This was forwarded to me by a Kiger cousin--I'm passing it along to the list. Joan Subj: Henrich Geiger - Lutheran family of Charleston Date: 11/1/00 3:03:25 PM Eastern Standard Time From: [email protected] (Valerie N. Caulfield) To: [email protected] (Joan Young) I never know if it's worthwhile to send you any of this stuff I stumble into - 9 times out of 10, you've already seen it. Anyway, I found this of interest. Maybe you sent me the article in the first place? Found among my piles of files. Val "Strangers Within the Realm: Cultural Margins of the First British Empire;" Edited by Bernard Bailyn and Philip D.Morgan Published for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, Williamsburg, Virginia by the University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill and London p255 "Charleston's role as a center for German-speaking cultural brokers who emerged from within this southern orbit could never come close to matching Philadelphia's of course. Halle's ties with Ebenezer, Georgia, to cite but one reason, had developed in the 1730s, a generation earlier than the corresponding merchant network connecting Charleston to the Reich. By the 1740s, this settlement on the Savannah River, populate by Salzburgers and increasingly, Wurttemberg Lutherans, successfully exported lumber to the West Indies and silk for reexport to Halle and ground grain for settlers from Augusta to the Georgia coast. Nonetheless, eminent Charleston Lutherans like Michael Kaltheisen and the Henry Geiger and David Sailer families did emerge, along with a prosperous small group of German artisans in the town who owned plantations in the low country and as far west as the Lexington district and at Saxe Gotha. I'm looking still, there's another part in here that suggests this Henry had kinfolk in Philadelphia - but that's about it. At least the family name got mentioned a couple of times. <g> Another gleaning from the same piece, of general genealogical interest: p263-4 The inheritance of family property among German-Americans had been guaranteed by German principalities and cities in part because of the system of manumission dues imposed upon emigrants. Those dues were calculated upon the value of the real and movable property they held in the village or that would fall to them in the future. Emigrants were thus reminded that they would be future lawful heirs to familial property in the villages after they left. And they did not forget, once in America. Philadelphia and Charleston, distribution points for German culture within the British world, were also conduits through which the value of property inherited from kin and family in the Old World could be collected an redistributed in North America. Beginning slowly in the 1740s and increasing steadily for another forty years, the recovery of these inheritances further guaranteed for the clergy and merchants their role as cultural brokers. Most needed little encouragement, eager as they were to sustain their own professions for enterprises. These leaders simultaneously supported their own community standing and helped to develop German Speakers' comprehension of Anglo-American legal and political subtleties. The recovery of inheritances tended ot include many more people than the relatively few directly involve. Comparing the names of emigrants from a particular region with those making requests for recovery, a cautious guess can be made about the prevalence of the practice. That most attempts occurred between the 1740s and the 1770s suggests that the members of the family groups that characterized migration before the Seven Years' War -those who had been at least marginal property holders before emigrating - were those who pursued recovery. Scattered instances occurred in the South Carolina, but most claims, even from New Your or New Jersey, went through Philadelphia. ......which means if these guys (the authors) saw them, they've got to be around, hmmm?