Our Story

This story about the Odaffer family summarizes some of the results of my (Phares O’Daffer, Center Director) dabbling in genealogy for the past 40 years.

It has been great fun to find out a little about the Odaffers, and the sections on the left summarize some of what I know, and in some cases, how I found it out!

In this story, I won’t bore you with all the documentary evidence for the conclusions, but all are based on extensive research, using genealogy library documents, government documents, old church records, and site visits to delve into the various origins and branches of the family.

About the Family

The Odaffer family is an interesting family. It is “small enough” so that it isn’t unreasonable to try to find where every Odaffer in this country fits in the genealogy chart for the family. While I can’t claim to know where every Odaffer fits, I have classified most of the Odaffers listed in phone books, in census reports, on the internet, etc. into where data says they should be in the Odaffer Family Tree. Future fun lies in trying to place the ones that still baffle.

The emphasis is on my branch of the family, beginning with my great grandfather, David Odaffer. However, since the name Odaffer is an American simplification of the German name Odoerfer, the story begins by describing the origins of the Odoerfer family in Germany.

Then we travel across the Atlantic Ocean as Johann Wolfgang Odoerfer comes to the new world and settles in Maryland. Later, the migration of Johann’s descendants as they move westward to Ohio, and then Indiana, Illinois, and Kansas is described.