If some of the genealogical files that we have seen are correct, it may be that Stephan "Gosse" did not come over on the same ship as perhaps his father and other brothers. This might help explain why Stephan was the only "Gosse" to sign the register for the ship Brothers in 1752. On the other hand, I find it a perhaps a little too coincidental that FamilyTreeMaker’s "World Family Tree" (WFT) and other similar genealogy archives contain user contributed files listing Stephan’s father to be a George married to an Anna..
…It just so happens that Stephan’s third born son who was named George married a woman named Anna (Spangler).
The information presented in these various genealogy databases accessible on internet websites might be correct, but since there appears to be no verifiable documentation of such, I find it more likely that some folks have gotten the "documented" information a little mixed up - Many scenarios involving assumptions or speculations could be envisioned.. It's certainly possible for one to conclude by consideration of such suppositions, that Stephan's father is named Stephan as well, and he might therefore be the one that signed the ship's log in 1752!
Ships' Logs and Passenger Lists can sometimes help shed some light on these things, but they may also raise more questions. For example, we have discovered a ship's passenger list from the year 1754 that included an immigrant named Johan George Goß ("Gosse") with the last name handwritten very similar to the way Stephan signed the 'Brothers' ship list in 1752.
The name and list was found in the "I. Daniel Rupp, Ship Load Volume" by M.V. Koger.
We have found yet another ship log showing the ship 'Snow Ketty' arriving in Philadelphia from Rotterdam one month later than the ship 'Brothers', that has a George "Gass" on the passenger log. He is shown to have signed with an "X" and therefore someone else wrote (and spelled?) the name for him. Could this be the George Goß ("Gosse") that some others have "documented" to be the father of Stephan and might the other brothers have been with him... or might this be one of the four brothers?
Of course there may be no relation between them at all. We believe that there were numerous "Gosse"s of germanic ancestry who immigrated to the United States over the years, and whose handwritten surnames eventually became "anglisized" and officially documented as "Goss". (For more on this, click on this link for "Meaning & Origins Of The GOSE Surname" or select the same topic from the Table of Contents on the home page of this website.)
After sorting out all of the verifiably documented genealogical facts, one begins to realize that much of what we have seen and heard is not quite true. Even our own word-of-mouth family stories referring to Peter and Philip as being some of the "immigrant Gose brothers" turns out not to be correct. We have discovered that Peter and Philip were in fact the immigrant Stephan’s sons named Peter and Philip. Thus it is not surprising that over the years, we had never met anyone in the family who had any records documenting the descendants of these two "immigrantsquot;.
Continuing with the aforementioned FamilyTreeMaker examples, there are some genealogy files in the FTM data base as well as Ancestry.com that show a "David" Gose as "one of the four brothers" but not Peter. Some of these same files list a George Gose, also born in Strasbourg, as the father of the purported immigrants Stephen, Philip, and David. (The name David has never been mentioned in our own stories of the family history stories.)
With regard to Peter, our word-of-mouth family stories simply say "Peter had no children".
Stephen Yancy Gose's letter of 1914 referred to in the first article of this series is another example of incorrect "recollections" being passed along - even though it does contain a lot of true and good information about family history as well.
We know that immigrant Stephan Goß (aka Stephen Gose, Sr.) and his family lived in Rowan County, North Carolina between about 1765 and 1778 since reputable sources document five or six of his children as having been born there during that period of time. (Their last child born in Lynn Township, PA was in 1764.) There was a significant concentration of German immigrant families located in this particular area of what was soon to become the new state of North Carolina.
One might therefore speculate that the other Goß (Goss) families documented in census records to be living in the Rowan County area during this time could have been brothers or other close relatives of the immigrant Stephan Goß. However, our research indicates no such close relationship exists between these families.
Apparently our Stephan Goß family did not find the life or future that they had hoped to build in North Carolina... Because around 1776 they again "loaded the wagons" and relocated to Cripple Creek, Virginia where the rest of the children were born. (For more on this, read the final of this series of three articles which more specifically covers the Stephan Goß Family.)
It is interesting to look for patterns in given names of possible Gose ancestors. Doing so may help give us some clues in our genealogical research since it was common many years ago to give children the same names as their parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
The given name "David" appears repeatedly in the Frederick Goß (Goss) line in Rowan County, North Carolina, ca 1790-1850 but the name "Philip" does not. The name "Philip" appears repeatedly in our Gose family line in mid-late 1700’s Lynn Township, Pennsylvania (Stephan’s family) and subsequently in Virginia, but the name "David" does not, although the name "David" does appear on a limited basis in the late 1700’s and early 1800's Virginia Gose families. The names "Philip" and "David" Gose both appear in early-late 1800's Kentucky Gose families.
But getting back to the discussion about the "four Gose brothers", some additional questioning is in order. Based on information from some of the various genealogical files we have found, one might conclude that there were three immigrant Gose brothers. (WorldFamilyTree file #3083 in WFT CD Vol. 10. for example)
This information is not correct... at least in reference to our 1752 immigrant Gose line. We have never seen anything documenting that Stephan had any other brothers who immigrated with him or were living anywhere in this country around that time.
Of course, with today's world of computers, the internet and email communications, incorrect information can quickly multiply - so we must be very careful.
It is possible that some may have concluded the existence of a fourth brother after confusing the "documented" information about the presence of the "father" of the three brothers who the WorldFamilyTree data shows to be named George. Our family history speaks of "three or four brothers". We would certainly be very interested in seeing any actual data supporting the existence of five brothers as well. But we also realize that there could be other immigrant Gose lines that might be adding to the confusion.
