Shreffler family origins?

You need to decide if you want to find your ancestors OR you want to find surname origins, the two are completely different subjects and your surname is just a word and words come from languages, NOT countries and NEVER tell you where your ancestry is from, such as websites like the house of names id just a scamm site wanting to sell surname products, it is NOT an genealogy website and you can trust nothing on it at all........

If you are looking for your ancestry then that starts with YOU and the records you already have at home, it teaches you how to research, it connects you to your ancestors and so you have your ancestors in your tree and not just anyone who just happens to have the same surname.......... http://familytimeline.webs.com/recordsinyourownhom...

Think about what you are asking... surnames were choices when given/taken just like first names are now...so ids everyone who is called Mary related? No,same as everyone of the same surname is not related, there are millions of 'Shreffler families' who are not related to each other, so collecting surname information will not find you YOUR ancestors..........

Once you find your family tree and know who your ancestors are I can give you more information possibly. I am a Shreffler descendent and have the Family History Book for many Shreffler's of the Flickinger Descendents. Locations of my family mainly lived in Illinois and Pennsylvania in the late 1700's and the early 1800's. Flickingers came from Palatine Germany but were educated in Holland and bordered other countries. Just like the Flickinger's this could be why you are getting conflicting answers. Many crossed borders for education and possibly where they lived or were born. This book was published in the early 1900's and the family compiled the information for years before publishing. So do not get discouraged by conflicting answers. Some could be completely off and other information might not be a conflict at all for the era they lived in.

House of Names is a surname product peddler. The surname product business is a scam.

Surnames do not have a family history. Your ancestors with the surname do. When surnames were assigned or taken in Europe during the last millennium it wasn't impossible for legitimate sons of the same man to wind up with a different surname and still each could have shared his with others with no known relationship. The purpose originally was not to identify a man as a member of a family but just to better identify him, frequently for taxation purposes. Too many men with the same given name in the same town or village and they had to have a way of sorting them out. So the root person of your surname will not necessarily be the root person of someone else with your surname.

The way to trace your ancestry is to start with yourself and work back one generation at a time, documenting everything as you do. Documents are birth, marriage and death certificates, land records, tax records, census records etc. Documents are not online family trees. The trees are subscriber submitted and yes there are tons of errors. Even when you see the absolute same information on the same people from many different subscribers that doesn't mean it is accurate as too many people copy without verifying. Actually if you just happen to find any of your family in an online tree and you see wrong information those that run the websites will tell you that is between you and the other subscriber. They don't get involved. It would be too costly for them to hire people to verify all the information submitted. This is true of fee websites like Ancestry.Com and free websites.

Also understand your name comes from only one person in each generation you go back. So it in no way indicates your total ancestry.

Get as much information from living family as possible. Find out what records they might have like old family bibles, old family photos, birth, marriage and death certificates on your ancestors. Depending on the religious faith of your ancestors, baptismal, confirmation and marriage certificates from their church can be just as helpful if not more so than civil records. Interview your senior family members and tape them if they will let you. I won't say that they will not be mistaken in some things. However they very likely will get into tellng stories of days gone by you wouldn't write down but in those stories can be clues that will help you break through a brick wall. If you go back periodically and listen to the tapes again you very likely will hear things you didn't hear the first time around. All of this is how you start your genealogy.

Go to a Family History Center at a Latter Day Saints (Mormon) Church. They have records on people all over the world not just Mormons. In Salt Lake City they have the world's largest genealogical collection. If you find anything in their database you would like to view and print off a copy of an original document they can order microfilm for you for a very reasonable fee. I have never had them to try and convert me nor have I heard of them doing that to anyone else that has used their resources. Just use the following link to find the nearest Mormon FHC. They have microfilm readers at the Family History Centers.

https://familysearch.org/locations

Once you do a little ground work then you can use the internet as a tool. I like Ancestry.Com and

this site which is free https://familysearch.org/ They have lots of records. Sometimes one will have a record the other one doesn't. Just don't get involved in copying from their family trees. Know the difference between records and family trees. When I go into Ancestry.Com after I click on Search at the top on the left the on the next page I click on Old Search which is in small fonts on the right toward the top. I feel the format of their Old Search is far superior to their New Search and to the format of FamilySearch.org.

Just don't think that some place back down the line that all people with your surname shares the same ancestors. As a matter of fact some of those people you might be related to in another family line.

Shreffler Name Meaning

Americanized spelling of German Schreffler.

Schreffler Name Meaning

German: topographic name for someone who lived by a split crag, Middle High German schreffe.

If Ancestry is correct on the origin there wouldn't be one person who founded the family, lots of different families who lived by a split crag (whatever that it :s ) would have been known by that surname. It's like the last name Hill, hundreds of families that lived on hills all across England would have been known by that name. Plus people started using surnames many hundreds of years ago, it's hard enough to get records back even 200 years ago in USA and UK I doubt it's any easier to trace that far back in Germany.

All you can do is trace your own ancestors as far as you can.

2 Great grandparents on mothers side Cape Colony modern day South Africa 2 Grandparents my dad parents Anglo Egyptian Sudan modern day Sudan Nan and mum from Canning Town, Essex now London. Dad from somewhere on London docklands never knew him personally. The rest I dont know, my mums dads side. And im from Hackney Downs East London! King In short im Black British category D (African) on police files the bastardss