The Geigers of Ittlingen (Baden, Germany) arrived in the US in several different batches across the 18th century, were still going back and forth in the 19th. Their Carolina connections are less well-documented than the PA connections, but historian A.G. Roeber adds some information in Palatines, Liberty and Property: German Lutherans in Colonial British America. In 1722, a Jacob Geiger was born in Ittlingen (so a different person from the Jacobs born around then in PA). He and his father Jacob went to PA in 1743, but kept in touch because they transacted legal business dealing with the German inheritances of PA residents. In 1749, Jacob (b. 1722) and his brother Valentine returned to Ittlingen. In 1750, Jacob married Maria Margarete Schuchmann, daughter of the local Schultheiss. The term doesn't translate exactly, but it's a combination of magistrate and political boss--at any rate, a good connection for him. His colonial investments and legal business prospered, and he later became Schultheiss himself. In 1769, a relative named Jacob Geiger (what else?) died in St. George's Parish in the Low Country of South Carolina, leaving a very extensive estate to his nieces and nephews in Beihingen. Jacob Geiger of Ittlingen purchased the estate from the heirs in 1771. After the war ended, he sent his son Henry to Charleston to manage the SC properties, as well as a mill and other holdings in Germantown PA. Henry became an influential merchant in Charleston, and was a member of the Vestry of St. John's Lutheran Evangelical Church. In 1790, he was listed on the census with one other male aged 16+ and two females. He is believed--but not documented--to have had a son named John Henry in ~1796. (John Henry died in 1836 while returning from a business trip to Germany, per family recollections.) Father Jacob was alive and well in Ittlingen as of 1789, and mailing instructions to son Henry in Charleston about how "Americans don't have the best reputation in this country...If someone...wants to realize an inheritance here, he is considered to be a thief." On 26 Jun 1806, Valentine Geiger, a 45-year-old merchant from Ittlingen, was naturalized in Charleston. He was presumably a brother of Henry (and son of Jacob), given his age, but the book does not state that. None of the Geigers from Ittlingen (or Beihingen) appears to have crossed paths with the Swiss-origin Geigers of Lexington Co SC. They have no legal documents in common at any time. There may still be some common ancestors in Switzerland in the early 17th century, who are yet to be determined. Harriet Imrey himrey@ntelos.net