I've been researching my grandmother Clara Bixler Bode's family. Her dad William Bixler came from Hippelsbach in the Gross Bieberau area and her mom Mary Lehn was born in Hohensachsen, Baden which is near Weinheim. They married in Youngstown, OH. Gross Bieberau is on the NW side of the area called the Odenwald which is the hilly southern end of Hesse-Darmstadt. Some of the families that I see in the Gross Bieberau were from the center of the Odenwald originally. Weinheim is in Baden but very close to the SW corner of the Odenwald. I'm finding my ancestors and related families in towns stretching north from Hohensachsen, Lutzelsachsen, Weinheim, Sulzbach & Hemsbach, to Laudenbach. These towns are all along the road called the Bergstrasse which goes from up in Hesse down to Heidelberg in Baden. It appears to follow the Rhine valley but on the eastern edge up against the hills. Actually on the map the area north of Weinheim looks like a little finger of Baden poking up into Hesse. I've read that one of the families (Schuessler) originated in Heppenheim which is over the border into Hesse. In the Baden records, I'm also seeing some of the surnames from the Odenwald - Rettig, Roeder, Karch, Hartmann. In the Hadis immigration index, I found a reference to a Lehn in Frankisch-Crumbach in the Odenwald and others in the area of Erbach. Could they be related? I'm curious about the history of this border area. Was it once part of Hesse? Does it have a name of its own or is it considered part of the Odenwald or of the Rhine valley? How common was migration in the area? Was it mostly of the type where people moved out of the farming towns in the center of the Odenwald to more developed places on the edge of the Odenwald? I bought a good map of the area published by Jonathan Sheppard Books. It is labeled [R 13a] Hesse-Darmstadt-1882. It covers the western half of the Odelwald and parts of Baden from Heidelberg in the south to Reinheim in the north. Only problem is that it doesnt show the border between Hesse and Baden which leads me to think the border wasnt very important in people's lives. Beverly Bode Howard