Frederick, MD, was Grand Central Station for Germans during the 18th century. Several of my ancestral German families met up in Frederick -- there is a surviving marriage record for a pair of gggggp's in the Reformed church there -- before moving en masse to North Carolina.
My ancestors spread westward. They included some of the original settlers in Harper’s Ferry, W. Va., and then moved into Ohio, Illinois, and Texas. During the Civil War, they fought on both sides.
Somehow, my mother’s branch of the family was cut off from the others, and she was unaware of her ancestry. Her relatives speculated that the family name might be of German, Swedish, or Greek origin, but through the Internet, I finally discovered our history.