02 | The First Big Discovery!

It was on a business trip to Washington D.C. in 1980 that my big breakthrough in Odaffer genealogy took place. I had been collecting data on the family since 1956, and had a lot of information about Odaffers in the United States, but little knowledge of where they originally came from. All anyone could tell me, or I could find was that they probably came from Germany! That wasn’t much to go on.

I had some extra time in the evening after the business meeting, so I took a taxi to the Daughters of American Revolution Genealogy Library.

I spent a couple hours in the library, but didn”t find a thing about the Odaffer family. “What a waste of time,” I thought, and prepared to leave. As usual, I glanced at the books on the shelves as I was walking down the aisle to leave the Library. For some reason- I have no idea why- I saw a book entitled “German Mercenary Soldiers who Fought for the British in the Revolutionary War” and picked it up!

As I was thumbing through the book, I was thrilled and excited to see what I later came to call “the first missing link.” It read as follows.

ODOERFER, Wolfgang, private A/5 Deserted 12 October 1782. According to Stadtarchiv Ansbach Am 1041, “he had spent all of his estate and, therefore, had to enter military service. He has a wife, a 15 year old son, and a 12 year old daughter who are in very straitened circumstances.”

Why Was This Such a Big Discovery?

I had earier traced our family back to John Odoerfer, whose name I found spelled that way in the Library of Congress records for Clear Spring and Concocheaque, Maryland, and knew that this was a real find!

It almost seemed that the finding of this link was a result of Divine Guidance, given how easy it would have been not to encounter and look at that particular book, but it was the beginning of a truly exciting genealogical adventure which has taken me to places I never thought I’d go, to find out more about the history of this very interesting family.