Gudema Family

My brother J. Gudema’s research has determined that pre Gudema family came from Stolzenau, Germany and moved to northern holland. This is from evidence of family members with the same name coming from both places around the time of the creation of the name.

We also have some anecdotal evidence that the name Gudema was created by a Friesen official, potentially a Napolean, who created all the …dema names in northern holland, specifically this name was Jewish and was most likely a Goldsmith.

There also has been some lore in the family, that the original family member named Gudema may have been a Russian soldier who fled the Russian army. This information has been passed down through the generations. This has not been confirmed, but it somehow seems appropriate, because there are Gudima families in Russia, and we have confirmed that they kind of look like Gudemas… None of this is really confirmed information, just hearsay.

Our current research points to the original Gudema family member coming from Germany , the town of Sto

I tried to see if somehow a Gudema from Holland went back from the 1800s to present and that is unlikely.

It really seems to me that Gudema and Gudima (or however they spell it in Russian or other eastern countries) are two separate families. I suspect that Gudima was an upper class family as there are several politicians with that name that show up throughout Russian history. If they were a Jewish family or had any direct link to a Jewish family from the 1700s, it could have been that the first person who took Gudema as a last name might have been from them.

Once I saw the circumcision records from the early 1800s that confirmed that the father of the first Gudema boys had been born in Stolzenau, Germany (or at least came from there) and then I found a website (http://streat.ca/stolzenau_cemetery/cem_page.htm) with the history of the Jews in Stolzenau – a town very close the boarder between Holland and Germany – I knew that was the origin of the family. The website on that community has all of the graves online – I found one headstone (http://streat.ca/stolzenau_cemetery/C19.pdf) that caught my interest because it was a double, husband and wife, Moshe the son of Elchanon and Blumche the daughter of Moshe Katz (Cohen Tzedek). I realized that all three of the names (Moshe, Elchanon, and Blumche) were names of the first Gudema’s children (Elchanon died as a young child – that was in the circumcision records) and knowing that the first Gudema came over to Holland from Germany around 1800 (after death of mother in 1800 presumably), married a local Jewish girl from Pekala, and started a family. Odds are that this gravestone is that of his parents – how likely would all of these facts be.

Just my thoughts.

check out the history of the Jews of Stolzenau.