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The first and most well known was Peter Bither of England. He is believed to have emigrated to Maine in the early 1700's. There are now many descendants of Peter Bither living today. I happen to have a copy of a published record of Peter Bither's descendants which includes the story of how the Bither name came to be. It includes 72 scanned pages and is in PDF format. Be sure to download Acrobat Reader if you don't currently have it on your system.
I'm happy to announce that Janet Peterson has volunteered her time to compile the entire book into GEDCOM format for anyone to download and import into your own genealogy database. In addition, if you have any questions relating to the English Bither's please contact Janet at janetgrannyp@usol.com
Descendants of Peter Bither GEDCOM compiled by Janet Peterson
Some Descendants of the Revolutionary Soldier
Peter Bither of Maine
Compiled by Janice Boyd with the assistance of Miss Jean Stephenson
1957 with 1974 revision
This PDF file is 3,739 Kb and might take a long time to download.
I would suggest clicking the "save" button once it's downloaded so
you have your own copy.
My ancestor, John Bither, was born in Wuertenburg, Germany abt 1824 and emigrated to Austerlitz, Columbia CO, NY circa 1850 and died in 1902. He appeared to have traveled with his brother, Anson Bither who is said to have traveled to Michigan. Recent researched has revealed that John Bither's surname at the time was BITZER, a fairly common German surname. There is also a family rumor that the name was changed. John Bither/Bitzer had several children and three wives as pointed out below.
John BITHER
William Bither
John Bither, Jr
Frederick Bither, b. abt
1862
Carrie Bither, b. abt 1865
Francis Bither
Elizabeth Bither, b. 1868
? SPATH
? ?
Agnes SAUER
William Bither was my great-great-grandfather and ? Spath is believed to be his mother. Both John Bither, Jr. and Fred Bither are said to have traveled west. Who knows if they had descendants and if any are living today. Carrie, Francis, and Elizabeth all have descendants who are living today, mostly in the Columbia Co. area.
If anybody knows anything about the Bither/Bitzer surname, especially the ones from my direct line, please e-mail me at the address below.
I am looking for help in updating this page and if there is enough interest, I will register a new domain and host the site. I need a volunteer to maintain and build on this site so that it can evolve to be the central web page of the BITHER surname, no matter what the lineage.
One of my goals is to find out my heritage and hopefully tie the two unique Bither lines together. Maybe the Bither's from England actually first emigrated from Germany, than to the U.S. after changing their name from Bitzer to Bither. Since recent research has brought up the possibility that the original name of Bither was Bitzer, maybe this page will also concentrate on the Bitzer surname as well.
Also visit the town of Canaan, which borders Austerlitz, where John Bither lived.