Hi Bruce First of all, I do want to give you this information if you don't already know it. Busch and Pusch are the same family-same blood line. In german the P and the B are the same. Its just the dialect in a given area of germany that the priests when writing the childs baptism or Wedding wrote it with a B or a P. So Busch's are Pusch's and vice versa. My original Busch's came from the Schwaban Area of germany. The Rhineland, Zaar. Pfaltz(Palatine), Elsace, Lothringen are some of the original areas from where they lived. Around 1700-1730 and up to 1790,these acestors were invited by the Empress of Austria/Hungary MariaTherese to populate the virgin territory of Hungary(her army just succeded in ousting the Ottoman Turks for the third and last time). There were tens of thousands that took the opportunity to get free land and also was sponsored by the Empress with money and equipment. So here they lived for over two hundred years till the end of WWI. You asked if we are connected. There is a strong possibility as my gggg-grandfather who came from the same area that you are talking about( I don't know the exact town in Germany he came from and that's where I am stopped) name written the the church book was Leonhard Pusch. It was also written as Leopold Pusch. I guess Leonhard is a derivitive of Leopold. Also, I have some family in St. Paul, Minn. My father was John Busch and his first cousin in St. Paul was also John Busch. They were both born in Zichydorf, Austria/Hungary. There were a lot of Johann/John Busch's running around I have found. Some of other surnames in St. Paul were Niedermayer, Faul, Muller, Osterle and Zopf. There are more but I can't recall all of them. All I can tell you at this time is Yes, we are connected but I don't know how far back we have to go. I do know that my Leonhard probably came from one of the areas I mentioned above. I can also tell you that we are derived from a Duc or King. This is why if we can get back to this King(Busch) and because he was noble and had a second name we should be able to go back to the 10 hundreds perhaps even to 850-Charlemange era. I hope this gives you some direction and I am also available to you. John This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/VEH.2ACIB/230.1 Message Board Post: My Johann or John Pusch or Busch was born about 1841 in, I think, Prussia. He immigrated to Mankato, MN and married Anna Meier, Meyer or Mayer there in March 1872. For more details see my Rootsweb site at: http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=GET&db=pusch&id=I000001 Can there be a connection? Bruce ==== BUSCH Mailing List ==== USGS Mapping Information query form http://www-nmd.usgs.gov/www/gnis/gnisform.html ============================== Search the US Census Collection. Over 140 million records added in the last 12 months. Largest online collection in the world. Learn more: http://www.ancestry.com/s13965/rd.ashx