Researching Reuter/Hannington/Hawksley

[craigreuter]

My name is Craig Reuter of Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. All my life I've heard about how my great-great-grandfather Gustav Adolph Julius Reuter moved from Königsberg, East Prussia, to England, to Massachusetts. He left one brother and parents in Königsberg. This family was driven westward at the end of WWII and settled in the Hanover area. In preparation for a family gathering in late May I began utlizing online resources and new family connections to track down information on the early days of the family emigration. In the process, I became interested in my Grandmother Reuter's family history. Her maiden name is Hawksley.

I came across a Hawksley relative in Maine who has contributed significant information about the Hawksley family all the way back to 1700's England.

I am trying to fill in several blanks about Gustav and his English wife, Rosa Jeneatte Hannington, daughter of Offord John Hannington and wife Catherine. I have reviewed the indeces containing their marriage, Rosa's baptism, Offord's birth and death, and am pursuing a connection in Australia regarding the descendents of Rosa's brother William. Gustav remarried Adele Schorling in New England.

The blanks are....

Where and when did Rosa die? Rosa bore four sons in the UK and a fifth in Bremerhaven or Bremen Germany. When Gustav came with his sons to New England in 1906, Rosa did not accompany them. If at all possible I would like to learn if Rosa passed away in Germany or if a divorce brought her back to England to live out the rest of her life.

Where did Gustav die? The Reuters in the US have no definitive answer to this. Gustav obviously didn't let grass grow under his feet. He lived in New York City, South Boston, Everett in Massachusetts, perhaps Worcester and also Detroit. A letter from a cousin in Germany to one of Gustav's sons in Detroit indicated he may have died in Philadelphia. No information is known to living relatives about Adele's date of death or burial.

This sets the stage for the intrigue.

I look forward to meeting new acquaintances on this forum and offering any help where I can in your searches.

Kind regards,

Craig

[Kerrywood]

Hi Craig, and welcome to the forums.

This forum is just for saying 'Hi', so I've copied your post to the General Family History Forum. You seem to have a pretty wide-ranging international challenge on your hands here, but I'm sure our members will do their best to help.

While you're waiting, why not make yourself comfortable and have a good look around the forums.

Anyone who can help with Craig's queries, please reply on the other thread.

[craigreuter]

My first post went into more detail than is requested for the introduction so I am returning to the forum to let you know a bit more about me.

I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota/USA with my wife and daughter. I'm am sales and marketing manager for a small coatings company that is beginning an export campaign to the UK. Who knows, maybe one day soon I will come to the UK on business and take some time for ancestry research.

Hobbies are piano (1883 Steinway grand in the living room), tenor saxophone, do it yourself home improvements and, most recently, ancestry research in advance of a big Reuter reunion at the end of May.

Since chidhood I was intrigued by my German heritage (both paternal and maternal). I took up German in high school then studied the language at the university, with multiple summer programs in Germany and Austria, and finally working for a short time in Düsseldorf. My first ever experience in Germany was 1981 in Wilhelmshaven, which is due west of Bremerhaven and Geestemünde where my g-g-grandfather Gustav and his family lived somewhere between 1899 and 1908.

Gustav started such a large family in North America, yet his children and their families quickly spread out across half of the continent and lost track of each other. Even the last residence and date of death of old man Gustav is unknown to the living relatives, with only old stories of maybe here, maybe there. His reputation was that of a stern old German, and maybe that contributed to the estrangement. Regardless of who or what he was, it is my goal to locate him and pay my respects so that the generations that have followed him will know more about him and his two wives, Rosa Hannington and Adele Schorling.

My grandmother's family, Hawksley, has some strong roots in the UK as well, and I have enjoyed providing her with information on her own grandparents that she never knew.

I am amazed at the inforamtion that is available in the UK and have been enjoying my genealogy activities. It's a pleasure to be part of the forum.

Craig

[Yeates]

How do you do, Craig,
I simply want to welcome you to the forum. You will find that generous, genealogy-minded problem-solvers abound.
I, too, am from Minneapolis, although I now live in Wisconsin.
Yeates