Harshbarger line: Friedrich Carl Hoerner 1703-after 1789, Immigrant

I thought I was done writing Harshbarger stories, but in a genealogy clean up project I have been working on, I found another ancestor who was an immigrant.  It will not surprise anyone in the Harshbarger family to learn that he came from Germany and died in Pennsylvania.  But what else can we learn about him?

Friedrich Carl Hoerner was born, or christened, December 23, 1703 at Dierbach, Sudliche Weinstrasse, Rheinfeld Pfalz, Germany.  This is a small village, current population abo0ut 540, and is located on the "point" between France and Germany.  One wonders how many wars this small village has seen?  Dierbach's church is Protestant and has been since the Reformation, the current church having been built in 1502.  Pictures of the town show typical German, half-timber construction, the type we would associate with medieval times. 

Friedrich Carl Hoerner was the son of Hans Gall and Juliana Margarethe Kurtz Hoerner, one of at least eight children.  Both of his parents lived until Frieddrich Carl had reached young manhood.  He was 20 when his father died and 33 when his mother died in 1737.  Friedrich appears to not have married until he was 41 years old, which was not that unusual for the men in small German villages.  Life was hard and it might take that long to save enough money to provide even the barest of necessities for a wife and a new household. 

In 1744, Friedrich Carl married Anna Catharina Schaub, daughter of Thomas Schaub, and their first child was born the following year.  Maria Salome is the only known daughter of the couple, and we don't know when Anna Catharina died.  Perhaps she died young and perhaps that is part of the reason that Friedrich Carl came to America, arriving at Philadelphia on September 29, 1750. 

Tbe next records we have for him are tax and census records starting from 1762, when he was in Berks County, probably Exeter Township.  It appears that they were members of the Schwartzwald Reformed Church (Calvinist, as opposed to Lutheran) because a son was buried there in 1788.  Also Friedrich Horner and Maria Horner are the parents of a daughter baptized November 21, 1766 at Oley (Salem) Reformed Church.  If this is our Friedrich, then it appears that Anna Catharina had died and Friedrich had remarried.  In the 1779 tax records, he is noted as having 100 acres of land, so he was probably farming.  It looks like there may be a Nicholas and a Matthias Hoerner in the same township, but I don't know if they are related or not. 

This is as much as I currently know about Friedrich Carl Hoerner.  He may very well have served in the French and Indian War of 1756-1763 (mostly up to about 1760, as far as the fighting goes) but I don't have any record of that.  He certainly would have been affected by the war, as this was frontier country at the time.  He lived through the Revolutionary War, too.  I would love to hear some of this man's stories, wouldn't you?  He is believed to have died after 1789, possibly in Bedford County, Pa.  I haven't located a will.

The line of descent is:

Friedrich Carl Hoerner-Anna Catharina Schaub
Maria Salome Hoerner-Henry Matthias Braun
David Brown-Barbara Brothers
Elizabeth Brown-William Cook
Barbara Cook-William Withers
William Withers-Della Kemery
Goldie Withers-Grover Harshbarger
Cleveland Harshbarger-Mary Margaret Beeks
Their descendants