In an e-mail I got from my second cousin last night, she shared a little tidbit with me about our family history which I hadn't heard before. We've known that the family left Germany in 1865 or 1866 because they were worried that the oldest sons would be conscripted into the army. My cousin shared with me that she had always heard from her grandmother (who would have been the grandaughter of one of the immigrants) that the family fled Germany, swimming across a river into France. As I've said before, we came from Insheim down near Landau, not far from the French border. Any ideas what river that might have been? Joe Metz