I was discussing research yesterday with Désirée De Nantes a member of this list and she gave me some information I had not seen before regarding her ancestor Johhn Spiess/Speas. To fill you all in on the background. John Speas is believed to have married Mary Elizabeth Geiger/Kiger who was born (based on fairly widely accepted family information) about 1765, and who is (again based on family information) the daughter of John Adam Geiger and his wife Maria Margaretha Fiedler. This is the John Adam Geiger who settled by 1770 in Stokes County (Rural Hall), North Carolina. The one piece of evidence that I have to connect John Speas to the Geigers is the fact that he is named executor of the will of John Adam Geiger and is referred to as his "friend" which could well mean he is his son-in-law (I sure wish he had just said so and made things easier for us all). Anyway, we have always assumed that Adam Geiger met and married Maria Margaretha Fiedler in Berks County, PA as this is where she was born and raised. It is my belief that I found this John Adam Geiger and wife in 1767 in the records of Blue Mountain Church in Berks County which is within a mile or so of the church where Maria Margaretha Fiedler was bapt. in 1747. I believe it is likely that Adam and Maria Margaretha were married at this church and had Mary Elizabeth baptized there also--BUT we can't prove that since the records of this church have been destroyed or lost prior to 1767. I can't account for Adam and his family's whereabouts between 1767 and early in 1770 when they show up in Stokes County, NC. The information Désirée has given me on the family of John Speas (good friends to the Geigers) indicate that they had left Lancaster and Berks County, PA in the mid 1760s and moved to (of all places) Montgomery County, NY to a place called Stone Arabia. Probably the only thing that made it possible for them to be located in the records there and positively identified is the very unusual given name of John Spies' father--Hieronymous! I wonder if anyone can enlighten me as to what possible reason a Pennsylvania Duthchman might have had for picking up his family and moving to Stone Arabia, NY, and then picking up and moving once again to NC. Montgomery County, NY is just north of Schoharie County, NY, the site of the disastrous early settlement of Germans in America. Could there be some connection? It should also be noted that Gottfried Fiedler, grandfather of Maria Margaretha Fiedler, was one of the survivors of that early early (1710) Schoharie Settlement in NY. Might the Geigers have gone to Stone Arabia also? What was the draw for the Germans to NY and how many went? Here are the facts on the Speas family from Désirée: John SPEAS/SPEACE (spellings vary) was born 14 May 1762 in Lancaster, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and christened at the First Reformed Church on 19 September 1762 in that same town. He died 3 February 1841 in Rural Hall, Stokes County, North Carolina, and is interred in the Nazareth Lutheran Church Cemetery in Rural Hall in what is now Forsyth County. He married Mary Elizabeth GEIGER (spellings vary, too) about 1787. His parents were Hieronimus ("Jerome" in English) SPIESS who was born in what is now Germany on 14 May 1732. He married an Anna Barbara_______about 1759. He migrated to the large German area of Pennsylvania aboard the ship "Halifax" on 22 September 1752. He died on 3 February 1841, probably in Stokes County, North Carolina. Their children were: a. Anna Katherine SPIESS, born 8 December 1760 in Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, christened at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran on 2 February 1761. She died 13 September 1814 in Stokes County, buried in the Shiloh Lutheran Cemetery in what is now Forsyth County. She married Johann Joseph MÜLLER on 30 May 1780 in Bethania, Stokes County; b. John SPIESS (SPEACE), noted above; c. Maria SPIES, born in July, 1767 in Stone Arabia, Montgomery County, New York, and christened 11 August 1767 at the Reformed Dutch Church in Stone Arabia. Sometime after this christening they moved to what is now Stokes and Forsyth counties, the date unknown." Anyone have any ideas? Joan