The Correct Spelling In Germany is "Naeher" If No Umlaut is used or "Naher" With An Umlaut Over The "A"

There is a possible family connection, which hasn't been proven yet to Carl Neher, One of the first Palatine settlers to New York in 1710

Sometime between 1900 and 1910 census, the Spelling Of The name was changed From "Near" to "Neer"
Conrad Near Jr. was born Dec. 1773 in Stone Arabia, Montgomery County, N.Y., the only child of the marriage of Conrad Near & Anna Eva Empie/Empey, daughter of Philip & Maria Elisabet Barbara Schultz Empie.
At age 7, Indians & the British captured his grandfather Philip & him in a field while getting horses, Philip was able to escape later that night with a penknife that the Indians overlooked, but he couldn’t awaken Conrad. Conrad was sent to prison in Montreal. He was then released from prison when a British Officer saw his father’s Mason ring that he was wearing and was sent to a private home where he spent the rest of the revolutionary war. He returned to New York at war's end to find that his father Conrad Sr. had been killed during the war battle of Klock’s Field in Stone Arabia, where the Americans were routed by the Indians and British. Later that night Col. Klock retrieved the bodies and buried them in a mass grave. Was his father one of those dead soldiers? His mother couldn’t be found, so he settled in Stone Arabia, Montgomery County.
Both Philip Empie and Philip's brother William were tried as Loyalists while he was a prisoner. They both went to Canada where they stayed and died in Cornwall, Ontario Canada. Philip’s wife Maria Elisabet Barbara
supposedly stayed in the U.S. and his mother supposedly had married Michael Van Koughnet, but was never found nor heard of again.
Conrad married Anna Nancy Fox, daughter of William W. & Anna Eva
Loucks/Laux Fox on October 18, 1794 in Stone Arabia. His first son John Conrad was born on July 31, 1795 in Stone Arabia. The family migrated from Montgomery County through Smithfield & Lenox, Madison County by 1820, Vernon, Oneida County by 1823, Crawford County, Pa by 1825. Chautauqua County by 1833 where he is shown on the tax rolls. On to Michigan by 1840, where he had a quit claim on 834.5 acres in Detroit. They moved to Ingham County, finally settling in Hamburg, Livingston County, Michigan, where they both died. Nancy (Anna Nancy) died in 1850, Conrad in 1860, surrounded by all their children except their eldest son John, who had stayed in Chautauqua County, New York.