Agreed, but.....only when you are talking about Johannes and Margarita Aegender/Agner. There are probably other Agner immigrants who may have come from Germany, Austria, etc. Pat, on the list, has the most complete location for Johannes' birth place.....Gemeinde Boltigen in the District of Ober-Simmenthal in Canton Bern, Switzerland. Pat, do you have a source for that tidbit? >From Johannes' power of attorney dated January 24, 1757 (available from the NC State Archives, if anyone intrested I can get the address and fee for you) it only said "....collect my rights to my paternal and maternal inheritance out of Switzerland, which inheritance is in Binsaltamen bei______." Now this was originally written in Old German and was translated to English in 1968. Looking at the German copy I can't even tell how they came up with that much -- but then I can't read German, much less Old German! By the way, what does your friend say is the original spelling? Johannes' signature looks like this: Ägnder or Ägeder. Only instead of making the dots for the umlaut, he makes a thing like a u, or a short vowel sound mark over the A. The closest to this spelling I have found in the on-line phonebooks for Switzerland is EGENDER, which is a known variant in America. --Celia H. :o) ----- Original Message ----- From: Hope Peterson <HopePeterson@webtv.net> > Does everyone agree that our Agners came from Switzerland? I have a > friend from Switzerland who says the "original" spelling is still in the > phone book in Switzerland. Has anyone done research there?