Meet the Director: Phares O’Daffer

Thanks for visiting this website and your interest in the Odaffer family.  I’ve been dabbling in genealogy for the past 55 years. My study has not been the result of full time searching by a genealogical expert, but rather of an amateur stealing bits and pieces of search time now and then from the demands of a busy career as a professor of mathematics and author.

Rather than being a genealogist, I might better be described as a “stumbleologist,” meaning that I look and look and finally stumble onto something!

But it has been great fun to find out a little about the Odaffers, to share what I know, and in some cases, how I found it out, with others. I have traced the Odaffer family back to Germany, and have records as far back as 1560.

I have written a 150 page booklet, “The Odaffer Family-A Brief Look, 1560 – 2002,” which is where much of the material on this site comes from.

I have also written a first draft of an historical novel, “A Blue and Scarlet Skeleton,” based on the life of Johann Wolfgang Odoerfer.  To read a preliminary version of this book, go to the Book section of this website.

I live in Bloomington, Illinois, and my wife Harriet and I have three adult children and seven grandchildren. I am a retired professor of mathematics from Illinois State University, and am an author of several mathematics textbooks for kindergarten through college. I enjoy volunteering, playing tennis and golf, and traveling.