Mower Family History Association
First Quarter 2004 Newsletter

During the last winter we have been working on several Mower related lines and MAY have come to an important crossroads on our research on the Martin Brill line. Martin Brill, whose history is located on this site, was born in 1710 in a German-speaking land...probably Germany. We have been unable to locate his village of origin. We have worked on this line since 1989 with not much success. We have hired Trudy Schenk to research out several of our German lines...the Michael Maurer line, the Charles Geissinger line, and she has made several trips to Germany for us looking in the Hessian archives for the Brill line. We have assumed that this line came from this region because of the naming patterns of the family and the preponderance of similar naming patterns in Hesse.

After several years of working on other Maurer/Mower lines including the Swedish Anderson line of Emilia Augusta Anderson who married John Lisbon Mower, we received a letter from Trudy Schenk who would like to pursue the investigation of some microfilmed records known as the "Wetter records". We are thus going to employ Trudy for another round of investigations as we search for the Brill family in this area of Hesse. Keep your fingers crossed. We have never given up hope of finding our people and so we embark on another "pilgrimage" of research.

This research is funded by dedicated family members who contribute money each month. All family members are encouraged to participate, making the load easier for all. I have contracted Trudy for $1000 worth of research and have sent her $500 as a down payment. Anyone wishing to contribute to the research...100% of which goes toward the genealogist's research fees...is invited to contact me at the following:

jmower@silverstar.com or
Jerry Mower
615 County Road 123
Bedford, WY 83112