Hi Connie. I will do as you say and try Alsace. There is usually a tiny bit of truth in most family stories, even though they end up distorted. Thankyou Regards Jenny DeAngelis <<Try Alsace first then. It's on the French/German border. It would fit with both your family story and with Eve's suggestion.>>

> Jenny DeAngelis > > <<Try Alsace first then. It's on the French/German border. It would fit > with both your family story and with Eve's suggestion.>> For what it is worth, when he married, George could not write his name, but Charlotte could. The vicar has spelled out the surname very clearly indeed, presumably at Charlotte's dictation.* All the entries in that surname (bar one) are members of their family in 2-3 generations. George was registered as Moschellers when he died. IT was extraordianrily easy to become bankrupt, if you were in a trade providing goods to the gentry (and plaster modelling would have been aimed at fairly wealthy customers.) You had to give credit, they didn't pay, and if you chased them for money they bad-mouthed you to other potetnial clienmts. Plaster is dry, dusty stuff, needing copiuos draughts of liquid to keep the mouth and throat lubricated. George could have used water - but all the medical men were beginnibng to agree that water was not very safe in London, full of sewage fall-out. What was a man to do but drink beer? Not, presumably, that George would have regarded that as a hardship :-) * Was Mich- shell really Michelle with a hiccup in it? And (courtesy of 'The Genealogist' site,) I have found one non-descendant - a later Edward Michshel, in that very uncommon spelling, and he is living in St Pancras, a waiter at an inn, b 1878, and 'born Switzerland, Swiss' - so that is worth trying too. EVE Author of The McLaughlin Guides for Family Historians Secretary, Bucks Genealogical Society