Hello Hessians, hello Jane, and hello Nelda, and hello Carolyn: Jane, you brought up the Rootsweb WorldConnect project and gave some leads in respect to Heinrich BITTER, who is being investigated by Carolyn. It all got me a bit confused, so I started to do some basic research, and I had a bulls eye. Remember that I suggested to Carolyn that Heinrich could have changed his name. I had this Ansbach-Bayreuther in my files, Heinrich Bittenholzer, who deserted in June 1783 according to the military files. This date of course is not carved in stone, he may have gone much earlier, but went unreported. I checked the German Telephone on-line directory for the name and hit a blank, but when I tried some variations, I found that there were about 40 listings in Western Germany of the name BUETTENHOELZER (the u and the o being Umlauts), and guess what, I did a search on the Rootsweb WorldConnect for the name BITTENHELZER and to my surprise here came two entries for this name, both for a Heinrich. Now hear this: Karen Moore kmoore2002@home.com and Suzanne Baird sbaird@nvahomes.com are looking for Henry BITTENHELZER, who married 5. April 1788 in Shenandoah, Virginia to Elizabeth BEARD, born 1753 in Augusta, VA. Her father was Zachariah BARD, born abt.1719 in Germany. Well, those two descendants at least do know now who this Henry Bittenhelzer was, I know that he married, and we all know a little more. Except I don't know if this has helped our subscriber Carolyn, she may have to look further. That's all I can do for now, best wishes, John Helmut Merz