Genealogical Truth is Stranger than Fiction

You have probably heard the old saying, “Truth is Stranger Than Fiction.” As I have gotten involved in Genealogy, I am amazed at the truth in this timeworn adage.

No matter how hard I might try, I couldn’t come up with fiction that would come close to matching some of the genealogical facts I’ve discovered about our family.

Let me use some situations, a few perhaps mentioned before, to illustrate.

A Surprising Link to the Old World

You might think your ancestor came over to the new world on a ship of immigrants, but it is much harder to believe what I discovered in a DAR library:

• That he was a Hessian soldier who came on a British Soldier transport ship that took four months to get here
• And that he had left a family in Germany, and later stayed in the U.S to start a new family

A Soldier Who Fought on Both Sides

Who would believe that Johann Wolfgang Odoerfer would have fought for the British as a Hessian Soldier, defected, and fought for the Colonists in the same Revolutionary War?

And was given land in Ohio for his service to the Colonists? And was declared a Patriot by the DAR?  You’ve got to be kidding.

A Disappearing Cemetery

Wait a minute!  A cemetery with 25 gravestones here one January, and gone the next? And back the next?

Well that was a case with a small Odaffer family cemetery I discovered near Monticello, IL.

After I visited in a January snowstorm, some vandals had taken all the stones and thrown them in a nearby creek.

The local genealogists found and replaced them — making the cemetery better than before. If you hadn’t seen it, you may not have believed it!

A Prolific Great Grandfather

It did seem a little strange to find that my great grandfather David had 15 children over a span of 35 years, with two wives, who differed in age by 31 years.

I don’t think I would have written this into a book of fiction — it just seems a little too far-fetched.

The Gravestone Mystery

And there are my great great grandfather Henry Odaffer and his wife Elizabeth. Married to the end — no divorce record can be found.

Yet, Elizabeth’s gravestone sits lonely, just inside the gate of the New Tarleton Cemetery in Tarleton, Ohio.  Henry’s stone is no place to be found, and there isn’t even a space for it.

In fact, I’ve looked high and low, in Maryland (in case they somehow took him back to his place of birth for burial), Ohio, and Illinois, and can find no grave/gravestone for Henry anywhere.  It remains a mystery.

An Amazing Family

And who would believe that this website and my database contains information on over 1,300 Odaffer individuals and relatives — probably over 90% of the Odaffers who live or have lived in the United States?

And what an interesting group of people!  Just when you think you know it all, you learn something new.  I had never known of an Odaffer who was a physician.

Then, just last week, I found out that in 1942, Dr. Robert George Odaffer sold a hospital he owned in Farmington, New Mexico and bought the Cushman Ranch in Colorado to develop a tourist resort.  Stuff for a novel, indeed!

So there you have it.  You think what you want.  But I think that in genealogy, truth is stranger than fiction — by far.