New Member, Roy Mueller - seeking help with brick walls

Question

I'm new to Wikitree but have had an interest in my genealogy for years.  I am hitting a brick wall for my paternal grandfather, John Mueller, who was born in 1876 in Germany (I believe in Godas, Bavaria) and arrived in America in 1896, settling near Highland Illinois.  I'm also blocked at my paternal great grandfather, Nicolaus Schneider, who was born in 1831 near Zurich Switzerland and emigrated to America around 1860.  Any suggestions anyone can give me where to go from here would be appreciated.

Comments

Hello, Roy! Welcome to WikiTree! You've come to the best genealogical website in the world, in my opinion. Hopefully, someday, you will break through your brick walls. I just broke through one a couple of days ago with very little primary documentation, but I have circumstantial evidence and a large number of matches in Ancestry.com's ThruLines. So my advice is that, if you haven't already, get an auDNA test done. In the case of your Mueller brick wall, a yDNA test might be beneficial, as well. I do not understand very much about the nitty-gritty of DNA testing and how to interpret the results, but there are people here who are very informed about it and would be willing, I'm sure, to give you advice. Best wishes with all your genealogical endeavors!

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Welcome, Roy!

I added some more tags to your post: Germany, Switzerland and Schneider.

These should pull in members from those projects, as well as people following the Schneider surname, and they may be able to point you in the direction of some relevant resources.

I also just realized that your post is in the Tree House, so I'm going to go move that to Genealogy Help instead. Some people will peruse that section of the forum to see who needs help. :-)

Answer 1

Welcome to Wikitree, Roy!

Answer 2

Familysearch.org (a free site) has a number of records for John, Johann or Johannes. Mueller. The same for Nicolaus Schneider.

Answer 3

Hi Roy!

Was your grandfather John Mueller Catholic, Protestant, or Jewish? This makes a big difference in terms of which German sources to look at.

And can you tell us a bit more about why you think he was from Godas, Bavaria?

Comments

He was Catholic.  We have located in the past an uncle of his named Josef Muller in Godas Germany but that source has dried up.

Answer 4

Hello Roy,

I am afraid the names of your ancestors are "worst case" for genealogy research. Müller, Schneider, Schäfer and John, Mary, Margaret are VERY common names.
You will probably find a couple with these names in every village.

Please first add all the information you have to these profiles.

I see there is already a familysearch entry, but a lot of information is missing. Please go on searching all the Census records, the immigration records and so on. Maybe you can find hints there? Especially in the immigration record you might find families that immigrated together, but have less common names?

And can you please give more details about this uncle in Bavaria?

In Germany, DNA tests are not so common, it is very unlikely that your find relatives this way.

Best regards

Bettina

Comments

...and the chance might be higher at MyHeritage, so if you do one at Ancestry first, make sure to upload the results to myheritage later as there are more German folks on that site, potentially.

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Hello Roy,

If Godas is the right place, you can find the church books for Kemnath here: https://data.matricula-online.eu/de/deutschland/regensburg/kemnath-stadt/
It is in columns and there are registers, so quite easy to check. Book7 (1855-1877) contains births, birth reg., marriages, marriage reg., death, death registers in one book.

Answer 5

Hello,

for Nicolas Schneider, on familysearch there is an immigration record that shows immigration of his family from Le Havre to New Orleans. There is a matching emmigration record from Le Havre available on ancestry - you can ask here (better in a new question, tagged France) if anybody has access to French ancestry records and can check it for you.

Bst rgds Bettina

Comments

And then, if you have the immigration record, the process of research would be the same as for Germany. I need to know the town where they came from, otherwise with such a common surname as Schneider, you wouldn't know where to look for.

In German speaking parts of Switzerland, such as Canton of Zurich, look out for Nikolaus and Niklaus, not only Nicolas.