FIRST RECORDS FOR THE VOOS AND VOHS FAMILIES

The Mainz archive records for the Catholic church in Lorch contain the earliest known records for the Vohs family. The Lorch records from 1753 to 1818 includethe names of the children of Caspar[1]Voos and Anna Maria Schamari, the marriage of their son Georg[2] Voos, and the baptism of their grandson Caspar[3] Voos. Each of the baptisms and marriage records lists parents names, and in a few cases information about occupation. All the records for Lorch list the surname only as Voos. It should be noted that the church records from Lorch for the period 1606 to 1753 might contain some additional records, however, these particular latin records are difficult to read and would need some scholarly review to be sure that no further Voos references were present.

The records for the Catholic church in Camberg, found in the archives of the Catholic diocese of Limburg, Germany, record the information about Caspar[3] Vohs' occupation, his parents, his marriage, his wife, his wife's parents, occupation of his wife's father and the births of his children, all the birth records include specific information about the names of the parents. Since the only records for the Vohs surname found in these records pertain to the family of Caspar[3] Vohs, this virtually eliminates the possibility of confusion about the individuals listed. All records from 1827 to the present list the family surname only as Vohs, no other variations of the surname were found.

The exact matches of baptism dates and parents names between the baptism records for Caspar[3] Voos in the Lorch records, and the birth date and parents names of Caspar[3] Vohs in the Camberg marriage record leave little doubt that the Voos and Vohs records pertain to the same family.

The name Caspar and Casparus in the Catholic church records are probably the latin words for the german word Kaspar. The german word Kaspar can be translated into english as Caspar, Jaspar and Gaspar. The Vohs descendants named Jaspar share a name that has been in the family since Caspar Voos of Lorch in the mid-1700's. In general, no attempt was made to convert the latin names found in the Catholic church records into either german or english. Since there are virtually no other known records for the individuals in Germany, there seemed to be little point in trying to come up with either german or english translations of the names.

In view of the use of the latin forms of the german names in the church records, one might question wheter Voos was a latinized version of Vohs. It may also be that when Caspar[3] Voos became educated enough to become a teacher, he may have changed the spelling of his surname to Vohs.


Updated 21 December 1994. This family history information is based on the manuscript The Vohs Families of Kansas prepared by Sean Furniss, 11094 Saffold Way, Reston, VA 22090, SeanBarry@aol.com.

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