Gottlieb and Katherine Bauder
From Kit Carson County History, page 374

        The Andreas Bauder Sr. family who were German settlers in Russia, migrated from the Ukraine area of Russia to Burlington, Colorado in 1889.  Their oldest son, Andrew, had settled here a few years earlier.  While the family was going through the red tape of getting passports and passage on a ship the second son, Gottlieb, became military draft age so was not allowed to leave the country with his parents.  So he and Jake Schlichenmayer, also of draft age, finally escaped from Russia on forged passports made by an old Jewish man in their village.  Then the two men were detained again at the German border because they didn't have the money with them for their ship's passage and train fare to Burlington, where free homesteads were promised to all.

       Finally, a German official got in touch with the families at Bremen, Germany, where they were waiting to board the ship to America.  The parents wired the money back to the boys and they were allowed to go on.  But there was yet another disappointment.  When they got to Bremen the ship with their families and many other migrating families had sailed.  So all they could do was wait for the next ship to America to sail.  They then made the lengthy trip across the Atlantic in crowded conditions, without a change of clothing.

       After the long train ride from New York to Burlington and a twelve mile walk, they were finally united with their parents who had despaired of ever seeing them again.

       Gottlieb as a young man worked for a farmer in Nebraska, in the sugar beet fields near Greeley and at the Bar-T and other big cattle ranches.  On Christmas Day, 1897, he married Katherine Fanselau, who was born in Pennsylvania.  The Fanselaus were early homesteaders in Kit Carson County too.  Gottlieb and Katherine's first home was a rock house near the Spring Valley Ranch.

       In 1898 they took out their own homestead thirteen miles northwest of Burlington on the Launchman (Landsman) Creek.  They lived first in a sod house, then an adobe house with a shingled roof.
Besides the first child who died in infancy, they had six children.  They were Walter, Anna (Bauer), Freda (Stahlecker), Emma, who died when she was 15, Robert, and Herman.  The children all went to Blue View School.

       The family suffered the hardships and deprivations of all the early pioneers but managed to survive through droughts, dust storms, and floods, During the big flood of 1933 the Launchman (Landsman) rose to within a few feet to their house.  They were just ready to climb the hill behind the house when the water started to recede.
After the children were all grown Gottlieb and Katherine moved to Burlington in 1947, where they lived on tenth street the rest of their lives.

by Sally Bauder