Familienforschung / Geschichte |
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 längerer
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, today's 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 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's sister Pauline followed to the U.S. in 1859. But
she went to meet and marry Gunther Schroter in rush town Shasta, CA.
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
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