Familienforschung / Geschichte |
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Gaining an overview - a summary of family´s history
Our family has its origin in the town of Frankenhausen at the
southern slopes of the Harz mountains. Teuthorns have been mentioned there
already in the middle of the 16th century with the forms Tütehorn
and Düthorn. But only the branch in the beginning of which stands
Joachim Teuthorn continues existing up to present times
It is thanks to the the 1843 edition of Archidiakon Wippermann:
"Stammtafeln der in der Stadt Frankenhausen größtenteils
schon seit lägerer Zeit heimisch gewesenen Familien [...] Teuthorn
[...]" that I know most of the family´s data before 1850.
I am happy to possess one well preserved specimen of that edition. In
the meantime this knowllege has been considerably enlarged by own research.
In Frankenhausen most of the time the Teuthorns stood out among others
by profession and social position. They were city treasurers, mayors,
soap makers, brewers and producers of salt, the "white gold",
but also shoemakers and tanners.
1835 Wilhelm Günther Teuthorn left Frankenhausen, moved northward
to Kiel, then capital of Holstein, and settled there as a surgeon.
The family stayed living there until the beginning of the 20th century.
Between 1890 and 1894 four of his grandchildren emigrated from Kiel
to America and settled in Chicago. Their youngest brother followed
them in 1895, but continued migration 4 years later to German Southwest
Africa, todays Namibia. When during World War I Germany lost this
region to the British Empire the new power forced him to leave his country
in 1919. Back in Germany he went to Greifswald, city in the then
german state of Vorpommern.
It was not before 2001 that internet communication succeded to get in
contact with descendants of the Kiel emigrants.
But the earliest emigrants were Wilhelm Günther´s older brother,
the doctor Johann Christian David Teuthorn (then 53 years old) and his
son Heinrich Ottomar Theodor. Together they went from Frankenhausen to
America already in 1848. Ottomar made follow his sister Pauline in 1859.
1850 und 1854 two brothers from the Leipzig branch emigrated to Boston,
Massachusetts. Whether there still live descendants of those Teuthorns
is not quite clear. But there are traces of more Teuthorns in the U.S.
and there is great probability that those cannot be connected to the
Kiel branch. For more details see list
of all known emigrants.
Male Teuthorns in Germany still live in Greifswald, Neheim-Hüsten,
Gilching and München, in the U.S. in and around Chicago and in the
Bay Area of San Francisco, California, and some other places not yet known
to me. - It is less than prophecy that the name Teuthorn will exist more
numerous and for al longer time in the United States than on the old continent.
© Peter Teuthorn, March and September 2002
A revision of the German version of this text was made in December 2002.
Mainly participation in the last battle of the Bauernkrieg from 1525,
immatriculation of Teuthorns in several universities and early emigration
within Germany are new. Exercised professions and the destinations after
heaving left Frankenhausen are mentioned. All this and the shortly found
traces of emigration to Chile have not yet been integrated into this version.
Peter Teuthorn, Dec. 2002