Gottfried Hann’s 1891 Marriage License is today’s Treasure Chest Thursday post.
Of course, it’s not just great-grandfather Gottfried’s marriage license but also my Sweden great-grandmother Anna Larsdotter’s license as well. 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.

My mother recently unearthed a Marquette County, Michigan, marriage license for Godfrey Hamm and Annie Larson from her family stash (above). And I almost wept to see that he actually existed in a real tangible record. Gottfried Hann is my brickiest of brick walls. I know he’s from Austria, probably from the Tyrolean region, and that he was born in 1861.

And that’s it – the sum total of family knowledge. His daughter, my grandmother, was a posthumous child, born in December of 1896, two months after her father died at the age of 35 in Chicago.

I used the FamilySearch 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.

Gottfried Hann's 1891 Marriage LicenseMost 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.

So I’m treasuring Gottfried Hann’s 1891 marriage license. My ongoing hunt from the mysterious Mr. Hamm Haun Hann? To be continued this Surname Saturday right here at Sassy Jane Genealogy. See you then!

Update: a brick wall has fallen, not in Austria, but Romania. Genealogy happy dance!