Who is Henry Gaus?

During my initial search on his name, nothing came up except for the 1880 US Census record so I knew there was probably another spelling of his last name. I went back to the actual image of the record and saw that the writing could be interpreted as Gaus or Gans. Since nothing came up for Gaus before, I searched for Henry Gans and bingo!

There is a 1900 Census record for Henry Gans, still living in Bloomington, WI. And who is still living with him? Angeline Heuertz, 34 years, and Kate Lorenz, 23 years. His wife, Stephania, had died in 1897 so it’s just the three of them now.

This was good info to know, but I knew the connection had to be on Stephania’s side and not her second husband’s. And the connection to Lou Winney, who Kathryn wrote letters to later in life, will be through his mother Elizabeth Wellman.

If Elizabeth and Kathryn were sisters, the “Aunt” designation would make relational sense. But, they had two different last names and their fathers are listed in the 1880 Census as being born in different states (Illinois and Ohio).

More likely, I thought, Elizabeth and Kathryn were first cousins. Growing up in the same house they could have felt as close as sisters and possibly referred to each other that way.

More Questions Than Answers

With every answer that revealed itself, more questions evolved from each one. Are Elizabeth and Kathryn children of Stephania’s daughter(s) from her first marriage to Jean Heuertz? Did a Heurtz daughter marry a Wellman or a Lorenz? Katie’s father is marked as being born in Illinois and Elizabeth’s is marked as being born in Ohio.

I rely on Ancestry.com extensively for my family history research, and have made many breakthroughs using their database. The problem I ran into was that after putting an initial person into a new family tree, everyone after that has to be connected to someone in the tree. And, when you have someone in your tree, Ancestry.com automatically crawls the records on a continual basis to show you potential records that might apply to that person. That’s how I was able to get information pretty quickly on John DeViche’s family.

But, without knowing the connection that Kathryn Lorenz has to the family I couldn’t add her, thus depriving me of Ancestry.com’s recommended records. 

I relied on the search function in the meantime, putting in variations that I’d uncovered: Kathryn, Kate or Katie for first names; Lorenz  or Lorentz for surnames. None of the searches provided any obvious family for her. It was like Kathryn had just appeared out of nowhere until 1880.

Other people’s family trees in Ancestry showed that Stephania had a daughter Mary Heuertz, whose birthdate is listed as May, 1842. Of Stephania’s four daughters, Mary has the most potential to be the mother of Elizabeth, Kathryn (or both!), so I turned backwards in time to untwist the connection.

Since Elizabeth was born in 1867, she should be in the 1870 US Census. As I typed in the search criteria, I was nervous and hopeful of discovering who her mother and father were.

Success! On June 1, 1870, when the US Census is taken, Mary Wellman, three year old Elizabeth, and two year old Josephine, are living in Guttenberg, Iowa. No husband or father is listed, and there isn’t a marital status box in that year’s Census questions. Twenty-eight year old Mary has the occupation of “keeping school”, which sounds to me like she’s a school teacher, so she is able to support her family. 

The names, location, and birth years lined up for what I had found so far, but I still didn’t have definitive proof that these were the Mary and Elizabeth I was looking for. It was all I had, so I took a leap of faith and followed this new path.

First, I had to process this new information. Josephine? Mary had another daughter? More answers always beget more questions it seems. 

One thing is clear, the mystery has grown beyond “Aunt Kathryn”. As I rode the highway of names in the family tree. One by one I passed them, until I came to a dead stop – Mary Heuertz. To find out more about Elizabeth and Kathryn, I had to step back and bring Mary Heuertz’s story to life. Who was she? What is she to my family? Who was her family?

Click to continue to Part 7.