In researching a family recently from Woldzegarten/Walow area of Mecklenburg, I ran across the following annotation on not only this person's marriage record, but all of their children's christening records as well:
" Der Vater is laut landesherrlicher Bestätigung vom 8 Juni 1871 unter dem Familiennamen Puls durch von ___ dem Kuhhirten Johann Joachim Ernst Christian Puls zu Wahlow arrogirt"
The person was Ernst George Christian Jenz of Walow, born on 12 Dec 1838, and married to Sophia Friederica Christine Puls on 30 Oct 1865.
Would this "adoption" have been done on an adult for reasons of transfer of property? Ernst Jenz's wife was a Puls, but her father was not the above mentioned cattleraiser, so this has me a little puzzled. I am going to review the churchbooks again to see if their is a familial connection to this man, but am really interested in reasons beyond my assumption that property was involved, if any exist, for an adult to change his name. Also, Ernst Jenz and his wife and children left Mecklenburg for America in 1875, only 4 years after the name change.
Anyone who is familiar with this type of name change, I would greatly appreciate learning more about this procedure.
Sincerely,
Robert