Heinrich Kleber//Henry Clever was born in Bethel Township, Lancaster County on 18 April 1754, the eighth recorded birth to Michael and Elizabetha Kleber. The Rev. John Caspar Stoever, an early itinerant preacher on the frontier, listed the Kleber family as belonging to a small congregation he termed Swatara. When Henry was only three years old, tragedy struck when marauding indians killed and scalped both of his parents on May 16, 1757 (see the Conrad Weiser papers). The oldest sibling, George Ludwig (John) Kleber was already of majority age and sold the family farm for funds to provide for the care and education of the younger children.

In 1780, Henry married Elizabeth Reigard, daughter of Matthias and Anna Elizabeth Muller Reigard, and was living in Hanover Township, Lancaster County in 1782, when he served a tour of duty under Captain Daniel Bradley in the 7th Class, Seventh Company, Ninth Batallion, Lancaster County Militia (see Pennsylvania Archives). The trek westward began shortly thereafter, and in 1785 he is recorded on the tax rolls of Carlisle Township, Cumberland County, assessed for "four horses and one cattle (sic)."

His father-in-law, Matthias Reigard, was granted land in Westmoreland County by the Supreme Executive Council in 1786, and Henry is next found in Mt.Pleasant Township in that year clearing and farming half of the land, the other half being improved by his brother-in-law, son of Matthias Reigard.

Title to the land passed to Henry after 1790 with the death of his father-in-law, who had remained in eastern Pennsylvania. Henry sold one parcel of this land to the Trustees of the German Presbyterian and Lutheran Congregation in Mount Pleasant Township to build a permanent house of worship, and gradually divested himself of the land, subsequently living in Derry Township between 1808 and 1815., ....

Evidence suggests five daughters were born to Henry and Elizabeth Reigard Clever. After Elizabeth died prior to 1797, Henry was remarried to Elizabeth Leasure, daughter of Abraham and Margaret Leasure. This latter union produced seven children.

Approximately 1816 he moved his family to what has been termed the "Rupp settlement at Echo" in Armstrong County, following two of his daughters and their husbands (Jacob/Katherine Clever Rupp and Frederick/Susanna Clever Soxman), moving for the final time once again to a sparsely settled area. Henry's daughter, Christiana, who lived to the age of 102 and was already 12 years old by the time of the move to Armstrong County, recalled in her later years that she and the other children walked beside the wagon as the family traveled to Armstrong County.

Clearly the hunger for good farm land was sigificant motivation to Henry's father as he braved the rugged frontier of Lancaster County, and subsequently to Henry himself as he pushed west over the mountains to Mount Pleasant Township, Westmoreland County.