Grabenstein

We can trace the Grabenstein family back to Cristian Erdmann Grabenstein, who was probably born around the 1760-70’s. He was a former soldier who married Anna Catherina Kempfen in Stendal, Saxony in 1789. Their son Andreas Heinrich Martin was an orphan by the time of his marriage in December 1821. He worked as a brick layer in the town of Gardelegan. His son Friedrich married Katharine Jordan and the couple had 8 children.

We unfortunately don’t know much else prior to the birth of Wilhelm Grabenstein in 1857 as most of the church books were destroyed by the wars, and there is a 1-generation gap in our family tree. We know that the family was Lutheran for many generations and lived mostly around Gardelegen and Edemissen in the Saxony region of Germany.

Wilhelm’s daughter Minna became pregnant at the age of 19 and her first son Adolph was born in 1929. At some point after Adolph’s birth, Minna married August Pytlik and her son took on his surname. The couple went on to have at least three more children together. Their son Adolph moved to Canada in his 20’s, but would return to Germany on several occasions to visit his family, and Minna made at least one trip to British Columbia in the 1980’s, where she visited her son, grandson and infant great-granddaughter.

The name Grabenstein is German, possibly formed from the words grabe (meaning ‘moat’ or ‘ditch’) and stein (meaning ‘rock’), potentially giving a clue to the region where the family originated. It could also be a variant of the Silesian name Grafenstein.