When Jakob Grosshans was born on May 21, 1872, his father, Jacques, was 30 and his mother, Salome Reinhardt, was 27. He had one daughter with Marie Nowatzky in 1898. He died on June 2, 1917, in France at the young age of 45.

Jakob was born in what is now modern day France. But, Jakob had been born shortly after Germany had annexed that Alsace region of his birth.

Jakob and Marie’s daughter was Mina Grosshans. Through ancestry, I was able to meet a direct descendant of Jakob’s family. They hosted us while we were on a trip to France in January of 2020. We were given a tour of the village Sundhouse where our ancestors had lived. The feeling of standing on that French soil brought me closer to the story of the family line. We even saw the church that our ancestors had attended and where their home was located.

Note that Jakob’s name Grosshans was spelled with one more letter “s” than we use in the spelling of our family name. Many folks in our ancestral line still use the spelling Grosshans.

This is how we relate: