Today’s Treasure Chest Thursday is the marriage license for Gottfried Hann and Anna Larsdotter, my great-grandparents. And the reason why it’s in my Treasure Chest is that this document and his death certificate are the only documents that prove Gottfried Hann ever existed.
Gottfried Hann is my brickiest of brick walls. I know he’s from Austria, probably from the Tirolean region, and that he was born in 1861. And that’s it – the sum total of family knowledge. His daughter, my grandmother, was born in December of 1896, two months after her father died at the age of 35 in Chicago.
My mother recently unearthed this Marquette County, Michigan, marriage license and I almost wept to see that he actually existed in a real tangible record.
At FamilyLabs,* I found an online database of Michigan Marriages, 1868-1925, and Godfrey Haun and Annie Larson's record is there (#101), but it has a line drawn through their names.
Most puzzling in light of the counter-signed, sealed, and embossed marriage license at top. So I wrote to Marquette County, Michigan, and they had no record of the marriage, even though I had a numbered license.
(*BTW, Randy's 2 Aug 2010 post at Genea-musings shines a light on the various (and varied) on varying search results at the FamilySearch beta sites - worthwhile reading.)
My ongoing hunt from the mysterious Mr. Hann? To be continued this Surname Saturday right here at Sassy Jane Genealogy. See you then!
My experience with records such as this Michigan marriage tells me that for some reason, the Priest did not return the license, signed, sealed and such to the county clerk. The line through the record would support such a thought, as all the information about the return, the date, the witnesses, etc., are MIA.
ReplyDeleteMy next research activity would be to see if you can find the church this Priest served, and see if they have church/marriage records. The record, might, you can hope, contain his parent's names.
If it were me, I would be RUNNING to find church records! LOL
Good luck and what a wonderful find your mother made!
I think you're absolutely right, Carol. But imagine if they'd needed proof other than their own copy of the license.
ReplyDeleteI'm not running, but flying to those church records. I'll be in Michigan by the end of the month. I've just got to find more evidence of poor Gottfried.
Hey Sassy Jane! So is the CA dept of vital records the slowest ever or is it usual to wait for MONTHS! Honestly, it took them a month to cash my check for my grandmother's death cert. And now it will be another 12-14 weeks! ACK!
ReplyDeleteArnold probably furloughed everybody in that department.
ReplyDeleteCook County took five months - four from the time they cashed the check. And my father died in the meantime, before I could give him an answer. :(
But when you're back, we shall proceed with the mysterious Mabel.