The Muffly people attending this reunion mostly descended from Charles Timothy Muffly (b. 1828, Pennsylvania). For those with Ancestry.com access, refer to the Howlett-Muffly tree at http://trees.ancestry.com/tree/11302215/person/-488963449
Charles Timothy was a brother of Joseph Wendell Muffly, who wrote a Civil War history of 148th Pennsylvania Infantry. Charles Timothy was also a 3rd cousin of our ancestor Joseph “Joe” Pierce Muffley. Charles Timothy Muffly lived in Pennsylvania, then Illinois, then Nebraska, then South Dakota. He was a Nebraska State Senator (1897) prior to retirement to Hot Springs, Fall River County, South Dakota. He was buried in Madison County, Nebraska, in 1913. He had at least at dozen kids by two wives. Descendants of his kids James Henry Muffly and Alma Alice Muffly Cooke were known attendees at the 1959 reunion, and there were likely others as well.
Part of the Spearfish S.D. reunion involved a visit to a ranch in adjoining Crook County, Wyoming. Charles Timothy’s daughter Alma Muffly Cooke (1858-1950) & family had settled there. Gary recalls meeting Alma’s son Vane Cooke (1889-1965), who appears in some reunion photos. An old address book in McCook had the name Svoboda as a descendant of Alma. That rings a faint bell. It is now noted that Larry Svoboda of Houston had put posts (2000 & 2001) on a “Muffly Board” at Ancestry.com. A 2002 note on that board refers to periodic Muffly reunions in the Black Hills, so the 1959 reunion was just one in a series. Also at the 1959 reunion was Marjorie Muffly (b. 1907), daughter of Glenn Muffly of “first contact”. In the 1970s, Marjorie’s brother Gary Muffly (1909-1979) & his wife Cynthia were visited in Powell, Tennessee, by the family of Gary Muffley (b. 1943), then living in North Carolina. Marjorie & Gary Muffly were 6th cousins of Gary Muffley.
