Hi Fritz, thanks for responding. Another family member has some documentation that they were from Mecklenburg, and recently I discovered another Ancestry member has posted on the surname Brinkert message board that her Brinkert family had emigrated from Mecklenburg. I don't have enough information to determine if there is any relationship between their Brinkerts and mine, but at least it establishes that there were Brinkerts in that area in the same era.