Introducing myself - Dardinger-2

Question

I guess I haven't introduced myself to the rest of you.  My name is Dave Dardinger and I've been seriously interested in genealogy for the last 14 years or so.  I've been working on my Dad's Dardinger line and my Mom's Miller line.  Dardinger is a rare surname and I'm pretty sure I have all of them in my Family TreeMaker tree (but not the surname "Darrendinger" or varients which Dardinger was shortened from.)  OTOH, My Millers line, descended from a William Miller b February 28, 1778 probably in Luzerne, PA, USA is brick-walled going backwards.  Still, the lines married in can often be traced back into the 1600s or so.  

Comments

Welcome, I guess you're name is rare, since you got an ID-2

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Hi Dave, thanks for introducing yourself. I noticed you are fairly new to Wikitree so if you have questions this is the place to ask them. Welcome to the Tree!

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I have many questions, but the great number of them, along with the broad scope of subjects have detered me from asking many when there is so much low-hanging fruit in the trees and I learn so much by plucking them rather than climbing ladders  in search of the most perfectly ripe fruit.  So I've been making mistakes and learning as I go.  I'll probably be asking more questions once I have more experience.

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Dardinger is rare mostly because it's a Swiss-German surname which has been shortened by a few lines when they moved to the US.  I'm hoping eventually to enter all the known Dardingers into WikiTree.  There's only maybe 200 of them.  And even including those who took it as a married name I doubt it comes to 300.  I have also seen a few people in Europe who show that name, at least on-line, but I don't know what the original spelling was in those cases.  Even the line I'm from has several different spellings.

Answer 1

http://www.ancestry.com/name-origin?surname=dardinger   Looks like most in the USA are in Ohio, then WV and one family in FL.

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/2:2:34M1-8B7          Here's William  Miller born about 1778 tracing back a few generations when the surname is Mueller.  Keep in mind that the submissions are not checked, so you may want to verify the accuracy, before considering them valid.    

surnamedb.com is a free site and they have origin info on 50,000 surnames. Check out          http://www.surnamedb.com/Surname/Miller

Comments

yes, Most of the Dardingers have lived in Ohio, including my line.  The name is derived from a suburb of Solothurn, Switzerland called Darendingen.  Switzerland had and may still have a tax on males who moved from their birthplace to provide from widows or spinsters.  Consequently they frequently were given a surname to say where they came from.  This also means that different families with the Darendinger surname may not be related.  But there were three families all of which settled in Ohio or WV who each changed the surname to Dardinger, so I expect they're all related.  My Uncle Bob was still alive in Florida the last I heard, so he may be the one you found, though there are a few more including Bob's wife Rosemary who died a while back and is buried there.  There are also some other families or individuals who used the Dardinger name at one time or another.

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Unfortunately this is not the droi... William Miller I am looking for.  My William Miller died in Licking County, Ohio in 1852 and is buried with his wife Delilah in a small cemetery near Johnstown, Ohio.  Unfortunately, William Miller is about as common a name as you can think of and I've looked at a lot of them, but none I've seen work.  The best hint I've found is in the obituary of his son Washington Miller which says "... Washington Miller son of Wm. and Delilah Miller,  was born Aug, 20, 1821 in Lutzern County, PA...."  Assuming this is correct, there may be something in the Lutzern records, but I haven't looked that closely yet.

Answer 2

Welcome to the Tree, Dave!  Even though I have a relatively low -19, I've found a lot of connections.

Answer 3

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:KGRK-M9H

https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QJVX-M8GV

Comments

I'm going through my old questions and responding to answers.  Yes, this is my uncle Bob and his late wife.  We got to visit him in Florida once when were were there.at that point he was living with what might have been his 2nd wife except that they didn't marry for tax purposes.