Do you have any Greathouse kith and kin who resided in Germany? If so, please join us in our efforts to better document the locations in Germany where Greathouse kith and kin ancestors lived, by sending your additions and corrections to Greathouse Point.

Families von Grotthuss and von Grothusen
Familienverband der Barone und Freiherren von Grotthuss und von Grothusen Family Home | Photo Gallery

Greathouse Cousins,

We have absolutely exciting news to share with you. We have made contact with "Cousins" in Germany!

On 4 June 2006, while we were celebrating Greathouse Point's 8th Birthday, we received a private email from Harry von Grotthuss, of the Family von Grotthuss, in Germany! He found our website, Greathouse Point, www.greathouse.us , for the very first time on that day. What a great Birthday present he has turned out to be for Greathouse Point!

Harry belongs to "The Family von Grotthuss and Family von Grothusen" Society, a German Family Society that focuses on documenting the ancestral history of the families von Grotthuss, and von Grothusen. His group has agreed to work together with the Greathouse Cousin Network to try to discover Herman Groethausen's German ancestors.

Our group, of American Greathouse cousins, has been working for years to obtain German contacts who could help us extend our research on Herman Groethausen across the Atlantic Ocean to his German home land where we hope to find more information about Herman Groethausen's German lineage. This is truly an exciting break through for us.

As time permits, this week, I will be adding a new family listing on Greathouse Point's Families page for the "Family von Grotthuss and Family von Grothusen" where we will be sharing some documents and photos that our German cousins are sharing with us.

Below is our first email from Harry:

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Dear family members,

your website was unknown to me till today. I found it by occasion and it is the 8th birthday of Greathouse Point.

CONGRATULATION

My name is Harry von Grotthuss and i am a board member and cofounder of the german
-Familienverband der Barone und Freiherren von Grotthuss und von Grothusen-

I recognised that your crest or coat of arms is the same like ours. If this is given from your ancester Herman Grothaus or his sons, there is no doubt that our families have the same origin.

The name grothaus, grothausen, grothusen, grotthuss is in principle the same, it varies upon location and time.

The first documentation about the family is dated 1269 and the name was used in the latin form
-de magna domo -. The family tree starts with conradus de magna domo, he was a knight. The family was living in the area of Lüdinghausen, Senden, Nordkirchen, it is southwest of the city Münster. At this time families were often named by the location they were living and our family was named by a big house.

Grothus, Grotenhus, Grothaus is the same and located between Nordkirchen and Südkirchen. In the time around 1400 the family moved to the area of Tecklenburg where they owned several estates, Grone, Mesenburg, Kronenburg, Ledenburg, Krietenstein and so on. From this estates several family lines splittet, all named von Grothaus.

My ancestor Otto von Grothaus went 1492 under the knighthood of -Deutscher Orden- to Kurland where he got the estate Ruhenthal, south of Riga.

All german family members -von Grotthuss- have this origin.

The german line -von Grothaus- mainly lived in Osnabrück, Hannover, and also east prussia, this line ended around 1811.

Even for us it would be very interesting to find out where Herman Grothaus is to connect to our family tree in 1670. We will try our best.

There is more information about the -Grothaus- before 1670 that i can send you later, today i attach 2 articles,

Eleonore von Grothaus
Das Rittergut Grotenhus

sincerely your
harry von grotthuss

Source: Harry von Grothuss