On my mother’s side of the family, my uncles were the resident genealogists, including Uncle Ralph, and Uncle Gordon, B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., book author and former Dean of the Department of History at Valdosta State University.  Uncle Ralph died and Uncle Gordon is in an assisted living facility so the family genealogist position fell to my cousin Janet.  Then, Janet became a grandmother and decided to pass the torch to me.  I wanted to complete the research on the family name, Teffeteller, which had sort of ended with this:

From “The history of Blount County, Tennessee and its people, 1795-1995,” pg. 352, article 1023 “Pioneer family fromDEFFITAHL toTEFFETELLER”   In 1748, a young man named Johannes DEFFITHAL left southern Germany. He traveled to Rotterdam, Holland where he boarded a ship to America. The ship was the “Hampshire” and it docked in Philadelphia,PA. Due to “Americanization”, the immigrant’s name was translated into ” John DEVENDALL”. John later moved to MD and his name was changed again, this time to TIEFENTELLER. He died in 1775. That same year, his son Michael was married.

This year 1813 was very important for our family. This was the year Michael TIEFENTELLER moved to Blount Co. from Lincoln Co. NC. Michael was between 55 and 60 years old when he settled on the land along side Crooked Creek in the Hubbard Community. He had 13 children, but we only have record of three sons. Joseph, Jacob and Daniel, who came to TN with him.

Then I found more recent information online:

Posted By:          Karen Vogt

Email:

Subject:               Origins of the Diffendall’s/Deffendall’s

Post Date:           January 30, 2005 at 12:03:39

Message URL:   http://genforum.genealogy.com/diffendall/messages/7.html

Forum: Diffendall Family Genealogy Forum

Forum URL:        http://genforum.genealogy.com/diffendall/

I recently ran across a Rotterdam, Netherlands record, unfortunately I was unable to copy it, that mentioned a Johann Tiefenthaler leaving for the U.S. at the same time and same ship and arriving in the same location as Johannes Divendall (other different spellings have been used for this last name.)

I believe these two to be the same person. I then checked for a Tiefenthaler in the southern part of Germany, particularly close to or on the Rhein River. Sure enough, I found one Johann Tieffenthaler, christened 25 Aug. 1718 in Bickensohl, Freiburg, Baden, Germany, father: Christoph Tiefenthaler who married Susanna Rieffler/Riessler on 9 Aug. 1707 in Bickensohl. This Johann has an older sister named Anna Barbara Tieffenthaler, christened 9 Dec. 1711 in Bickensohl. There are more Tieffenthaler’s in this region. Next, I checked for a Barbara Weise in Freiburg, Baden, Germany region. I found Barbara Wiss, christened 19 Feb. 1725 in Katholisch, Elzach, Baden, Germany. Her father is Joseph Wiss and mother is Agatha Maier b. 5 Feb. 1706 in Elzach. This I believe to be a very strong lead to our common ancestor, while I have found nothing on Hans Jorg Dievedal except that he was deported back to the Netherlands from England as a reject for American colonization in 1709 due to belonging to the wrong religion.

If anyone can help with this it would be greatly appreciated, you too Eric.

Karen Deffendall Vogt

Which led me here:

(from http://ethnicelebs.com/megan-fox):

Megan’s paternal grandparents were Euel Massie Fox (the son of James Earl Fox and Nila Dell Warf) and Vivian Vier (the daughter of Shellie V. Vier and Maud F. Simerly). One of Euel’s ancestors, born in the 1700s, Capt. Peter Thompson, was born in Scotland. Megan has German ancestry through Vivian’s ancestor, Joseph Teffeteller (making Megan of at least 1/64th German descent). Megan also has very distant German ancestry from another of Vivian’s lines (through her Rainbolt and Grindstaff / Crantzdorf ancestors).

We humans are connected in more ways than one!