Hi.
There is not enough room here to pass very much information. In the past 5 years, we have managed to piece together the connection between our Waco Drahn family and the Iowa Drahn family. Also traced several generations back in Prussia (Germany).

Here is a start:
Johann(56), Maria(56), Friedrich(26), Joachim(16), Christian(14) and Maria(11) all came to America on the ship John Hermann. They arrived in New York on May 28, 1855 from Hamburg. The ships manifest counts them as passenger numbers 215-220 indicates they were in the main cabin on deck, not in steerage. Their son, Carl, came to America almost exactly one year earlier, May 23, 1854.

They came to Lyons, Twp. IL. near Chicago. The eldest son, John, emigrated to Chicago ten years earlier. They raised sheep and when they heard of cheap land in the Texas, moved to the area of Waco, in East Texas where the sons purchased two large ranches.

Checks of census records for Lyons Twp. and Illinois, for 1850 and 1860 show no entries for Drahn. A response to in inquiry about the possibility of a family raising sheep in Lyons Twp. in the 1850's was that this was entirely possible. As the family was well established in Texas before the Civil War, they were in Illinois only a very few years.

Email direct for more information. Don't you to suffer from overload!

Paul Drahn
Redmond, Oregon