I believe that we may have to look at very different spellings of Geiger back in pre1800 GA to find some answers. I am looking into the possibily that the name was spelled Gugel in some documents. Before all of you delete this before reading further, let me give you some reasons for this hypothesis: The letters G and K were interchangable in the early German language. Of course, we have accepted that because of the 1767 land grant to Ulrich Kegar (Geiger). But I recently came upon some documents listing Matthias Gugel, yet he signed his own name in German spelling it "Krigul." Effingaham records show Anna Maria Guger (Gugel spelling also used) marrying William Stafford in 1773. In 1798 Abraham's daughter, Mary Hoffman, conveyed land to Abraham Stafford. Descendants of this line know Anna Maria to be a Geiger. I recently came upon a Geiger document spelled as Griger and have wondered if the German language translates an "R" differently or if somone later made transcription errors. Additionally, there were only 20 letters used in the German language and the translation to English is not terribly accurate. Now, I have not seen the original Ebenezer Record book which was written in German so I don't know if whoever translated it misread the faded writings or took these things into account or considered that people spelled phonetically back then. There are historians that felt that the Geiger brothers intentionally altered the spelling of their names when they fanned out from Orangeburg. This would not surprise me as a story has been passed down for generations in my Geiger line that Jesse Gieger (b. 1793) was adamant that we came from the Geiger line which spelled it as GIEGER. He (wrongfully) stressed that the original spelling was always GIE. I just can't help but wonder if these sons altered their names to assert their new indepence in a new land or if there were just a lot of scrivnor errors. Just a thought...