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I'm taking on a small venture into my family's surname. I am tracking down some Culveyhouses across the world, and so far, the few families I’ve found are in the U.S., Ireland, and Germany. I’ve been offering free email accounts to these people, and slowly they are starting to reply and band together with the rest of us already on the web. Eventually, Culveyhouse.com will be a website devoted to personal and professional websites of the whole clan.” I may invite all Culvey families as well, as this surname is essentially the same.
There have been hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who have asked our family, “What kind of name is Culveyhouse?” Finally, after years of research, I have the answer: There are references to the Culveyhouses, or more appropriately, the Culvyhouses, which date back to both medieval Bavaria (Germany) and Ireland. The family’s presence in America dates back to colonial times. During the Civil War, our Yankee ancestors were largely wiped out during several of the battles. From what I could find, as many as 40 Culvyhouses were killed, leaving a few family survivors scattered throughout Tennessee, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. This accounts for the scarcity of our name, not to mention that over the years, descendants further coined several variants to the name, including Culvy, Culvey, and our name (Culveyhouse), and many surviving widows married into Ackley families.
The presence of the word “house” in our name bears significance as well. In nearly all countries of medieval Europe, a “House” was a designation often given to a principal house of a district, usually that of a large proprietor. To preserve that distinction, our ancestors tagged our surname with the word “house.” If this is genuinely the case with our surname, I should be able to locate our house’s official coat of arms. This is turning into quite an exciting research project, and I’ll publish the results as soon as I have them.
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