From an email sent by Karen Nichols-Rexwall [krexwall AT telia.com]:
"Fountain is my paternal grandmother’s line. Decades ago one of her brothers traced the family tree back to the late 1600s in Maryland. He printed a manuscript and we all got copies, myself included. Decades later I decided to take that manuscript as a basis and research the family further and through a series of extremely lucky breaks (a distant cousin hiring a professional genealogist who traveled to France) and finding research data of a French Fontaine researcher I was able to trace back the family to Jean de Fontaine, a Knight who participated in the First Crusade in Jerusalem (ca AD 1070)!
I have managed to link the Nicholas de la Fontaine (b. 1610 in St Lô, Normandy, France) line to the Jacques de La Fontaine (b 1549 in France) line in my research. The link is back in France in the 1400’s if memory serves me right. If I remember correctly off the top of my head, their common ancestor was Michel, married Estar de Lions. I had a hunch that these families had to be related at some point!
For access to this data, see page at Geneanet:
http://en.geneanet.org/profil/karex/Karen-Nichols-Rexwall