Neff Tree graphic

Home for the Neff Family Name (and my other family names)

Created by Rob Neff, for his Family Tree

This page holds genealogy and family history information for branches of my family tree, including the Ungerecht, Bean, Lidstrom, Broadwell, and Schindler ancestry, among others. (See my list of surnames).

Neff is a German name, perhaps coming from neffe, meaning nephew. See a quick history of the general Neff family name, followed by a description of my ancestors' migrations as best we know.

This site is not for all Neff families! As you can see from the Rootsweb Neff page, there are simply too many different Neff families, although it is somewhat rare in the United States - just one in 15,000 people. (I'll be happy to add links to related Neff websites, if you want. Unrelated links belong on other genealogy sites. The Rootsweb link I just gave was a good organization with a long history in online genealogy - I found them in 1994 as a listserv - but eventually they got absorbed into the ancestry site and has since withered.) See the section below on "Are we Related" if you have any questions.

My Neff ancestors are Germans-from-Russia who came from Dinkel, S. Russia (along the Volga River) primarily to the McClusky area of North Dakota.

Unfortunately, I had to drop my rob.neff.net personal page (which had existed in one form or another since 1995). Facebook made general news obsolete, and the genealogy stuff resides here now. (Some aspects of this website show their obvious lineage from that ancient page).
Brief family overview:
On Dad's side we are German-from-Russia (Germans who lived in southern Russia (Volga, Crimean peninsula) for about 100 years before immigrating to the Great Plains around the start of the 20th century).
On Mom's side, we are 1/2 German (from Germany), 1/4 Swedish and the remainder is English/Scottish mix, some having lived in the colonies that would become the United States since the mid 1600's.

Specific family information: Hadley Bean & Blanche in horse-drawn wagon leaving ranch
Are we related? If you're wondering if we're related on the Neff side and you don't have relatives in North Dakota, then we most likely aren't, at least not in the last 200 years. If you're looking for a connection on the Bean side, and you don't have relatives/ancestry in Hardy County WV/Athens County Ohio (or more directly, Glen Ullin, ND), chances again are very high that we aren't. But if you're an Ungerecht or Broadwell in the United States, you most probably are related, unless you're related to the Tennessee/Texas Ungerecht clan (which still might be connected, but before the 1750's). See the surname list for details.

(Some notable Neffs - Mother Neff State Park in Texas, mother of a governor; Francine Neff, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury during the time of the Bicentennial quarters, whose signature was on innumerable bills, Neff Lumber and other businesses in Virgina, a mayor in New York, director of a major investment fund, etc. All unrelated to me, at least as far back as anyone knows.)

Created November 2004, on a Macintosh (17" iMac G4 flat-panel)
Last updated: To contact me (webmaster), e-mail "rob" at "neff.net".