In 1664 for the first time the name of Roffmann is to be found in official lists about Kemme. In the poll-tax list the butcher and small farmer with a farm and 10 acres of soil is mentioned. He is the only Roffmann being proved.

The first entry into the church book of Kemme regarding the Roffmann family is to be found on March 7, 1672. It is the notice of the birth of Sophie Dorothee. As her father Hans(en) is mentioned. We are proceeding on the assumption that Toni is Hans’ father.

Kemme belongs to the oldest settlements  in the Hildesheim Region. It belongs to the bishopric of Hildesheim. Therefore it  falls under the rule of the Bishop of Hildesheim. Today Kemme is a component of the municipality of Schellerten, district of Hildesheim.

In Hildesheim there are to be found the so far oldest documentarily mentioned Roffmanns. On March 26, 1620  the wine publican Thilo received the sum of about 50 Taler for the delivery of 34 barrels of wine (voucher in the City Treasury of Old-Town Hildesheim). At the same time an Earl of Burgstemmen  married a Roffmann. This is an entry in 1622 as a brother in law and godfather in the “Deutsche Geschlechterbuch Band 9 of the Tise”. Connections of these two persons are not clarified  so far.  We look at these as the eldest ancestors from Kemme for our family-historical consideration.

Originally the Roffmanns were farmers, their designation Kothsass or Köther. Partly among them there were Halbköther. Determined by the Law of Succession, the younger sons got a lump-sum payment from the farm, mostly in form of a building site with a house at the outskirts of the village. This is the reason why we find some Roffmanns as Brinksitzer or Anbauer. Brinksitzer or Anbauer just managed to live. They had to look how to get along. Many took on a craft. Partly the descendants wandered away with the prospect of marriage into a farm. Toni included, the Roffmanns more than 250 years were part of the farmer’s history of Kemme. When Gottlieb got free his farm by purchase, it had the same size of 10 acres. The last farmer upon this farm is Wilhelm, born 1848. Besides two daughters he had two sons. But Karl moved away, and Ernst was killed in action before Verdun in the first world war. The married in son-in-laws Hüncken and in the following generation Anders carried on the Roffmann Farm. The Kemme Line ends with the dead of Wilhelm in 1907.

At about 1800 the name of Roffmann first came to Hohenhameln by  Christian Johann, born 1775 in Kemme, then to Adenstedt. His grandson  Wilhelm Karl Heinrich, born 1854, had 11 (!) children. This part of the family is up to now the largest related one in the history of the Roffmanns.

In Equord situated directly besides Adenstedt, for the first time provable with the birth of  Henning Jacob in 1760 a Roffmann is mentioned as an estate servant to those of Hammerstein-Equord. Unfortunately we did not succeed up to now to combine this extensive family part with the Kemme Line.

In Mehrum, near Adenstedt, there is to be found another layer, too. At about 1800 there lived Johann Conrad. Also, it did not happen to get the connection.

Christoph, born 1801 in Kemme, was the first one to move into the neibourhood village of Schellerten. His solely son  Johann died 1845 without descendants. With Wilhelm Johann Carl, born 1819 in Kemme, another Roffmann came to Schellerten. Because of the circumstance of a illegitimate birth oh his grandson Ernst August Wilhelm in 1884, in Schellerten there is a not unimportant family layer in this region carrying today this name, including the author.

By the emigration to America there was another valve opened for the rural German population to flee from that chanceless being. So did some of our family.  In the hope of finding better living circumstances are emigrated provenly so far.