About The GERMERODT / GERMEROTH Family
Please sign in to see more. **Attention : (I have added Aunt Edith (Smith) Germeroth's family genealogy as of 9/2/2006. To view it enter Edith Smith and go to the family tree. It was given to me at one of our Germeroth reunions and I filed it away and had forgotten it. It was rediscovered recently so I took a few evenings to enter it for all to see. It is of special interest to Uncle Carlton's side of the family of course.)
This is an accumulation of many hours of research and data entry. If I have something wrong please let me know as well as the source of your information to prove the correction(s). I hope this site can help fill in some gaps for you. If not, I hope you enjoy looking through these pages and learning a little about your family. There have been many new weddings, births, and deaths since our last family reunion. Please help fill in the missing information by entering it in the guest book. This includes any information you have on your spouses and their families.
If you have any photos that you would like to see included please email me a copy.
This site is currently accessible by my invitation only. I must send you an invitation that gives you the website URL and the password to access this site. This prevents others from gaining entry.
PLEASE sign the guest book to let me know you were here.
You may ask, how did you get started in all this? I became interested in our genealogy in the early 1990's. I had asked my father if he knew where in Germany his grandfather Peter Germeroth was born. He didn't know nor did any of the family that was living. This sparked my curiosity and started me on a long journey of research. Dad's oldest brother Peter Carlton Germeroth, had done a lot of the family genealogy in the USA but never had anything on those in Germany. Sometime in 1991 or 1992, I was introduced to Dr. Walter Germeroth. Walter was in Washington DC at the time visiting the USA on business. He has a Ph.D. in Economics and he lived in Lorrach, Germany near the French and Swiss border. Although his last name is the same as ours we have never found a common ancestry linking us. After our meeting in DC, Walter agreed to do some research for me to see if he could determine where Peter Germeroth had immigrated from. At that time Walter had been doing an extensive amount of research on his family genealogy and he had a theory that all the Germeroth clans had originated from a small town near Kassel / Hessen, Germany called Gernrode. The Old German spelling of our name before the early 1700s was Germerode. He was not certain whether the town got its name from the family or visa-versa. He traveled into the area and found 48 people living in 5 towns with the last name Germeroth! The oldest person to whom he spoke was 90 and he told Walter to search the different parochial registers of the various towns in the area. In the Protestant parish of Oberkaufungen near Kassel, Walter found the birth registry of Peter Germeroth born 4 Nov. 1854 at 8.00 p.m. His parents' names were given as Peter Germeroth and Marie, nee Muhl. His father's occupation is listed as a miner. At the time I was still not completely certain this was the right Peter. However, if you click on Peter Germeroth on this website then under his photo click on more photos, then click on the document pictured there you will see the original German letter and a copy of a translated letter. This letter was translated by Walter from German to English and the original letter was given to me by Uncle Frank Germeroth. It had been passed from Peter to Peter Godfried to Franklin Elmer and now to me (David John). This letter is 147 years old and holds the information I sought after all along if only I read German!
Shortly after Walter discovered Peter's birthplace he paid a visit there and met some of our relatives still living in the same general area. One of them gave him a copy of the Germerode/Germeroth clan genealogy that starts in 1600 with Jorg Jahannes Germerode and traces down to Peter. They did not know what happened to him but now they do.
I want to express my deep sense of gratitude to Dr. Walter Germeroth for all his contributions to this genealogy.
Enjoy!
Dave
P.S. In my research, I have also made contact via mail and email with two other Germeroth clan researchers in the USA. Robert Martin Germeroth lived in Nesconset, New York, and traced his clan back to Heimarshausen, Hessen, Germany. Robert said he lived in Gaithersburg, MD for 8 months in 1987-88.
Joel Germeroth of Ballwin, MO. also has shared some of his clans' info. They have settled in and around
Kansas and MO.
I have not found any ancestrial link to either of these men or their clans.
*** Update July 2023 Reinhard Germeroth has developed an extensive site about the Germeroth family name and it can be found at http://www.germeroth-genealogie.de/44/home.html. It is in German so I have been using a translation app. to read it. This is a quote from his work: "The oldest written evidence in which the family name GERMERODE is mentioned is a deed of transfer of ownership by the nuns of the Germerode monastery from 1255. Other medieval documents follow with people who have the place name as their family name. However, no master sequence can be created from the sparse sources. Only from the 17th Year-
hundred, after the Thirty Years' War, related family data appear in the Hessian church registers. An undeniable indication that there is a family GERMERODE or von GERMERODE..." |