History of the Wolfarts

From the Wolfarts to the Walfards in France

On the 6th January, 2000 Francois Walfard from Paris reported by E-Mail. He had partly read our homepage with the Wolfart-History and contacted us to possibly find common ancestors.

Whilst the following correspondence he forwarded his genealogical line, which is going as far back as to Jean Wolfart, born 1655 in Oensingen. This place is located in the canton Solothurn in Switzerland. Jean Wolfart writes:"He (Jean Wolfart) is married to Elisabeth-Marie Meier in Solothurn. She died in here bed on 26th April 1686 in Unter-Morschwiller, which is a small town in the region of Mülhausen in the Alsace. Subsequently this line emigrated to Belfort, then into the Lorraine and the Champagne. This th first emigration from Switzerland to the Alsace took place between 1680 and 1685, which happened after the contract of Nimègue 1678, which stated the connection of the Alsace to France.

This Wolfart-Walfard-Family conitions in total 12 generations with 239 persons, who spread out over the whole of France meanwhile.
There are varions changes to the way of writing this name, originally the way of writing was the same as ours, namely Wolfart, then Volfart, Vofard, Valfard and, since 1797, Walfard.

It now is quite obvions to seek for connections to one of our recorded Wolfart-Families.We take for granted, that the origin of the W`s from Waiblinger, Edelfinger and also the Wolfarts from Galtür is in Vorarlberg, which is located not far away from oens Switzerland, approximately 50 km south-south-east of Basle. So far we were unable to do so nevertheless we would like to refer to the namesakes in chapter 20, who lived in this.
THE WOLFARTS FROM THE STREUSANDDOSE enumerate the namesakes, who lived in this region and coud not be related to any family so far: Theobald Wolfhart, who was born in Gebsweiler and died on 15th October, 1554 , was mayor in Ruffach; his son Theobald worked as a parson in Ensisheim; his son Konrad Wolfhart (gen.Lykosthenes) was born in Ruffach in 1518.

The question remains whether there is a common ancestor of the Wolfart´s respectively Wolffharts from Galtür, Waiblingen and Edelfingen and the Walfards from France. There are two possibilities: we either have a common ancestor- the proof by means of documents would not be possible- or the particular families developed separately.

We also contacted them but didn't receive an answer.
Moreover we contacted Dieter Wolfarth, Meisenweg 4, from CH-4123 Allschwil in Switzerland. He wrote us, that his family most likely moved from the region of Karlsruhe to Basel and that his father was born in Basel already in 1902. That was all we found out. Further research in Karlsruhe concerning ancestors from Vorarlberg and Switzerland would not bring new results.

There are two more Wohlfarts's known to us from the Elsass, who can not be classified, namely 7th Wohlfart, born in Bourbach-Le-Bas on the 10th June, 1706, and Johann Peter Wohlfart, born on the 23rd August,1728 in Bourbach. Most likely they were father and son.

Thus the origin of the extensive family of the Walfards in our neighbour hood France is leading to the common historical home of other Wolfart families, so that a remote consanguinity might exist and we feel as being among relatives.