The Meuer Descendants

Researching the Meuer and Reckenthaler Families in the Montabaur, Germany area.
Margaret T. O'Connell, Bob Meuer & Mary Ann Raynoha from Madison, WI
Vicky Nadler & Lynn Litchfield from Dodgeville, WI
Ruth L. Huff from Bloomington, ID & Kathy Becker Barr from Indianapolis, ID
Guido Feig from Montabaur, Germany
Michael Meuer from North Aurora, IL , Walter Schmidt from Fond-du Lac, WI, William Meuer from Winnetka, IL,
Ed Rosenthal from Lake Zurich, IL

An alle Mitglieder der Meuer Familie,
mein Name ist Ed Rosenthal. Ich selbst bin ein Nachkomme der Meuer Familie und interessiere mich sehr fuer die Geshichte meiner Vorfahren. Ich waere daher sehr dankbar fuer Hinweise und Informationen aus Ihrer Familiengeschichte. Meine Vorfahren kamen aus dem heutigen Gebiet von Montabaur und wanderten ca. 1848 nach Amerika aus. Ich hoffe sehr, auf diesem Weg mehr ueber die Geschichte meiner Familie zu erfahren. Ich gehoere einer Gruppe von interessierten Ahnenforschern (aus Dodgeville, Wisconsin; Madison, Wisconsin; Chicago und Indianapolis) an, und wir arbeiten bereits seit 20 Jahren an der Aufdeckung der Familiengeschichte der Meuers.

Immigrants came to state mostly by chance Timing, cheap land made Wisconsin most German state in U.S. By Tom Heinen of the Journal Sentinel staff May 19, 1996

The first big wave of German immigration to America happened to hit when the frontier and the corresponding sale of federal land at only $1.25 an acre had reached Wisconsin and other parts of the Midwest. "It was pure chance," said Henry Geitz, director of the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. John Gurda, a locally prominent historian who is writing a book about the Milwaukee area's history, agreed. "Wisconsin's wooded areas reminded them of home," Gurda said. "It may have played a very small role in making them feel good about their purchase. But the fact is, if German immigration had peaked in the early 1800s they would have settled in New York state, and if it had peaked in the early 1900s they might have settled in Oregon." Although many middle-class German tradesmen, shopkeepers and professionals settled in Milwaukee whose Great Lakes port was an early gateway to the frontier German-speaking people seeking farmland spread across much of the state in dominant numbers from the mid to late 1800s. That's why Wisconsin now is the most German state in the nation, with 54% of its residents claiming some German ancestry in the 1990 census. In Milwaukee, 34% of all city residents and 53% of white residents claimed German ancestry. So did a combined 48% of all people living in Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha counties. "I ran that against St. Louis and Cincinnati, both city and metro, and we're off the charts," Gurda said of the two other cities most often cited as centers for German immigration. "You can say proportionately we are still the most German big city in the country without any fear of being challenged."

The census also showed that, even in 1990, more foreign-born Wisconsinites came from Germany than any other country, and more Milwaukeeans still spoke German at home than any language other than English or Spanish. Thus, it was no accident that the first kindergarten in the United States was established in Watertown in 1856, or that Milwaukee had the only German-speaking Catholic bishop in the United States in 1844. Although some accounts differ, former Milwaukee Mayor Frank Zeidler says the first German settler arrived in Milwaukee in 1835, the same year that the federal government began opening land in southeastern Wisconsin to settlement. The first large group arrived in the city in 1839 a few hundred Old Lutherans who had resisted the Prussian kaiser when he pressured various Protestant churches to unite under the Reformed banner. They kept moving to what is now the Freistadt area of Mequon.