The Association was founded as a non-profit organization in 1986 to bring together Prall descendants and to promote the study of the ancestry of the Prall and allied families.  Other spellings of Prall include Praul, Prawl, Praal, Prael, Parall, and perhaps De Prael, Du Prael, de Praulle, and DePraelles.

    The first Prall immigrant to America was Arendt Jansen Prall, the ancestral father of almost all Pralls living today in the United States, probably born in the Netherlands about 1647, who spelled his name Praal. The earliest documented record of Arendt found in America is in the Old Dutch records of Kingston, New York from 1660. The name Arendt is equivalent to the English name Aaron. Arendt and his family moved down the Hudson River from Kingston to Staten Island, NY., around 1670, and there he lived until his death in 1725. In 1670 he married Maria Billiou, daughter of Pierre Billiou.  Peirre's house still stands today, owned by the Staten Island Historical Society. Some of his children and descendants remained on Staten Island, and later grew hay on Prall's Island in the Arthur Kill between Staten Island and New Jersey, but others bought land west of the Hudson and moved to New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and eventually throughout the country.  

    When your webmaster was growing up in the 1940's, he was told by his father that there were few Pralls in the country; maybe a dozen or two. In the 1980's, I got a letter about the Prall Family Association that seemed different from most phony "family history/crest" offers for $25 or 50 or up. They offered me four newsletters a year for $12. I stood to lose 12 bucks if they were phony? Not bad, so I sent it in. After my first issue I told my parents to join. They told me I was a sucker and an idiot to be taken in by such a scam, but soon joined [without apology, of course] and to paraphrase Richard D. Prall "much of...part of the chapter on Daniel Prall must be attributed to my father Josef A. Prall", who joined and spent several vacation tours exploring Prall history in his family stomping grounds with my mother, who just celebrated her 94th.

    Much of this site is taken from the 1990 book "The Prall Family" by Richard Dwight Prall of Albuquerque, NM, with permission.  Some other content is from the quarterly newsletter and photographs and data donated by members.

    We welcome all sorts of people who are interested from simply being curious about family roots, up to serious researchers and all in between.  We may have info that will help you find your Prall roots, but you may have info that will help us connect the dots to unknown branches of the tree.  We all stand to benefit.

    Most of the starting examples necessarily comes from your webmaster's files and photos. I hope to fill the site out soon with other members' data. In the words of a recent New Yorker cartoon, "Maybe nobody goes to your Web site because it's about you." I hope to prevent that by including content from others as well, as examples. Any errors on this site are the sole responsibility of the webmaster.

   We also propose to bridge the frenzied lifestyles of the web-savvy, with the monkish-in-the-desert sedentary mission of our lauded Historian, to a 21st-Century middle ground. Much of Richard's progress is probably due to his not being online, and so not distracted by daily online demands on his time. Lets respect and applaud that, and not ask him to change his habits that have benefitted us all.  A lawyer told me long ago "You can have it good, fast, and cheap.... pick any two."  From offline Richard you get Good and Cheap, but slowly by snail-mail.  This site is Cheap and Fast, and I hope to make it Good as well in time.  I'm paying for it and don't make any money from it, so I'm hoping that the Cheap factor in the equation disappears, leaving the other two.  It cost me about $50 to set up.  So far I've put in about 100 hours on it, or under one cent per minuite, and as I put in more time, the cost per unit of time factor gets smaller....

 I'm just throwing a couple of ideas into the waters off Prall's Island to see what nibbles......  

    Richard Prall's 1990 book "The Prall Family" sold out in two printings of 50 copies each at the bargain price of $50 per copy. There is a copy in the Mormon Library in Utah. One of my motives in starting this website for the PFA was to provoke Richard into writing his "long-threatened" Second Edition. Content of the Newsletters since 1986 is now about 640 pages, so it's to be expected that a new edition would cost more now. Let's say $100 per copy or even more? Then consider something you can leave your kids to span centuries, versus the cost of two movies or one pro sports event for the family...

    I'm personally committing to buy three copies of a new edition. One for me and one each for my two nieces who weren't born when the old book was written. Maybe PFA members could set up an escrow account for pre-orders. Commit $20 per copy for preorders, to be refunded with bank interest if no new edition is ready within 3 years? Money to be forfeited if there is a new edition but they don't order? I'd wager many of the current 114 members would bet on that. Details to be set later for guarantees all-around.    Surely we've spawned one lawyer over the centuries who'd write such an agreement pro bono for the PFA?

    Another recent project involves the use of DNA to track genetics and match related people.  I heard about it from a PFA trustee, and signed up.  See the link to the testing site on the links page.  This is not an endorsement, and is not for everyone.  I'll send my cheek-scraping samples out when the Post Office reopens.  I took the instructions about taking two samples at least 8 hours apart seriously, and took one in 2005 and the other in 2006.  I'll post more about that later when I get the results in about 7 weeks.

    So once again, what does it cost to get involved in the Prall Family Association?  $12 for a year's worth of the newsletter; four issues of ten pages each.  The rest can come later if you like.  Check the rest of the site.  If you stumble across it soon, I expect to have all mail boxes working in a few days.