Descendants of Levi Infanger - Cardello Family History

Peter is Organist-Choir Director at the Laurel Mississippi United Methodist Church. It is a large church.
He has 8 choirs and a full scale church music programs. He has an MA from the Conservatory College at
the University of Cincinnati and is currently in a PhD program at Southern Mississippi. He has a
delightful wife who is also a musician and three children: John 7, Robert 5 and Catherine 4. Nothing
very original in those names is there.
Lois is a Public School Teacher in the Millburn School District teaching emotionally disturbed children.
She has her own apartment in New Providence and keeps busy with her profession and tutoring other
disturbed children. She has a good voice and sings from time to time at the church I serve. She has a BA
from West VA Wesleyan and an MA from Kean.
Leah, our youngest, who will be 30 works for the Mid-Lantic bank at their operations office in West
Orange. Since Mid-Lantic is one of the northeastern banks on the endangered species list, each week is a
trauma for her as to whether or not she still has a job. She also is an unclaimed blessing and lives with us
in a 3 bedroom two bathroom apartment in Chatham Township near the area the Great Swamp. We came
to this apartment when I retired until we could make up our minds where we wanted to live. I want to
live in Florida, Frances does not, so we are at an impasse we will celebrate our 40th Wedding
Anniversary on the 30th of December. I hope this finds you both well.
Signature
{John M. Infanger, Jr.}
PS:
On re-reading this I have told you twice that we will be married 40 years, I guess sub-consciously I
believe that to be an accomplishment.
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{Letter written by John Melchior Infanger, Jr. to his great nephew Spencer Infanger, presumably for a
school project on family history. Written sometime between 1994-2004. Source: Frank & Del Infanger}
Dear Spencer:
My father's (your great grandfather) family was from Switzerland. They were from Canton Uri one of
the three woodland cantons that formed the first Swiss Confederation in the 11th or 12th century. Uri is
also the place where William Tell, the great Swiss hero came from. Indeed, my grandfather John
Infanger was born and raised in Altdorf which was the birthplace and home of William Tell. Altdorf is at
the foot of Lake Lucerne. The next town up the Lake, to the north is Fluelen which was the home of my
grandmother Catherine Zurfluh. Both the Infangers and the Zurfluhs were well known families in Canton
Uri. They were woodmen and carpenters and watchmakers. There is a very large Infanger Construction
Company in Fluelen today. My grandfather was one of 16 children, 14 of whom lived past childhood
which was quite an achievement for mid¬-19th century child rearing. One child drowned in the Lake and
another died of diphtheria. My father, your great grandfather was born April 30, 1893 in Fluelen. He and
his parents left Switzerland for America in August of 1893 and arrived in New York in October of 1893.
They were met by my grandfather's brother Carl or Charles as he Americanized it, who had come to the
US about five years before and was established as an architect and builder. My grandfather was a
cabinetmaker and would take great umbrage if you dared call him a carpenter. In America my
grandparents had three more sons: Frederick, Charles and Joseph. They were Roman Catholics and my
father attended parochial schools. After High School he attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and
graduated from there with a certificate in architecture. At that time, Pratt did not award a degree. He was
a good baseball player (3rd base and Left field) and played on semi-pro teams in East New York, where
they lived, and Jamaica. He had a try out with the Cincinnati Reds but World War I intervened. He
enlisted in the United States Army in the 11th Engineers. William Barclay Parsons was the Colonel in
command of this regiment. Parsons had been one of the engineers who built the Panama Canal. His
regiment was one of the first of the American Expeditionary Forces to arrive in France in 1917. His
regiment built railroads in France to assist in moving troops and supplies to the front. My father was a
cook and often said that he ate well throughout the war. After he was mustered out he returned to school
and received a diploma from New York University in architecture. He obtained a job with a Brooklyn
architectural firm, Slee and Bryson, as a draftsman. This was a well known firm at the time with a large
office of architects who built estate houses for the New York 400. He worked for Slee and Bryson all
through the 1920s, a time of great prosperity, which ended with the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and the
subsequent Great Depression. Mr. Slee and Mr. Bryson, both quite old, dissolved their partnership on
January 1, 1930. My father and a friend opened an architectural firm in New Jersey but it was doomed to
failure because no one was building anything during the 1930s. For about four years, my father did any
kind of work he could find (he sold things door to door, he was a route man for a local bread company,
he was a helper to a furnace installer). In 1936 he was hired by the Prudential Insurance Co., in Newark,
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