Earlier I posted the
Hammer Family History notes that my grandfather left. A very distant cousin posted a detailed genealogy that mentions his father, David Harry Hammer (the first). You can see it at
http://www.newcomer-genealogy.com/ - click on
Peter (1719) Newcomer, Senior (1684-1732) to view his descendants. His descendants are numbered so that you can keep track and it's a good thing - there are thousands of them. The folks who assembled this data did an incredible amount of work.
My great-great-grandfather was John Hammer (#18), born in Hagerstown, MD in 1806. He married Elizabeth Witmer (also spelled Whitmer) in 1832. They moved to Illinois.
John was the son of George Hammer and Catherine Hall, who married in Lancaster, PA. His wife was the daughter of John Witmer and Barbara Newcomer of Maryland.
I won't go into all the other data because you can read all about it on the Newcomer's fine site. Other surnames of my ancestors mentioned there are Gerber, Weber, Coffman, Hall, Rowland, Miller, and Kendig. Newcomer was once spelled Neukommet, Weber was sometimes spelled Weaver and even Weller, Coffman was also spelled Kaufman.
My gggggg-grandfather Wolfgang Newcomer is said to have been born in Bern, Switzerland around 1715. He came to America with his parents in 1717. (Father was Peter Neukommet.) They were Mennonites who left Europe to escape religious persecution. Wolfgang moved to Leola, PA in 1749 (Lancaster County). His farm is said to still exist there.
Postscript: I updated the link to Newcomer genealogy in 2013:
http://www.newcomer-genealogy.com/. Also there is an interesting history in PDF form that mentions Newcomers and Witmers:
http://www.doubsmill.com/Doubs_Mill_History_4.pdf