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For the holiday season, I wanted to step away from our long-running exploration of the original Dafler children and look into what seemed to be a strange pattern in our family history: Why did so many Dafler couples marry on or around Christmas? Once I noticed the pattern, my initial assumption was that a Christmas wedding was just an opportunity for a particularly festive wedding ceremony. And why not? Christmas is such a beautiful and joyous time of year, so why not add to

This is the sixth in a series of deep-dive studies into each of the eleven children of John Wolfgang and Catherine Dafler. Lewis Phillip Dafler was born on March 4th, 1853, the fourth son and fifth child of John and Catherine Dafler. Once again, no records can be found of his birth, baptism, or any elements of his early life in Maryland except for his appearance in the 1860 census. He may have been named after a neighbor of the Dafler family. We also have no record of when he

This is the fifth in a series of deep-dive studies into each of the eleven children of John Wolfgang and Catherine Dafler. Rosanna Susanna Sophia Dafler was born on February 19, 1850. She was the fourth child - and first daughter - of John and Catherine Dafler. As we've seen in the stories of her siblings, we don't have records of her birth, but we know from several sources that her family lived in Carroll County, Maryland at this time, and she was almost certainly born at th

This is the fourth in a series of deep-dive studies into each of the eleven children of John Wolfgang and Catherine Dafler. Wesley Webster Dafler was the most well-documented Dafler of his family of birth and achieved what could be judged as the highest level of career success. Like his brother John , he leveraged early experiences in agriculture into the experience, network, and capital for a lucrative business of his own. He also was a strong supporter of his siblings, and

This is the third in a series of deep-dive studies into each of the eleven children of John Wolfgang and Catherine Dafler. Melchior Harrison Dafler was born on January 25th, 1861, and died twenty-five months later on February 25th, 1863. He was likely born in the later Dafler farm near Houcksville, in Carroll County, Maryland, and named after a nearby neighbor . This is about all I can say with certainty about Melchior. Unlike his siblings, there are no other records that men

This is the second in a series of deep-dive studies into each of the eleven children of John Wolfgang and Catherine Dafler. This post was...

This is the first in a series of deep-dive studies into each of the eleven children of John Wolfgang and Catherine Dafler. When I first...

I have two data sources to share that provide a cross-section of the occupations Daflers have had across some discrete periods of time....

One of the family trends that Johann Wolfgang and Rosanna Catherine Dörfler immediately diverted from in America was the practice of...

Has our family always been known for staying on the right side of the law? For the most part, the answer is yes. Like many immigrant...

The Dafler Family Tree takes a simple form: a husband and wife at the top, and several generations of Daflers succeeded them. But were...

Today marks what would have been my grandmother’s 100th birthday, and I think it’s a fitting anniversary to memorialize as we start this...

One of the most basic and solid facts we know about Johann Wolfgang Dorfler, our Dafler forebear, is his original home: Bayreuth - or...

As a kid, I often asked my father and my grandmother about where our family came from. Over the years I took those pieces of stories and...