However, barring the emergence of any documented evidence,
we can only conclude that there were no other immigrant brothers at all who were directly related to our ancestor, Stephan Goß, aka Stephen Gose, Sr.
Several other Gose family researchers are in agreement with us as well, and thus join us in concluding that these stories appear to be nothing but myths… That the three brothers that were said to come over with the 1752 immigrant Stephan, are actually his first three sons (born in Pennsylvania) who emmigrated with Stephan and the rest of the family to North Carolina, and then finally to Virginia.
From the "Annals of Tazewell County" published many years ago we read: "There were four Gose brothers who came to the Virginia Valley from Pennsylvania." One can certainly see how statements such as this might be misquoted or misunderstood by others when being passed along by word-of-mouth.
As previously mentioned, one of the things that makes the Gose genealogy difficult to research, is that there may be several other immigrant "Gosse" (Goß) families from Germany and Switzerland (Bavaria) with the present day surname of Gose and Goss. The Frederick Goss (Goß) family of Rowan County, North Carolina is only one of these examples. We believe there are numerous other family lines in this country today that originated with german immigrants having the same surname originally spelled as "Goß". Their names may currently be spelled Gose, or the more common Goss, but the likelihood is great that we share common ancestry. Many of the Goss families in the U.S. are of english descent however, as Goss is a somewhat more common name in England.
(For more on the origins of the surname, see the article titled "Meanings & Origins of the Gose Surname".)
One example of another Gose family line that shows up in the 1752 immigrant Gose family line is that associated with Stephen Gose, Jr. and his sister Elizabeth Gose who were children of the immigrant Stephan Goß. Stephen married Maria Barbara Kettenring (Ketterling, Kettering, Catron, etc.) and Elizabeth married Maria's brother, Johann Jacob Kettenring. Both Maria and Johann were born in Scharrhof, Germany. Their father was Christoff Kettenring who was married to Susannah Gose!
(You will find them in the Stephan Gose genealogy file associated with this Gose Family Website and posted in the Rootsweb WorldConnect Project.) Christoff and Susannah and family evidently immigrated from the Scharrhof, Germany area, perhaps somewhere around the same time as Stephan immigrated from Strasbourg.
But where did this Susannah come from and how might she be related to Stephan's family!? Our genealogy research in Europe is beginning to shed light on this as we have discovered a "cluster" of Goß families in an area stretching from Strasbourg northeast and east about a hundred miles into the mountainous Baden region of Germany, south through the Black Forest and into western Switzerland. Scharrhof is not far across the present day German border north of Strasbourg in the Rheinland-Phalz region... Part of an area once known as the Palatinate. (More on this further below.)
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The Genealogy Files
The "Stephan Gose" genealogy file associated with this website presents the most up to date, complete, and accurate information on the first five generations of the descendants of the 1752 immigrant that we have been able to compile.
The information contained in this file represents the combined research efforts of numerous other Gose family researchers. We have attempted to verify and wherever possible document the sources for the information contained in the file. However, some of the information in the file does not list a specific source other than World Family Tree (WFT) or some other such entity. Because much of the unsourced information may actually be documented and valid, rather than not include it and perhaps miss out on some good information or clues, we have chosen to include it. But please be aware that verifying of any such sources is highly recommended.
If you do verify any of this information or discover errors and correct them, we would very much appreciate your submitting a revised copy of any such corrected and/or verified family trees for which you have now listed specific
sources, so that we may update our files for the benefit of your fellow genealogy researchers.
GOSE EUROPEAN HISTORY
At this point, I have not completed much research on our own family history prior to the 1752 immigration. It gets, of course, much harder to find documentation as you go back past 1800. For this reason, we must rely more upon information in family bibles, church records, and other local government or personal records. In my most recent trip to France this past summer, I spent time searching the Registres Paroissiaux (church records) in the Archives Municipale in Strasbourg. My goal in searching these records is to eventually locate the Goß family home or homesite in Strasbourg. Since Strasbourg was mostly spared the devastations of World Wars I & II, it is quite possible that the family home still stands. If as I suspect, however, the family of Stephan Goß lived on a farm in the countryside outside of Strasbourg, the location will be much more difficult to determine. The archive librarian in the Strasbourg Archives Municipale was very helpful when I explained what I was looking for.
The LDS libraries in the U.S. also have microfilm records of many of these European documents and we have been making use of this resource as well. That is how we discovered the existence of the other Goß families in Germany and Switzerland. Fortunately I speak French and some German, which is a big help in this research. You will of course find the Gose surname spelled with the German sizlig (ß) character in these old documents as we have used it here.
If any of you have information that you would like to share, please do so by going to the
Contribute Your Information section on this website.
One of the best ways that we can obtain information on family genealogy in an effort to clear up discrepancies and confusion, is through query boards and forums such as those hosted by this website. Please consider joining the Gose Mailing List which will keep you posted on updates to the website, genealogy file(s), or other discoveries and research leads related to the Gose line.
We encourage you to share all family history information that you may have, no matter how insignificant you may feel that it is, because to someone, somewhere, the information you have may provide a desperately needed connection or verification of a suspected connection that would otherwise remain unverifiable without that "small" piece of information that you may have.
On behalf of all of those frustrated amateur genealogists out there...
Thanks for taking the time to help!
Sincerely,
Ted Gose