I've been working through a couple of the marriage licenses in my "stuff to file" folder, and I came across an interesting phenomenon. I was looking at the marriage for Hazel (Craddock) Heard and John W. Kaufman, and wanted to get a little background info on John for my database. He said was born about 1901, his parents were John E. Kaufman and Rose Warren, and that he was from Iola, Kansas. I went digging, and found his family in the 1910 census, living in Humboldt, Kansas. It turns out both cities are in Allen County, Kansas, and aren't very far apart. John and Rosa had a fairly young family at the time - they'd only been married about 8 years, and had for kids, ranging from 8 years to 10 months (John W. was the 2nd youngest, at 3, so he was a little off on his birthdate on his marriage license to Hazel).
What caught my eye about this family is the fact that John E. Kaufman's father was German, and his mother was from Pennsylvania, where there were a lot of Germans. Rosa (Warren) Kaufman's parents were both from Ireland. This combination of Irish and German appears several times in other places in my family tree:
Augusta Joseph (my great-grandmother, German) married John F. Gibson (my great-grandfather, whose parents and grandparents were all Irish)
Elmer Joseph (Augusta's only brother) married Julia Barrett (daughter of Irish immigrants)
Olga (Joseph) Haft (Augusta's oldest sister) married Michael McKeown (an Irish immigrant)
Helena Joseph (Augusta's youngest sister) married John "Jack" Walsh (son of Irish immigrants)
Maybe it was just the Joseph family, but it's interesting to me to see German immigrants (or their children) marrying Irish immigrants (or their children) so often. Was there something that they saw in each others' heritage that rang a bell? Was it just chance that they all happened to go for someone with that background? Once again, more research leads to more questions for more research. :)
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