I am researching the GUTH/GUT family in Kurland/Courland, today's Latvia.
The GUTH name originates from Switzerland.During the year 1331 ,a document in the Benedictine Monastery of Einsiedler shows that a Roudi/Rudi GUTTAN/GUT was a tenant of a piece of land in Hinterburg of the Hasli Valley of Canton Zug,next to Zuerich Canton.
Almost a century later in the 1412 tax lists of Zuerich Canton appears Rudi GUTTAN as owner of a farm in Lunnern.From him,all the German GUTH families stem.The family grew, and first of all moved out to the surounding villages and then to the town of Zuerich around 1450 and to Basel around 1500.
While the Zuerich GUT's joined the Reformation in the 16th century,other GUT's in the inner Swiss Cantons remaind Catholic,even to the present day.During a cantonal census of Zuerich in 1634,seventeen GUT families were recorded,all of them from Ottenbach parish and the five surrounding villages.When the Anabaptists or Dunkards appeared in the Zuerich cantonal area,many GUT families were involved from the beginning as they were during the uprising in the Zuerich lowlands around 1550.
At that time,a Melchior GUT was recorded as a Dunkard and under pressure of opposition, immigrated from the Zuerich area to the village Finsterthuelen.From this Melchior GUT probably originates all the Mennonite GUTs/GOODs in Germany and America.
The persecution of the Anabaptists in Switzerland resulted inlarge emigration out of the country.A great grandson of this Melchior GUT by the name of Jakob GUT[born 1639]was arrested as a Dunkard in 1660,taken to prison in Bern Canton,and together with ten comrades, shipped down the Rhine River and out of Switzerland.Jakob with his wife Barbli settled in Kraichgau in northwest Wuerttenberg,Germany.
Many GUT families also emigrated to the Alsace and the Rheinpfalz/Palatinate[Southwest Germany],where the Thirty Year War[1618-1648]devasted the area.After the war,settlers from other parts of Germany and Switzerland were attracted to help repopulate the area.Then in 1674 and 1675 the French invaded the area.Again from 1688 to 1689 the War of the Palatinate occured,and the French General Melac,laid waste to the whole area,making it almost uninhabitable.People were driven from their homes in the dead of winter.In addition the people were taxed execessively,so that the German Princes could emulate the French court by building palaces and gardens.The religious persecutions took many forms.The Electors-Rulers-of the Palatinate changed theirreligions four times in as many reigns.With each change ,the people were expected to follow the lead of their rulers.An extremely cold winter in 1709 brought much suffering and was the last straw for many.
Did the GUT/GUTHs arrive from Switzerland as settlers in the Palatinate and did they,as many others,find life there unbearable,and left?Alikely senario would be of the Gut/Guths first moving northeast to Prussia and settled there.Historic evidence shows large movements of people from the Palatinate/Pfalz migrating eastwards towards Russia.Sparcely populated areas,shortage of skilled labour,all were inviting to move on.In the sensus of 1772, in West Prussia,we discover fourteen GUTH families.They started to aquire trades and as it was the tradition,once finishing their appreticeship, a journeyman would go on the road for two years and practice his trade . And so we discover Johann Carl GUT in the Duchy of Kurland,a Russian Province at that time,todays Latvia.Church records show him born 1760 in Eckengrawen.
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