Hello, Janie, I noticed your correspondence to Brethren Rootsweb regarding the Dutch Brethren and marriage records, and that your line of research are Smiths. This may be a long shot, but....I am also researching Smiths, and wonder if there could possibly be a connection. Hardly possible, because of such a common name, but I'll give it a try. I'm descended from a James Smith and wife, Mary. It is recorded in "Immigration of the Irish Quakers into Pennsylvania, 1682-1750, by Albert Cook Meyers (1969) that his son, James Smith Sr., married to Alice Bowen, came to Lancaster/York Co., PA from Ballyhagen, Armagh County, Ireland in 1733. They were apparently part of a group of Quakers, including Blackburns and Bowens, who left Ireland to settle in PA near present day York, PA (Menallen township.) These families later moved further west to Springhope and Fishertown, Bedford County. My great-grandfather, Mahlon Smith, son of James and Alice (Bowen) Smith married a Catholic, Christiann Veronica Luken, of New Baltimore, PA. They were surely excommunicated from (or left) their respective churches-- Quaker and Catholic--and at some point became Brethren. They moved by covered wagon from Bedford County to Black Hawk Co., Iowa in 1865. I'm now living in Bedford County, PA, and would dearly love to know more about my Smith family line. Doris