{"id":4949,"date":"2014-03-14T21:58:39","date_gmt":"2014-03-15T02:58:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/?p=4949"},"modified":"2014-03-14T21:58:39","modified_gmt":"2014-03-15T02:58:39","slug":"a-breakthrough-in-the-emil-mller-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/a-breakthrough-in-the-emil-mller-case\/","title":{"rendered":"A Breakthrough in the Emil Müller Case"},"content":{"rendered":"

How appropriate\u2014it\u2019s been four years to the day that I last wrote about any progress<\/a> on the case of my second great-grandfather, Emil M\u00fcller.  Sadly, it\u2019s taken about that long to make much progress, but I have made some major breakthroughs that I thought I\u2019d share.<\/p>\n

Last March, Archives.com<\/a> released a collection of Evangelical Lutheran Church of America records.  To say I was ecstatic would be an understatement, as I knew I wanted to get my hands on those records, knowing the M\u00fcller family attended a church in Chicago that eventually became a part of the ELCA (I also knew that the records were a part of the ELCA archives).  Armed with a seven-day trial, I managed to find some records.  No real breakthroughs at that point, although I uncovered a possible second marriage for Emil (which was confirmed).<\/p>\n

Several months passed, and by August, I decided to set aside some time to do more work on this family by going though all the church records.  So I signed up for a one-month subscription to Archives.com<\/a> and got to work.  I knew the family had been associated with the church through at least three generations (now I know it is actually four), which meant a lot of record browsing.  I went through nearly 100 years of baptisms, marriages, and deaths.  I looked at each entry, concerning myself not only with the M\u00fcller surname (as either primary participants or witnesses) but the surnames of witnesses I found in M\u00fcller events.<\/p>\n

Cluster genealogy is a wonderful thing, and to make a very long story short, by late October, I was able to give Emil a mother and a brother.  Additionally, I learned the whole identity of his mother, thereby giving Emil an uncle and some first cousins.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, back in September 2012, I had identified a potential area in Prussia where Emil came from.  I had it narrowed down to Bromberg, Posen, Prussia.  Bromberg is a city, and \u201ccounty\u201d and a \u201cstate\u201d so who knew what would come of this information.  Another fortunate find was a village name listed in one of his mother\u2019s church records.  The village of Maximilanowo, situated in Bromberg Kreis (county) suggested that Emil was probably from this smaller village.<\/p>\n

Anyway, back in October 2013, I actually found an index entry for him in the Germany Births and Baptisms, 1558-1898<\/a> database at FamilySearch.  No doubt it was him, and I also found an entry for his brother and his mother.  I couldn\u2019t wait until January to walk into the Family History Library and retrieve the records.  <\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know when this family got so easy!  Really, it didn\u2019t, or at least it wouldn\u2019t have, if I hadn\u2019t taken the time to comb through all those church records using the cluster genealogy technique.  And while I did obtain those baptism records and more, I also uncovered some additional information that I was not expecting, but that\u2019s a story for another time.  In the meantime, here are the three baptism records I obtained.<\/p>\n

Emil August M\u00fcller Baptism Record<\/h6>\n

\"MILLER,<\/p>\n

\"MILLER,<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong>  Evangelishcen Gemeine zu Bromberg [Evangelical Congregation of Bromberg] (Bromberg, Bromberg, Posen, Prussia), “Taufen [Baptisms], 1862-1864,” entry no. 1310, p. 486, baptism of Emil August M\u00fcller (1863); FHL microfilm 245,344. <\/p>\n

Entry no. 1310  \/  born 15 December 1863  \/  Legitimate male  \/  born in Bromberg  \/  baptized 27 December 1863  \/  given name, Emil August  \/  Pastor Romberg  \/  father, Friedrich M\u00fcller  \/  mother, Maria Wojan  \/  parents both of the Evangelical faith  \/  father\u2019s occupation, tailor  \/  witnesses:  Gottlieb Wojan, a potter, and Albertina[?] Thiede, a single female.<\/p>\n

Eduard Friedrich M\u00fcller  Baptism Record<\/h6>\n

\"MILLER,<\/p>\n

\"MILLER,<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong>  Evangelishcen Gemeine zu Bromberg [Evangelical Congregation of Bromberg] (Bromberg, Bromberg, Posen, Prussia), “Taufen [Baptisms], 1859-1861,” entry no. 929, p. 405, baptism of Eduard Friedrich M\u00fcller (1860); FHL microfilm 245,343.<\/p>\n

Entry no. 929  \/  born 4 October 1860  \/  Legitimate male  \/  born in Bromberg  \/  baptized 14 October 1860  \/  given name, Eduard Friedrich  \/  Pastor Romberg  \/  father, Friendrich M\u00fcller  \/  mother, Maria Wojan  \/  parents both of the Evangelical faith  \/  father\u2019s occupation, tailor  \/  witnesses:  Ottilie Michaeles[?], a single female, and Johann Lang, [occupation ?].<\/p>\n

Maria Petronella Wojahn Baptism Record<\/h6>\n

\"WOJAHN,<\/p>\n

\"WOJAHN,<\/p>\n

Source:<\/strong>  Evangelishcen Gemeine zu Bromberg [Evangelical Congregation of Bromberg] (Bromberg, Bromberg, Posen, Prussia), “Taufen [Baptisms], 1837-1841,” entry no. 216, p. 41, baptism of Maria Petronella Wojahn (1837); FHL microfilm 245,338.  <\/p>\n

Entry no. 215  \/  born 30 April 1837  \/  Legitimate female  \/  born in Maximilanowo  \/  baptized 15 May 1837  \/  given name, Maria Petronella  \/  Pastor [?]  \/  father, Johann Wojahn  \/  mother, Elisabeth Niemann  \/  parents both of the Evangelical faith  \/  father\u2019s occupation, [?]  \/  witnesses:  Michael Wichmann[?], [occupation ?]; Christian Potratz, ditto; Regine Ristau, [?], Maria Niemann, ditto.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How appropriate\u2014it\u2019s been four years to the day that I last wrote about any progress on the case of my second great-grandfather, Emil M\u00fcller.  Sadly, it\u2019s taken about that long to make much progress, but I have made some major breakthroughs that I thought I\u2019d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,25,26],"tags":[325,417],"class_list":["post-4949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to","category-genblog","category-personal-research","tag-family-muller-miller-prussia","tag-family-wojahn","cat-27-id","cat-25-id","cat-26-id"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3HcLI-1hP","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4949"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4950,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4949\/revisions\/4950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/genealogy.julietarr.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}