131 - 11 Research and Blogposts

Research

This tree started by downloading all the US draft cards for WW1 & WW2, then researching them back to build the families. US records do not release indexes of births, so we have to rely on marriages, census and death reports as the primary sources of this information. With the name Gotts, which in this case came in from Germany, it has been recorded as Gotz, Gottz, Goetz, Gatts and Gates, depending on the officials writing down the verbal response of the person.

Given the wanderings of Henry over the country we have to rely on ages, occupations, and the useful documents within the Grand Army of the Revolution, which help us to link together Civil War service, location in 1885 and Veteran’s Pensions which then link to beneficiaries.

The availability of Harry’s Guardianship records provides a great insight to his life.

Here is a list of stories  and blogposts involving this family in other parts of the website:

 Travel

Given most of the Gottses in this site are located in Britain, it is interesting to consider some of the distances that people in USA commuted through their life. This image shows those in the family who moved a lot. The distances are huge compared to migrations in England of 100-200 miles.

One take on this is a migration westward to where there was more opportunity after the earlier growth around Cleveland.