>I forgot to say about the Moravians: I am not sure they are considered >Pennsylvania Dutch and the reason may be that they came from a region >called Moravia, now in - well, I'm not sure whether the Czechs or >Slovaks got Moravia in the latest rearrangement of borders, but it is >not in what is now Germany, and I'm not sure whether it ever was. But >the people are definitely ethnic Germans, not Slavs. >-- >jan <janiceaf@ix.netcom.com> >Researching names: FRANK, KELLER, LUPHER/LUPFER, > PENROSE, SCHULTZ, TAYLOR > > Joan Myers Young gave an excellent summary of the early Moravian church in Europe and America in response to this question, so I won't repeat that. However, I would like to add that a very substantial number of the early Moravians in America were people who immigrated as Lutherans or Reformed, mostly from the Rhineland, and later joined the Moravian church. I was quite surprised in fact to find when I started doing genealogy on my Moravian ancestors (my father's entire family, in the Winston-Salem NC area), that most of them were actually from Alsace or Switzerland. I would definitely consider them to be part of the PA "Dutch" or German community. For more on the Moravian church, take a look at their web site: http://www.moravian.org/ Elizabeth Harris chlamy@acpub.duke.edu