On May 9th back in 2016, the first year of this blog, I wrote a short post about today’s birthday boy titled, A to Z – Amalia to Zacharias. My first thought was to just re-publish that story for today, but I thought that the story of Zacharias Mueller was too important to have just the few paragraphs that made up that article. Now, today is not only his birthday again, but this time it is his 200th birthday, so I am going to provide a few more details about the man who has been mentioned in so many other stories about his descendants that have been written on this blog.

Zacharias Mueller…Müller…was born on May 9, 1825 in Paitzdorf, Germany. He was the son of Gottfried and Maria (Rothe) Müller. We have some records in our research library from the parish in Paitzdorf, and I did attempt to find the baptism record for Zacharias, but I failed. Many of the records that we have for that parish are death records, and the smaller portion of records that we have just include baptism records prior to 1800, so it looks like we do not have the portion of that congregation’s records that would include the baptism record for Zacharias.

When Zacharias was about 14 years old, his Mueller family boarded the ship, Johann Georg, to make the voyage to America. That ship had already dropped off passengers in New Orleans in January of 1839, but then returned to Germany and brought back another load of passengers that arrived in New Orleans in November of that same year. Zacharias and his family were on the ship when it made its second voyage. The passengers on that ship are the ones we call the Gruber Group. We can see Zacharias’s name on the passenger list below. There were 4 sons and 2 daughters on this list, along with Maria Mueller’s mother, Rosine Rothe.

We find the Gottfried Mueller family in the 1840 census living in Perry County. The numbers on the left list the male members of the family, which would include the father and 4 sons, while the numbers on the right list the 3 females, the mother and 2 daughters. Those numbers correspond with the persons on the passenger list.

Zacaharias is found in the 1850 census at the age of 25. It looks like he may be living with a brother named Christian Mueller, but that is not the case. Christian Mueller was a member of a different Mueller clan that came to America with the Gesellschaft in 1839. We often call that group of Mueller’s the “Ziegel Mueller’s” because ziegel means brick maker in German. You can see that Christian is called a brick maker in this entry. Zacharias is called a peddler.

On the map shown below drawn by the dentist, Dr. Edward Lottes, we see the brickyards located near the property where the Log Cabin College was built. I think this is likely where Zacharias was living in 1850. It is the early community that was called Dresden.

Now, we will turn our attention to the woman who would become Zacharias’s bride. Her name was Amelia Christiane Caroline Wilhelmine Palisch, who was born on March 12, 1830 in Lobau, Germany. Amelia was the daughter of Johann Gottlob and Johanna (Kaempfe) Palisch. The Palisch family also made the voyage from Germany to America in 1839 aboard the Johann Georg, but they were on that ship when it arrived in New Orleans in January of that year. The Palisch family can be seen on the passenger list pictured here. Amelia would be the 8 year-old on this list.

The Palisch family is found in the 1840 census for Perry County.

Amelia Palish got married twice. Her first husband was Frederick Hiller. These two were married on September 27, 1849. There is no church marriage record for this event, and the Perry County document shown below says that the wedding was performed by Rev. Carl Gruber, who was the pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Uniontown. Rev. Gotthold Loeber, the pastor of Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg, had died in August of 1849, so that congregation was vacant. The document below says Rev. Gruber did a few weddings at the Altenburg and Frohna churches, which had both been served by Rev. Loeber. Rev. Gruber apparently did not get to enter Amelia and Frederick’s marriage record in any church books.

As near as I can tell, this Hiller/Palisch marriage was a disaster. Already in 1850, when that year’s census was taken, we find Amelia Hiller living with her parents, and Fred Hiller is not to be found. Amelia was 19 years old at the time.

I was able to find a few court records from Perry County that dealt with this Hiller/Palisch marriage. I found those documents very difficult to read. I will not dwell on this horrible situation, but it looks as if this couple became officially divorced in 1852. I can tell you that Fred Hiller was a medical doctor and would later be found living in California with a wife and children.

On December 4, 1853, Zacharias Mueller married Amelia (Palisch) Hiller in St. Louis. Perhaps the controversy revolving around the Hiller/Palisch situation led this couple to go to St. Louis to have their wedding. Perhaps another reason for this was that the Lutheran pastor in Altenburg was not willing to marry this pair during the Advent season. A St. Louis marriage record is pictured below. Let me also point out that, since Mueller is pronounced as miller around here, Amelia had two husbands, a Hiller and a Mueller (miller).

According to our German Family Tree, Zacharias and Amelia had 10 children, all of whom were baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church in Altenburg. That is no small deal. Amelia’s Palisch family went with Pastor Schieferdecker when he was expelled from Trinity in 1857 and started Immanuel Lutheran Church on the other side of town. The Mueller’s, on the other hand, remained at Trinity. When the 1860 census was taken, we find the Mueller household with 3 children. Zacharias was a merchant in Altenburg.

I am able to display these two images of Zacharias and Amelia. Both of them look like what I might call photograph/drawings.

I also located this photo of the Zacharias Mueller family.

Next, we find the Mueller’s in the 1870 census with 7 children. Zacharias was called a retail dry goods merchant.

We are able to view Zacharias in one more census. He is found in the Missouri state census that was taken in 1876.

Zacharias did not make it to be listed in the next census in 1880. He died in 1879 at the age of 53. His death record in the books of Trinity, Altenburg says that he died of pneumonia. That left Amelia as a widow. We find her and her family in the 1880 census in which it says she was merchandising. It looks as if she was still trying to operate the Mueller Store. I will add that one of their sons, Joseph Mueller, is not found still living with his mother in this census. He had gotten married and was operating another Mueller Store that was located in Wittenberg by this time.

Amelia was still living 20 years later when we can next view an entry in the 1900 census. She is called the head of the household at the age of 70. Her son, Anton Mueller, was a farmer with several children by this time. So Grandma Amelia got the opportunity to live with quite a few of her grandchildren.

Amelia Mueller died in 1909 at the age of 79. Her church death record says that she died of old age. Both Zacharias and Amelia Mueller are buried in the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Altenburg. Zacharias has an old gravestone along with a more modern stone which is much easier to read. Zacharias’s original gravestone is easy to pick out when you drive by this cemetery because it stick out above all the rest of the gravestones.

The descendants of Zacharias and Amelia Mueller take up numerous pages in our German Family Tree because not only did this couple have quite a few sons, but those sons also had sons to carry on the Mueller name. I know that there are still quite a few descendants from this Mueller couple still living in Altenburg and attending Trinity Lutheran Church.

I want to discuss one more fact that shows a connection between this Mueller family and my Schmidt family. Take a look at the 1870 census entry once again that also includes my great-grandfather, Gottwerth Schmidt. The Mueller’s and Schmidt’s lived near one another in Altenburg. They also each were called retail dry goods merchants. I know that the Schmidt Store was located right next to his house on the east side of Altenburg near the cemetery. If the Mueller Store was located on the Mueller property also, then these two stores may have been both located on the east side of Altenburg and rather close to one another. I have to think that the Mueller’s and the Schmidt’s must have been business competitors. If they were, that does not mean that they were enemies. I know they occupied pews in the same church on Sunday mornings. And I know that there is no animosity between the Mueller’s and Schmidt’s nowadays.