Having a German family that more or less follows your time and migration pattern - Frederick Maryland to SW Pa late 1700's - I found some data in the Pennsylvania Archives tax records. In my case there was also a will and some court records since some of the minor children's inheritance was not handled properly. Anyway the PA Archives are a good source if you know where to look. I will follow up with some volume information unless the cross references for Bedford and surrounding Counties are available on line. Anyone? John -----Original Message----- From: pawestmo-bounces@rootsweb.com [mailto:pawestmo-bounces@rootsweb.com] On Behalf Of Linda Nead Sent: Wednesday, April 27, 2011 5:06 PM To: pawestmo@rootsweb.com Subject: [PAWESTMO] Brick Wall - Niedt/Need/Nead Family We need help with a brick wall on my husband's side of the family. Two brothers, Christopher and Mathias Niedt from Germany, entered the colonies via Philadelphia in 1752 and moved to the Frederick / Washington County area of Maryland. They came on different ships about a month apart. Christopher Need, age about 70, shows up in the 1790 Federal Census in the Hagerstown, Maryland area. Mathias is also known to have moved to the same area and operated a leather tannery. Christopher had three sons, Johan Christof b.1734 Germany, George b.1740 Germany and Jacob. I'm not sure if they were Lutheran or German Baptist. They seemed to migrate with a number of other families; Nommaker, Tomer, Wagoner, Brown, Roher, Rinehart, Ott, Ramsey, Waite. This migration pattern was likely due to their German heritage, they may have even came from the same part of Germany since many arrived on the two ships together. The group splintered into several smaller groups, with the smaller groups going off to Ohio, Tennessee and later traveling deeper into the west. But the main group seemed to stay in Maryland, until suddenly the whole group decided to migrate from the Hagerstown Maryland area to Bedford and finally Huntingdon County Pennsylvania around 1800. Was there anything that happened about that time which would have caused this wholesale migration? Since the counties of Huntingdon and Bedford split about this time we have had trouble finding out where the group settled prior to coming to rest around Three Springs, PA. We have looked in census records in Maryland and both Bedford and Huntingdon Counties in Pennsylvania to no avail. Do you have any suggestions on what records would be available that could help us discover where might have been between 1800 and 1840? We're thinking that they were somewhere in western PA. Thanks for any suggestions, Linda Nead ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PAWESTMO-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message