In a message dated 4/23/99 10:18:44 PM Pacific Daylight Time, Joycejsews@aol.com writes: << it seems they settled in Connecticut, but then just disappeared. >> I bet they disappeared because they changed their name from NEITZEL to something that worked better in English. (This kind of change is different from having the name go through the normal course of mis-pronunciations and mis-spellings. ) For example, I know of a French family named MORIN that simply changed its name to MURRAY one morning; a line of French GUERTINs likewise all changed to GORDON. The given names all were changed too - Henri to Henry, Francois to Frank, etc. This happened in Massachusetts and Rhode Island, that I know of. I think many of the families whose names presented problems to English-speakers just got fed up with it and changed to something Anglo-Saxon-sounding. Also, perhaps they thought it would help them fit in since they were surrounded by English. Note that the Morins and the Guertins at least kept the same first initial. Did your people live where there were city directories? Sometimes these contain clues to name changes. How about KNIGHT? Or NIGHT-something? ("eee-eye" in German is pronounced "eye", as you probably know.) Good luck.