Joseph Kirner

Joseph Kirner ( March 13, 1769 in Furtwangen in the Black Forest , Upper Austria - June 9, 1830 in Kernersville , North Carolina ) was a watch dealer from Furtwangen in the Black Forest who emigrated to America and, as Joseph Kerner, laid the foundation for the founding of the city of Kernersville in North Carolina put down.

Life

Joseph Kirner's parents were Petrus Kirner (1739–1796) and Magdalena nee Duffner (1734–1773). He married Christina Kastner on January 3, 1797 in Forsyth, North Carolina. They had three children during their marriage. He died on June 9, 1830 in Kernersville, North Carolina, aged 61 and was buried in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. His nephews, the painters Lukas Kirner and Johann Baptist Kirner , who also come from Furtwangen, are also known .

emigration

Joseph Kirner received a passport from the Obervogtei in Triberg on April 9, 1785 , which authorized him to trade in wooden clocks in Cologne, Holland and later also in North America. On April 19, Kerner left Furtwangen at the age of 16, which was a goodbye forever. For as he noted in his prayer book, he arrived happily in New York on August 5, 1785. It is said that he ran a small factory for ironmongery from nail to plow especially for the farmers.

Kerner's Crossroads

In 1817 he was able to significantly enlarge his possessions with a purchase: he acquired "Dobson's Crossroads" with a total of around 450 hectares of land. This "Dobson's Crossroads" was founded in 1756 as an inn and business at the intersection of two important roads in the Indian territory of North Carolina. Over the years, the settlement around the inn, which, by the way, was also home to President George Washington during the Revolutionary Wars in 1791, became a small village. Joseph Kirner then moved in with his wife, who belonged to the Moravian Brethren , who was widespread in the region , and the children and ran the inn and the shop until his death in 1830. From this point on, the inn and the patch were no longer known under the name of the previous owner Dobson, but now under the name Kirner or Kerner as "Kerner's Crossroads". Even in his new home, Joseph Kirner was obviously still connected to Furtwangen, because there is another entry in his prayer book: "I was born in Furtwangen, my fatherland is in heaven."

Kernersville founded

After Joseph Kirner was able to enlarge the area by buying land, the settlement continued to grow after his death. The children started other businesses and in 1871 the town of Kernersville was officially founded, which at that time already had 147 residents. Due to its favorable location, the city continued to grow and after the Second World War had around 5000 inhabitants. The city was dominated by agriculture, especially tobacco growing played a very important role here. That changed in the 1950s when the great American roads were built that called the "interstates" between the states. Since then, Interstate 40 has been running right through Kernersville , comparable to one of the major German motorways. So Kernersville also developed into a transport center, the number of inhabitants rose to almost 20,000 in the four decades.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Koerner's Folly - Kernersville, NC Historic Home - Jule Koerner. Retrieved July 29, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Gerd Bender: The clockmakers of the high Black Forest and their works.