The Grobbel Wappen

(image courtesy of Johannes Grobbel, Schmallenberg, Germany)

Johannes Grobbel has recently traced an engraving from a piece of furniture made by his Great Great Grandfather, Johannes Rottger Grobbel (1785-1858), who was a master cabinetmaker. He has taken that tracing and converted it into a Grobbel Family Coat of Arms (Wappen) by adding the script "G" and a walnut tree in the oval between the two griffins, plus the date of 1398. He chose the walnut tree as a symbol for the family because its wood is, as he puts it, "hard, just like the Grobbels". The date is that of the earliest written records mentioning the Grobbel Hof and our forefathers. The tree is shown growing on the side of a hill, representing the hillside location of the ancestral Grobbel Hof in Obringhausen and the origin of the Grobbel surname. The Grobbel surname is a corruption of "Groite Boill", which are two Low German words which roughly translate into English as "major bump", a description of the Grobbel ancestral farm's hillside location overlooking the village of Obringhausen.

Return to the Sauerland Home Page

Return to the Grobbel Family Genealogy Home Page

Return to the GROBBEL.ORG Home Page