I've been thinking about the German origin issue for Meshach Inman, and a thought suddenly struck me: Meshach was English. That has been fairly well established. However, nothing has ever been decided about Meshach's wife. She may well have been German. Rowan County, NC had a large German population during the time that all of these people lived there. Meshach and his brothers were all fairly young when they arrived in NC. Shadrach and Abednego did not marry until after they settled in NC; I think this is also true of Meshach. After Meshach's death, his wife eventually relocated to Middle Tennessee. Lazarus Inman (b. 1765) was the first of the two sons to move there. He first settled in what is today Williamson County and then later resettled in Kentucky, where he died when he was almost 100. Samuel Inman (b. 1767)--from whom I descend--did not relocate to Tennessee until after 1795. He settled in what is today Perry County. I have records from there on which he is listed as a squatter on Indian lands in 1809. His daughter, Elizabeth, my 3rd great grandmother, was born there in either late 1808 or early 1809. Lazarus and Samuel would have had very few memories of their father Meshach. However, they would certainly have been aware of their mother's German ancestry. Perhaps they thought their father was a German also and perhaps this is where the "German issue" originates. I have run across this same type of thing on the Spence lines. Family lore suggests that the Spences may have come from Alabama, etc.--but Alabama is the place where Elisha Spence's father-in-law John Spencer (the first sheriff of Maury County, TN) died in 1825. Perhaps someone along the line thought that there was an Alabama origin for all of these people. I have already referred to the other discrepancies between the 1880 Jasper County, Missouri census and the 1880 Washington County, Arkansas census. When asked about his parents' birthplaces, William David Spence (of Jasper County) knew that his father Samuel Spence was born in SC. So he presumed that his mother Elizabeth Inman was born there also. (Elizabeth fled from Missouri with the Bunch family after the Civil War and died in Washington County). On the other hand, Milly Catherine Spence Bunch (William David's sister) knew that her mother Elizabeth Inman was born in TN. She presumed that her father was born in TN as well. I think this "Meshach as a German" issue stems from this kind of thing. I also think that Meshach's wife was probably a German. This will be my next focus of research whenever I return to the library!!! Barbara