At 5/20/2010 03:42 PM Thursday, you wrote: *********START OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE TEXT********* >Betty, > I, of course, don't know the whole truth of this, but, I was always >told by relatives that we were part Black Dutch, "Black Dutch" meaning from >the northern regions of today's Germany. This is the part of my family that >came from Saxony and Mecklenburg, all having the physical appearance as >short and stout (in my words, built like power tanks!) Our family from that >region, while some having snow white hair in their very early youth, all had >dark hair. Both of my grandmothers were built like tanks; my other German >folk were blonds with blue eyes and medium to tall with that lean look, >those were from the southern part of Germany. > But as we all know, by the time of the first two generations, our big >German families married into other sects and than into the other English >Virginia colonies' families and those that moved into the Shenandoah Valley, >like your YEAGERS and my HITE-CHRISMANS, found some of those fast tempered >and hard fighting Scot-Irish families to marry. >Chocy **********END OF ORIGINAL MESSAGE TEXT*********** Hi Chocy: Has anyone read the definition of "Black Dutch" at Wikipedia? If not, it's worth looking at. Lots of "what ifs". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dutch Sarge My Germanna Database at Rootsweb: http://wc.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?db=germanna My Germanna Website at Rootsweb: http://homepages.rootsweb.ancestry/~george/index.html