Hello "another Bigler cousin" Gale. Glad to know how we are related. Have enjoyed your postings to the list for a long time. And yes, I was also thrilled to learn some of the ancestry of Marx Bigler. And to answer your question, yes we have Mark's grandparents on both lines and one more generation back from one of his great grandmothers! Also Mark has two more brothers, Hans Jacob and Hans George. So I have lots more information to share. I spent a great deal of time about 33 years ago compiling a thick ring binder of research notes on him over a 2 year period before I gave up. Then about 10 years ago my youngest daughter invited my husband and I to visit them in Germany, where her husband was stationed with the Air Force. So I re-read all my Bigler notes and went to Germany, naively intending to find our Mark. Of course that did not happen! In those days internet service in our remote community was dialup and pay long distance charges. But a few days after we got home I decided to join AOL, because they had a great genealogy site. I paid my fees, logged on the site, typed in "Mark Bigler", and there he was - in Hunspach! Only a 2 hour drive from where I had just spent 2 weeks!! What I had found was the book, "Eighteenth Century Emigrants from the Northern Alsace to America" by Annette Kunselman Burgert, FGSP,FASG, published by Picton Press, copyright 1992, pages 71-74. Perhaps you know Mrs. Burgert. If you do not have access to this book it would be well worth it obtain a copy. If you need it, I can send you her address. The same information also appears in "Early German Settlers of York County, Pennsylvania" by Keith A. Dull, published by Willow Bend Books, copyright 1997, page 180. I rented a microfilmed copy of the Parish Registers of the Evangelical Reformed Church of Hunspach, Alsace (now Bas Rhin) France, and spent the next year reading it, all the while learning to read the old German script. The next year we went to Germany again. Our daughter loaned us a car, took us by the Archives of Bas Rhin, put us in a hotel outside of Strasburg, and left us there for a week. The above mentioned original parish registers are there but can only be read on microfilm, and you have to make an appointment a couple of weeks in advance to use a microfilm reader. (This may have changed since then.) So, since I had already extracted the family and collateral lines from the microfilm, I spent my time searching the notary records. A notary was like an attorney, and they handled the legal matters, including the distribution of estates. It was there that I found the mothers that the parish records did not name, and got one more generation back on another. What a thrill to handle the 300+ year old books of original documents and to read the actual signatures of some of our ancestors, and to learn a little about their lives!! I did not have the privilege of meeting Norman Burns, but I corresponded with him. He did not have any more copies of his book, but he very kindly made me a photo copy of his personal copy, which contains many hand written notes and additional information that he obtained after the book was published. (Maybe you have those too.) Unfortunately, I did not think to let him know that Mark had been found. I don't know if he was still living at that time. The book (78 pages) that he worked on with Frank and Sherman Brough follows the lines of Mark's son Jacob for 4 generations down to Jacob G. Bigler who was my great, great grandfather. I did, however, meet Frank Brough (another cousin), and shared the information with him before he died. He was also the author of "Freely I Gave, the Life of Jacob G. Bigler". Jacob G. Bigler was the son of Mark Bigler (and Susannah Ogden), who was the son of Jacob Bigler (and Hannah Booher, who migrated to Enterprise, Virginia), who was the son of Mark I. None of these three books are still in print, but I might be able to get copies that were made by a couple of other relatives with permission of their respective authors. N. H. Goodman -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of gale honeyman Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2011 10:29 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [BRE] Bigler at Little Conewago Enter another Bigler cousin through Elizabeth Bigler and Henry Eller, the first. First off, I am thrilled for the baptismal record of Marx and his brother Michael. This is totally new information to me. Am I to presume that these were the only two in the Hunspach registry, or were there others? Is anything further known of Hans Thomas and Anna Maria?