Genealogy, Part IV (The Last of the Prützmans)

There’s a town in the German state of Mecklenburg called Prüzen, and a town in what was once known as Pomerania or Pommern (now split between Germany and Poland) called Prützen. Someone from either Prüzen or  Prützen is known as a “Protzmann.”  

The surnames Brotzman and Prützmann derive from Protzmann - a Protzmann named Dieter would be known as “Dieter Brotzman” or “Dieter Prützmann.”  The Americanized form of the names Brotzman and Prützmann is Prutzman.

In the 1840s, while Isaiah Hart was using slave labor to establish his fortune on his plantation Paradise, Prutzmans began settling in eastern Pennsylvania.  The largest number of Prutzmans were recorded during the census of 1880 when there were 119 Prutzman families living in Pennsylvania. That year accounted for about 65% of all the recorded Prutzmans in the U.S.  Pennsylvania in the 1880s was “peak Prutzman period.”  

In Europe, the Kingdom of Prussia had completed its annexation of Pomerania after the Napoleonic Wars. Both Pomerania and Mecklenberg joined the newly constituted German Empire in 1871. Under German rule, the Polish minority suffered discrimination and oppressive measures aimed at eradicating its culture.  It’s not surprising, then, that a large number of Prutzmans would decide to leave their homeland for a new life in Pennsylvania.

Ira Prutzman was born in 1850.  I do not know if Ira was born in either Pomerania or Mecklenburg and then emigrated to the United States, or if he was born here of immigrant parents, but he lived in the Pocono Mountains region of Pennsylvania since at least the 1880s. At the time of his death on April 11, 1932, Ira was considered one of the oldest and most highly esteemed residents of the small town on Noxen (pop. 633), located near Wilkes-Barre and Scranton, where he had lived for more than 30 years.  His widow, the former Sarah Getz, died two years later.

The problem with genealogy is that it's so patriarchal.  Family names are passed down from father to son, and the wives usually give up their birth names to take the surnames of their husbands.  But DNA and genes are passed on by mothers just as much as by fathers, despite naming conventions, and Ira Prutzman is my great-great-grandfather on my mother's side just as much as Isaiah Hart and any of his offspring are my ancestors on my father's side.

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Ira and Sarah had six children.  Daughter Alpa lived at home with Ira and Sarah while son Charles had his own home in Noxen.  Another son, Freeman, lived in Niagara Falls, but the rest of the children, daughter Mrs. Russell Perigo and sons Alonzo and William, all lived elsewhere in the Poconos.

William Franklin Prutzman, one of Ira and Sarah’s six children, was born on November 22, 1881 in nearby Hickory Run, Pennsylvania, but lived most of his life in Stroudsburg.  He was a salesman for Heckman Nash Motors in Stroudsburg and had married the former Lillian Maude Keifer.   One fine morning in 1968, while he was out working in his yard, he suffered a heart attack and died.  He was 76 and had reportedly been in failing health for some time.  

William and Lillian had three daughters and no sons, so that line of the Prutzman name died with William in his yard that day.  The last of the Prutzmans was my great-grandfather.