In 1965, while my father was on a business trip nearFrankfurt Germany he decided to take a day off to investigate his familyroots.  He looked through the phone book and found that the town with themost Rohé listed was Kleinwallstadt on the Main river.  He took the trainthere.  He asked around in his halting German, and once people finallyunderstood what he was asking they all directed him to a Father Rohé who was aretired priest.  A nun finally escorted my father to the old priest whowas widely regarded as the Rohé family historian and genealogist.

They spoke in German and my father wasn't really fluent, but he got the gist ofwhat he was saying.  He showed by father a report (in German of course)his niece had written for school.  It said in essence the family wereoriginally French Huguenots and the name was originally spelled Roi.  Asthey moved to Germany the name was changed to Rohé, with the French accent aiguover the e, as a proud reminder of their French heritage.  More recently,most families have dropped the accent and it became simply Rohe pronounced inGerman fashion.

My father simply scanned over the report and didn't make a copy.  I don'tknow what happened to it and whether it had been preserved or lost. Therefore this is all hearsay evidence, but it may provide a clue.

Year latter, when we did finally make contact with our provably closestrelatives in Germany (Grünmorsbach near Aschaffenburg), my German cousin toldme that his father had told him, that the Rohe family came from Kleinwallstadt,before that from the Saar and before that from France.

There are two neighboring towns, Sankt Ingbert and Rohrbach, in SaarPfalzKreise, that have the highest concentration of the Rohe surname in Germany,(Vechta in Oldenburg in northwest Germany comes close).  SaarPfalz is inthe modern Saarland state, but is near the border with the Palatinate(Pfalz).  It is also not far from the border with Alsace and Lorraine(modern France).  Sankt Ingbert was a medieval monastery.  Rohrbachis known to have been a refuge city for the Protestant Walloons and latter theFrench Huguenots.

In 1604 Louis von Nassau-Saarbrücken allowed the Huguenots to settle in theSaar, where they helped to promote local industries such as glassmaking. However, in 1637 Rohrbach was devastated by the 30 Years War and left empty andabandoned.

A genealogist of the Rhoa (pronounced Roy and originally spelled Rohe) familyof Cambria County, PA, told me the family came from Arnsberg on the upper Ruhrand family tradition said that the name was originally spelled LeRoy. Since Arnsberg was originally owned by the Archbishop of Cologne, it isprobable the Archbishop wanted to attract good Catholics to come and helprepopulate his territories after the 30 Years War.  Likewise the Archbishopof Mainz wanted to attract good Catholics to Kleinwallstadt after the war tohelp repopulate it.  This is apparently the origin of the Kleinwallstadtbranch.  The Rohé family seems to be split along religious lines.

The word 'Roi' or 'Roy', meaning king, is pronounced 'Rwah' in modernFrench.  In Old French, as was spoke in the 12th century, it waspronounced somewhere between 'Rho-eee' or 'Rho-ay' similar to the Englishpronunciation of 'Roy'.  I believe the spelling Rohé was an attempt toretain the original Old French pronunciation of Roi.  So calledmisspellings in America such as 'Roha', 'Rhoa', 'Roa' and Roae' could likewisebe attempts to retain the original pronunciation, under the mistaken assumptionthat the letter 'a' in English is sounded out the same as in the alphabet.