John S. Lauffer Sr.

  General Notes:

From the 1906 Lauffer History

John Lauffer, Sr., son of Christian, the Pioneer, was born March 8, 1769, in Northampton Co., Pa., and was a boy of five years when his father migrated into Westmoreland Co. In the year 1794 he moved on a tract of land north of Harrison City, a portion of which has since been known as the Hezekiah Waugaman farm. We have inserted a few more of the Lauffer land deals, as contained in the records of Westmoreland Co., Greensburg, Pa., as suggestive of the business enterprise of, the early Lauffers in Westmoreland County.

His tombstone in the Denmark Manor (Woodlawn) Cemetery, Penn Tp.(Export), Westmoreland Co., bears this inscription: In memory of John Lauffer, Sr., died Feb. 18, 1851. Aged 81 years, 11 months, 10 days.

John Lauffer, Sr., was a very careful man in the matter of keeping an accurate family record. In his huge German Bible with its wooden lids covered with leather, he jotted down the dates of birth of his children as they were born. His estate was settled in 1856 after the death of his wife Barbara in 1855. Geo. Ashbaugh, son-in-law, and his son, Christian, were the executors. The whereabouts of that old Bible the descendants of neither Christian Lauffer nor George Ashbaugh can inform us. This old Bible may be no longer in existence. It simply shows the necessity of the publication of some such history as this to keep old records together, if we are to know in the later times, just Who-is-Who in the great Lauffer family.

John married Susanna Kemerer, daughter of John Kemmerer and Margaret Minimum, in 1795. (Susanna Kemerer was born in 1774 in Washington County, MD and died on 11 Nov 1815.)

John next married Barbara Errett in 1795. (Barbara Errett was born on 5 Feb 1785 in Pennsylvania and died in 1855.)