Johannes Gutke and 2nd wife Anna Stina Oloffsson

I was able to get into touch with one of my Gutke relatives whose line is through John Magnus Gutke, son of Johannes and Anna Stina Oloffsson. Thanks, Dianne, for the response and clarification of Johannes' second wife, Anna Stina!  I look forward to seeing if your family has any histories, records, etc. about Johannes and maybe his brother Karl!!!

According to the records (secondary source) I have, Johannes and Anna were married 15 April 1849 in Foss (the parish name), Goteborg Och Bohus, Sweden. Anna was born 3 July 1822 and died 16 October 1855 in this same area of Sweden.

Their first son, Karl Johan (spelled Carl Hohan on www.familysearch.org), was christened 14 December 1849 with a birth date of 10 or 11 December 1849.  The place includes "Munkedal" which I don't know if this is the church name or what.  Karl died 8 May, 15 May or 18 May1924, but there is no place listed so I don' t yet know if he emigrated from Sweden and lived in the United States. He appears to have been married in 1870 or 1874 in the Foss Parish in Goteborg och Bohus to Andrine Bergette Andersen (1847-1913). They had no children according to this record.

I'm definitely going to look closer into the records and see what I can find on Karl, and if anyone knows more at this point, fill me in, please!!!

Johannes and Anna's second child was John (Johan) Magnus Gutke, born 1 November 1851 in Munkedal, Foss, Goteborg Och Bohus, Sweden. He married Anna Elisa Hansen, on 18 August 1881 in Salt Lake City (it appears they were sealed in the Endowment House). According to these records, they had 12 children including twins!  John Magnus died 26 October 1934 in Idaho Falls, Idaho. I am hoping that John Magnus' family has a history of him of some sort!

Truth to Titanic story?

photo from http://www.greatdreams.com/ships/Rms_titanic.jpg

Growing up I reveled in the story that our great-great grandfather Andrew Frederick Gutke was scheduled to sail on the ill-fated Titanic and yet had a premonition to not board the ship. He was returning home from an LDS mission in Europe.

A few years ago I learned that LDS missionaries were indeed scheduled to sail on this ship and did not, so I began more earnest research to prove or disprove the story.* In the process of researching I contacted an archivist at the LDS Church Archives, and he answered my questions with the following:

"According to our records, Anders F. Gutke was set apart on 10 March 1910 for a mission to Sweden. He arrived there on 3 April 1910 and was assigned to work in Goteborg. Later, on 2 November 1911 he was assigned to the Norrkoping Conference. He sailed for home from the port of Liverpool, England, on either 1 or 2 May 1912 aboard the ship Corsican in company with Elder Carl O. Peterson of Murray, Utah. They apparently arrived in Salt Lake City on 19 May 1912. The Titanic sunk on 15 April 1912."

So, did he, or did he not at one time plan to board the Titanic?  I still don't know. We don't have any records (journals, etc.) to recount the story, and the research assistant "could find no information in the missionary records that shed any light on the story about Elder Gutke and his forewarning about the Titanic's demise."**

*Lorin, our kids and I visited the Titanic exhibition when it came to Salt Lake City. One of the displays mentioned the name of a missionary as "Alma Sonne", so I started my research there. The Church History departed responded that Alma Sonne was a missionary in England who was scheduled, along with several other missionaries to sail home on the Titanic. "One elder, Fred Dahle, was unable to arrive at port on the scheduled departure date, so Elder Sonne canceled the missionaries' bookings for the Titanic and rebooked them for the Mauretania that left a day later. The story of the episode involving Elders Dahle and Sonne is recounted in the book A Man Named Alma: The World of Alma Sonne by Conway B. Sonne (Bountiful, UT: Horizon Publishers, 1988). Alma Sonne was born in 1884, so he would have been 28 years old at the time of his return home from the British Mission in 1912. He was sustained as a Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in 1941 and to the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1976. He died in 1977."

**Most of the information extracted for me came from the Missionary Record Index, 1830-1971, Missionary Registers, and the unpublished "Manuscript History of the Swedish Mission." Next time I go to the Church Archives I am going to read through these indexes and see what I can learn about his mission. 

Photo of Elder Gutke and a companion. Would this companion by chance be Carl O. Peterson of Murray who traveled home with him on the Corsican?

Johannes (John) Gutke obituary

I found this obituary at the LDS Church History archives. It was listed in the obituary index and has been microfilmed from the Deseret Evening News. This is Johannes; I verified him by his birth date.

Notification can also be found here at the following two links online:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1888-10-25/ed-1/seq-1/;words=GUTKE+Gutke

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85058130/1888-10-26/ed-1/seq-8/;words=Gutke

Mary C. Gutke Wilcox obituary

I found this obituary in the Deseret News - Nov. 27, 1918. Mary C. Wilcox is "Maria Christina Gutke Wilcox" (who was buried in the same plot as her father Johannes and her mother Johanna at the Salt Lake City Cemetery). Mary is Grandpa Andrew Fredrick Gutke's sister, who in this obituary is listed as "Fred."  He apparently went by "Fred"; census records list him this way also.

Note: Mary and Fred's brother John had a different mother, Anna Stina Olaffsson, who died in Sweden before Johannes and Johanna were married. I am researching another brother, Karl Johan, to see if he ever came to the United States because he is not listed here and was apparently not yet deceased.

Gutke headstone in Salt Lake City Cemetery

Headstone for Johannes Gutke and wife Johanna Fredrika Mork Gutke and their daughter Maria Christina Gutke Wilcox in the Salt Lake City cemetery.