Theobald (David) Christler came to America as a nine-year-old in 1718. The family lived for a while in Pennsylvania. He moved to the Robinson River Valley at about the same time that the Garr family did. There may have been a connection in these two event, as Theobald married Rosina Garr. The name Christler or Crisler in America was Christele in Germany.
Frederick Baumgardner arrived at Philadelphia in 1732 and went to Virginia immediately where his uncle, Michael Willheit, lived. He also knew other residents of Schwaigern who had emigrated to Virginia. Baumgardner, or Baumgartner, or Bäumgardner, is a popular name in Germany and means tree-gardener or orchard-gardener . It some cases it can also mean forester .
The John and Martin Deer families appear in the Hebron Church records as Hirsch, the German word for " deer ." In the civil records, the form is either Deer or Dear. John and Martin were brothers.
The George Teter family of Virginia was another Schwaigern family that arrived in Philadelphia in 1727. The family lived in Pennsylvania for a few years before settling in Virginia. An association with the Henckel family began there and, I believe, there were eventually four marriages between the two families. The German spelling of Teter was the sound-alike name of Dieter.
Three members of the Lutspike or Lotspeich family moved to Virginia in the later period of immigration, but even by then, spelling was still at the whim of the writer. In Germany, the name occurred in multiple forms with the most common being Lotspeich.
The Scheible family left no male heir in Virginia, so there are no English spellings of the name. The family came from the same small village as the Blankenbakers, Fleshmans, Schlucters, and the Thomases. Margaret James Squires, a major researcher of the emigrants from this village, thought the Scheibles might be related to the other families, but she found no conclusive proof. The Scheible family had five daughters, all of whom had the first name of Anna. Three of them were given the name Anna Maria but the first two died. Three daughters came to America in 1717 but the fate of only one, Anna Elisabetha, is known. She married Michael Holt.
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.