Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> wrote: > Now if I could just afford/find something between the > hypothesis that the family was still in Germany in <1840, and had > made Ohio by 1845 (based upon the place of birth for two of the > children). One way to try to determine when the family arrived in the U.S. is to find each of the children in the 1880 census, the first to give the birthplace of each person's parents. This should work for children born in Ohio post-1845. A common migration path for German families was from PA to Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, then to Ohio. There were Biebers in the Valley in the late 1700s and on - actually they were called Beaver mostly in Virginia. Another variation you need to keep in mind for German names is the B - P change and vice versa. It was primarily in the Shenandoah Valley were Bentz became Pence. Regards, Richard "Richard A. Pence" <richardpence@pipeline.com>