In family history research, every new answer tends to create two new questions, so in dealing with this hydra effect, it is always satisfying to find a kind of endpoint such as the place and time where a family name came into being, if only as an excuse to stop digging. I have shared a few such origin stories already, some more hypothetical than others, eg for my lineages of Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum) and Kauer (leading to the Kauerhof at Nickweiler, mentioned in 1074), and the French connection of Dopheide / d'Oppède.
Now I discovered another one accidentally just by looking out of the window of a train while travelling to Idstein:
Photo of the train station of Niederzeuzheim, Kreis Limburg (Lahn), Hesse, Germany, taken from a train.
Own photo.
Ignore the first bit, "Nieder" just means "Lower" Zeuzheim, there is also an Upper Zeuzheim nearby. Now Zeuzheim is also a really rare and interesting family name which probably arose only once, with Zeutzheim and Zeutzem as spelling variations. My most recent Zeutzheim ancestor Maria Magdalena (baptised Margaretha Helena but definitely the same person) married a de la Strada and later became the grandmother of Elisabetha de la Strada, the founding mother of the Krefeld Clan. She was born in Horchheim (today part of Koblenz) in 1743 and died in Krefeld in 1798.
Her father and paternal grandfather were both born in Horchheim as well, and of her great-grandfather we only have the name Johann Zeutzem (as well as two wives and lots of descendants, will have to prepare an entry on the Zeutzem Clan one day). He must have been born before 1640, so it is a plausible hypothesis that he or his parents were displaced by the Thirty-Years War and may have been settled with the name Zeutzheim as the indication of where they came from. The historic villages of Niederzeuzheim and Oberzeuzheim, today both parts of Hadamar, are about 30 km east-northeast of Koblenz, so this would be the kind of place that people in Horchheim would be just about aware of, a half-day's walking journey away.
Meanwhile the fact that I wasn't aware of the place until I passed through on that train is easily explained by the writing as one word with Nieder- or Ober- prefixed to it. Any online searches for the family name would thus not have included the place name among the results.
In gedbas.de there is a Zeutzheim family in Horchheim descending from Johann Georg Zeutzheim born 1758, so 15 years younger than my Margaretha, could be a brother, nephew or cousin. The other spelling variants yield only more recent results. There are Zeuzheim people in Koblenz to this day, including a roofing company established in 1889.
List of origin stories for name lines (this might become a very irregular series):
- Wolff (named after the Wolffskotten farm in Styrum);
- Kauer (linked to the Kauerhof at Nickweiler, mentioned in 1074);
- Weyland is a name chosen by my Jewish ancestor upon his adult baptism - he was the reason I was travelling to Idstein;
- Obelode is a unique name linked to a farm at Steinhagen near Bielefeld
- From the same branch of the family tree and geographic area comes the French connection of Dopheide / d'Oppède.
Ancestors' names matching place names that I should look into include: Trimbach, Wilsberg,
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