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MAP-Meyer zu Mecklendorf, Pötter& Plogmann-Germany

I have been hunting for information on my 5g grandmother, Catarina Liesbeth Meyer zu Mecklendorf, for several years. All that I knew of her was her name & that she & Johann Herman Pötter had a daughter, Catarina Liesbeth Pötter, who [according to my great uncle MJ Riordan, in 1916] "was baptized in the parish church in Hagen, [Osnabrück,] Hannover, Germany May 12, 1770." After her we also have information on her daughter, Catharina Elisabeth Herkenhoff, also baptized in that church March 2, 1803, as was her husband, Gerard Heinrich Rietbrock on April 29, 1795 & his mother, Catharina Maria Plogmann. Recently, Anke Waldmann, very kind & generous genealogist, whom I met on-line, provided me with this map of the area in the Germany where the Meyer zu Mecklendorf , Pötter & Plogmann families lived [note the red arrows]. She also sent me the following explanation of how they may have taken their surnames. "Meyer originally was not a name but a profession. Charlemagne conquered the area around Osnabrück about 780 AD. A Meyer was something between mayor, judge and policeman. As payment for doing this job the Meyer got a farm the "Meyerhof" (Meyer-farm). This term is still known in the German language. At first these farms could not be bequeathed from father to son but that changed over the centuries. Simultaneously the Meyer lost his importance as official. But the name of the farms stayed and the people were called after the name of the farms they lived on, Meyer became a name. There happened to be quite a few Meyer farms . . . so the people separated these families by adding something to the name. Sometimes they added something in front of the name like "Deitemeyer", but most of the time they added something behind the name. Normally this addition was the name of the town the Meyers lived in. . . of course every Meyer who has an addition to his name is proud of it for it separates his family from the uncountable amount of Meyers. According to the language the people used the "zu" sometimes was "to". "Zu" is High German while "to" is Low German. So this proves that Low German is much more related to English than the High German that we speak nowadays. . .I once was told that Meyers written with "y" lived in catholic areas and Meier with "i" come from Lutheran. First only the family of the owner of the "Meyerhof" was named with the addition. The siblings who left the farm where just called Meyer. That is the reason why there are so many Meyers existing in Germany. This habit changed during the 19th century. Emigrants didn't used their addition after reaching their destination so that is the reason why there are no "Meyer zu …" in the USA. Of course this makes family research difficult. "

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