Hi Kathy! Welcome to WikiTree! I trust you will find it useful and helpful, as i do!
Regarding your brick wall, don't give up yet!
If I were you, the first thing i would do is make a profile for your maternal grandmother, including as much documentation as you are comfortable sharing online. Then make profiles for her parents. Then ask a question here using the Wiki IDs of the person you are asking the question about - put it in the same place you put your Wiki ID to ask this question.
Thus the profile and the discussion will be linked from either side--later visitors to the profile can find the discussion, and even more importantly, those of us who want to help you can see what you've already got, so we don't waste time and energy finding it all over again. There is nothing so discouraging to those of us who want to help as spending some time finding a few gems of sources only to have the profile manager say, oh, yeah, i already got that...and that....and that...
We can be most helpful if we can see everything you have assembled so far, look it over for clues that you might have missed, and let you know about missing sources that we think should be available somewhere.
In your particular case, Jacob and Laya seem to be living in a time frame where they probably left at least a bit of a trail of documentation: they are living right through a period of censuses and BMD registrations. Try to find all members of the family on the censuses --- you just never know when granny is staying with one of the other sons, or a cousin is living with a family. Sometimes figuring out just how the cousin or niece is related opens a whole other door. When you can't go directly back, go wide!
(That's where a lot of the interesting stories come out, too!)
In Jacob's case, it seems likely that there has been some anglicization of his name. Keep your eyes open for Jakob Schenck, or something that could have become Shank. Remember that in the duchies that later became Germany, the second name was the 'calling' name, so he might officially be Hans Jakob Schenck and or Karl Jakob Schenk...you might have looked right at him without realizing it was him!
Don't give up! When you have the profiles built, ask a question here again. Also feel free to send me a message by clicking on my name, and I'll have a look!
Cheers
Shirlea
