Surname Origin
Back in the medieval era, Barbarian tribes inhabited German lands and there was an ancient dukedom that inhabited the territory after the fall of the Roman Empire which is known as Saxony. This is where the Gunterman surname first emerged as one of the notable families of the region, according to the House of Names.
From as early as the 13th century, the Gunterman surname was known to have a great social and economic impact on evolution making the territory a landmark contributor to the nation’s development. Click to learn more about the family history.
Initially, I always check the Ancestry.com site to see what information they have. Eighteen thousand historical documents is quite a bit of information on one surname. It seems with 3,000 birth, marriage, and death certificates, there’s at least a few Gunterman ancestors in the Ancestry database to research on.
Population
The House of Names website gives a lot of great information on the origins of this surname and their activity before migrating over to America. The year 1880 had the most Gunterman families found in North America between 1840 and 1920.
The highest population of Gunterman families lived in Illinois in 1840, accounting for 44% of all Gunterman families. But it was only four families.
By 1880, New York had 38 Gunterman families living there which accounted for about 38% of all recorded Gunterman’s in America at the time. This was the highest population of them in that time.
Michigan held the highest population of Gunterman’s in 1920 with 9 families accounting for 16% of all recorded Gunterman families in the United States.
Occupations
In the late 1800s, Gunterman families held a small variety of different jobs between in the United States.
The top three reported jobs worked by Gunterman’s were Farmer, Carpenter and Butcher. The most common of those occupations were Farmers with 36% of Gunterman’s being Farmers. Cabinet Maker was the least common occupation held by Gunterman folks.
Life Expectancy
According to Ancestry.com, between 1963 and 2004, in the United States, Gunterman life expectancy was at its lowest point in 1995, and highest in 2004. The average life expectancy for Gunterman in 1963 was 74, and 91 in 2004.
Family Members I’ve Found So Far
I obviously still have a lot of work to do in order to fill this family out and discover my roots. Of course, I will be working on that in the weeks and months ahead and will come update this page as I find additional ancestors.
Have you found any Gunterman’s in your family tree yet? Where were they from? Were they farmers as well? I’d love to see if any of my ancestors were actually cabinet makers! I have so many questions!
Again, I will come back and update this page as I learn more about the Gunterman family.
Happy Searching!
~Kris
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