[Grobbel.ftw]
How did this branch of the Grobbel family end up in Cobbenrode,Westphalia?
The farm in Cobbenrode where Johannes Rttger and Maria Catherina (neeSpott) Grobbel lived and raised their children is known, even today, asthe Meister Hof (per Dierk Stoetzel of Elsohe, North Rhine Westphalia,Germany) . According to information Dierk sent me that he obtained fromKlaus-Jürgen Lauber (also of Elsohe, North Rhine Westphalia, Germany),M.C. Spott's mother's name was Maria Catharina Meister, and she was bornin Cobbenrode. M.C. Spott's mother died in 1802, 8 months before herGrandmother, Anna Elisabeth. From all of this, I draw the conclusionthat at the age of 9 years old, M. C. Spott must have inherited theMeister Hof from her Grandmother, and when she married J. Rottger Grobbel13 years later in 1815, he moved from Obringhausen to Cobbenrode to livewith her in the Meister Hof.
This still leaves an unanswered question: why didn't their family surnamebecome "Grobbel, gt. Meister", since they lived on the Meister Hof?Perhaps by the early 1800's the practice of "calling" people by the nameof the Hof had become impractical and had been abandoned in favor ofconsistently using the surname of the husband/father.
Maria Catharina , gt. Spott EICKHOFF
[Grobbel.ftw]
When Maria Catharina Spott's son, John Grobbel, got married in St.Clement Church in Center Line, MI on 28 Jan 1864, the priest wrote downhis mother's name as "Catharine Eikhoff". This was not a mistake on thepart of John or the priest, they were just just following the namingconventions of John's adopted country. In Germany, she was called"Catharina Spott", and for record-keeping purposes, her name would havebeen recorded as "Catharina Eickhoff, genannt Spott". In the U.S.A., shewould have been "Catharina Eickhoff". Why the differences?
Maria Catharina's paternal grandmother had inherited the Spott FamilyAncestral Farm (Spott Hof) in Kueckelheim, which was unusual since inGermany, the family farm usually went to the eldest surviving malechild. This made them "choice" marriage material since it represented anopportunity for a younger son to acquire a farm of his own throughmarriage. Since her grandmother married a man with the surname"Eickhoff", their children's (and grandchildren's) surnames are writtenin German as "Eickhoff, genannt Spott" (abbreviated as "Eickhoff, gt.Spott" ). In English, this means "Eickhoff, called Spott". People were"called" according to the name of the Hof that they were born on, even iftheir father was born on a different Hof.
The net effect of this practice was that the woman who inherited the farmkept her maiden name, her husband accepted her maiden name as his own andtheir children were called by her maiden name (but for record-keepingpurposes, the children's surname took the form ("father's surname", gt."mother's maiden surname")