III. Westphalia-Hesse-Nassau

III. Westphalia-Hesse-Nassau

The family has two different branches with one Roman-Catholic and the other Lutheran/Protestant Religion, whereas the Catholics are originally mainly located around Bad Schwalbach and the Lutherans around the city of Dillenburg.

Members of the protestant family Huthstein(er) in Westphalia and Hesse originated around Dillenburg. According latest research all their known family members are descendants of Michael Hutsteiner who  immigrated from Saxony along with his uncle Georg Hutsteiner.

There has been a place called ‚Hutstein‘ in the vicinity of the city of Limburg/Lahn, a location named like the one in Upper Austria, too, but there is no evidence that any Hutsteiner family  was founded at this place as it has been the case in Austria.

The first noted ‘Hutstein’ found around this region is Peter Hutstein in the city of Geldern 1634, which can not be followed later on at the moment. Likely it has been a type mismatch error within his surname, either Hustein, which occurs often in neighbouring Netherlands, or Holstein.

Occurrences of Hutsteiner family members

In the whole area it was common to use ‚th‘ in the german word ‚Huth‘, thus most of the family members name is spelled as ‚Huthstein(er)‘.

Map Bad Schwalbach – former Langenschwalbach – and Dillenburg

Out of these families several members emigrated to the US with their descendants living there to present days.

Some of them could be found in the Netherlands, one in Australia and one emigrated ca. 1830 to Bristol/UK. Another one of them emigrated to Paris around 1820. It seems some of these emigrations happened due to the Napoleonic wars in Germany.

An existing legend about fled Huguenots from France could not be verified.

Two interesting findings about these families:

  • while the catholic ones had been shepherds, day laborers and similar, with a quite ‘low’ occupation and some of them had been illiterates, the protestant ones mainly had been doctors, state servants and so on, occupied a quite high level of professions.
  • while for the catholic ones mainly the family name ‘Hutstein’ was recorded, the Lutheran most of the time were known as ‘Huthsteiner’.

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