About the Dafler Family Project

Where We Started

The story of the Dafler family in America starts in 1839, when a 41-year-old German immigrant named Johann Wolfgang Doerfler landed in Baltimore to lay the foundation of a new life. Like so many other immigrants, he faced the trials of learning to live in a new home and to make a life for himself and his new family - and in this way, our story is simply one more note in the symphony of the American experience. But for us, with a surname that marks us as unique, each Dafler is naturally curious to learn the story of the principles and experiences that shaped our family into what it is today.

Whether from a sense of family pride, a German tendency towards orderliness, or the natural longing to understand where we come from - the Dafler family has always had an interest in genealogy. The first generation of native-born Daflers began documenting the family story in 1928, and the "Dafler Genealogical Tree" was published in 1947. This book included a short section describing what little was remembered about the initial Dafler family and basic genealogical data regarding the members of the Dafler family.

Of course, any published work of this nature becomes incomplete immediately after it is printed. Many members of the Dafler family have collected their branches of the extended family tree. Also, while we were blessed to have so much material to start from, so much was left unsaid - about the early struggles to integrate, how "Doerfler" became "Dafler", how Johann and Rosanna met and became John and Catherine, and so much more. And we know with hindsight that the stories of their descendants are no less rich and interesting. Our desire is to fill in that story, not just with names and dates but with stories that fully explain just who the Dafler family is.

What We're Doing

We have a three-pronged approach to build the Dafler family story:

First, the structure of our story will be based on traditional genealogical data - hard facts like names, dates, and relationships from trusted sources. We'll work to corroborate and expand on our family records and bring them from 1947 to the present day.
Next, we'll add color and texture with stories - based on historical records, newspaper and other accounts, family oral histories, and other sources. It's our goal to make our family history come alive, and describe what makes our family unique other than our surname.
Finally, we'll use scientific methods to learn about events that predate our 500+ years of family history data. We'll use DNA analysis to extend our family history to times that predate modern records. By correlating results from several sources, we can derive confident projections to our earliest origins.

This website will be our central clearinghouse to share what we're learning, encourage Dafler family members to connect and share with each other, and to collect the information we need for our goals - an up-to-date Dafler Family Tree and a fuller Dafler Family History for ourselves and our posterity.

Other Surnames in the Dafler Family Tree

Many other surnames appear in the Dafler family tree! Here's a graphical depiction of surnames, with the most common ones largest:

How can you join in?

We welcome anyone with a connection to the Dafler family to connect and share their stories. Here are some ways you can join the project:

Figure out where your branch of the family tree is. The easiest way to do this is to review "The Dafler Family in America: An Introduction" and search for a parent or grandparent. From our research, we estimate that at least 90% of people with the surname "Dafler" are connected to Johann Wolfgang Doerfler. Of the rest, some may be linked to his traveling companions, whose story is even less well known. If you can't make the connection, please reach out - we're interested in those cases too!
Submit a Family Record Sheet to ensure your family is documented. This may sound daunting, but it's really just a list of the members in a family, along with their key dates. We'd also appreciate some basic information about your family members. You can find a sample for to submit here, and once complete you can submit those documents to our Family Genealogist for inclusion. We have careful rules in place to protect your privacy, which you can read about in our Genealogical Information page.
Join our Forum to discuss your family stories. Our Forum is a family-only space where you can share the stories you remember - whether serious or silly, modern or ancient. It's also a wonderful place to share your photos and family achievements, and connect with your family far and wide.
Submit DNA records. If you are interested in submitting DNA records, our DNA Historian would be grateful for your data! We can advise on the services that will provide the data that links best with the data we have on hand. With data from widely-separated family members, we can deduce common elements that came from our shared ancestors. Of course, we will use your data solely to build information about our ancestry and we will not publish personally-identifiable genetic information.
If you are a genealogical researcher, see our Genealogical Information page for GEDCOM files and other ways where we can collaborate.

Contact us to learn more.

Let us know if you have questions or want to get more involved!