Johan Michael Braun 1724-1785

In the past few years there have been entries on familysearch.org and ancestry.com that list his parents as Abraham and Margaret Braun, but we have been unable to substantiate by searching German church records. Recently a search of some Moravian records in York County, Pennsylvania indicated that a Johan William Ohler settled there after arriving on the St. Andrew Galley in 1737 which is the same ship as the one in which Johan Michael is listed as a passenger. The York County entry had a notation "Joh. Willhelm Ohler, master smith at Friedelsheim, and Ursula his w. were sponsors for a child of Hans Michael Braun in 1735." It is unclear just what that means. The fact that it was mentioned at all is suspicious that there is some connection to the passenger of the same name. I am speculating that the fact that there has been so much difficulty in locating baptismal records could indicate that the family may have been in transit around the time of his birth. Also it would seem that the reason that a thirteen year old would be on a ship to America without his parents most likely would indicate that he was an orphan.

Other reports list Michael's birthplace as Niedermohr which is much further west from Friedelsheim, but extensive search of records there and in the surrounding parishes failed to find the baptismal records. There were many Brauns in the Friedelsheim area and a notation in one of our family histories indicated that they lived near the Rhine River in Germany. Friedelsheim is near the Rhine but Niedermohr isn't. Does anyone have further information about this? Anything at all would be greatly appreciated.