The first Bauer/Bower line is from Kleinbottwar, Wurttemburg, and my ancestor came over in 1838, though I have never been able to find the ship listing. He was Stephen Gottlieb Bauer, and his wife was Maria (Mary) Glock from Hoheneck, Wurttemburg. There were brothers of his who left Germany earlier and later, but I have not been able to find information on them. Stephen Gottlieb (sometimes Gottlieb Stephen) was a weaver by trade, as well as a farmer. Before he married and emigrated, he traveled by foot from Wurttemburg down through Turkey and into the Holy Land, earning his way with his weaving. In Palestine he became ill and was advised by a doctor there to go back to where the food was more familiar, so he walked back home, weaving cloth as he went. Then he married Maria, and after the birth of their first two sons, they emigrated to the U.S., living 10 years in the Aughwick Valley of western PA, where they were baptized into the German Baptist Brethren (Dunkard) church--Maria's brother John Glock was an elder in that church. They then moved west to Stephenson County IL in 1848 and we have an account of their journey by wagon, canal boat, inclined-plane railway, river boat, and wagon again. We have journals from my great-grandfather and good information on this family--though never enough. The family name was anglicized into BOWER in 1851 in Illinois, but surprisingly Stephen and Maria's two surviving sons used two different spellings. The elder brother and his descendants use the spelling BOWERS. My father's line uses BOWER. Apparently there was a period of time when it was not healthy to be known as German, particularly amongst German-speaking Dunkards, who were pacifists, and the "S" was added to sound more English. The one line kept the "S", while my line reverted back to the original pronunciation. The other line, among my mother's ancestors, sounds more likely to have been English in ancestry. I first ran into the name of one BOWERS SLAWSON, which intrigued me. Bowers Slawson was lived 1742-1800 and was born in Stamford CT. Apparently the name came to him from his grandmother, identified in our records, alas, only as 'MISS BOWERS' who married Nathaniel Howe (1650-1692) of New Haven CT. Does anyone connect with these CT Bowerses? I presume their ancestry traces back to England. Jan T