We are finding out we are more than we thought we were. Take all different nationalities and combine them into one person and you get an American. I wasn't doing this when thinking or our Harkey/Herche family. I have been puzzled and amazed lately to see strangers showing up in my family. I was possessive. All Harkeys and all Herches were my cousins. They fit, some way, if they didn't seem to fit, the excuse was we just didn't have the proper bit of information to make them fit.. I thought of genealogy as a stream. Somewhere it had one start. The name had one beginning. One day in time , one man got that name. Now it appears that man and his family -- went in lots of different directions. I don't think it is possible for us to go back further looking for our roots. Nina and others have Herche's in Sterbfritz back to 1591-- If they belong to some of us that is great. If Johannes was ours and one of theirs then, there is our immigrant? A problem I see with many of us on the Harkey list is we haven't proven that George Martin was a son of David nor have we found David's other children, and we haven't proven that David was a brother of Martin and we haven't found the parents of Catherine (Barringer? ) We haven't tied in John born in 1765 - with the rest of the family. We saw both Herche and Harkey used in the same document in reference to Martin but we haven't tied in any Herche families directly with Martin line. We are fielding questions about Harkey's born in 1900 ? I don't have them in my database. I apparently haven't realized yet that 1900 was 102 years ago whew! It is difficult for most of us to go off looking for French or Irish or Italian Harkey's in Europe. We don't have access to their records. We will never know how they got to be French, Italian or Hungarian and be named Harkey, Harkay or Herche. This is all sad to me <G> my goal has been to get All Herche/Harkey members inserted into their proper place on this giant peg board in my mind. I'm going to need a bigger hammer to make them all fit <G> Mary Harkey Russell bird@scrtc.com