One night while researching various family trees my brother discovered an Ancestry user with a detailed tree for the Mullers reaching back over 200 years. The tree was like a godsend when our search needed it. This tree even had a twist involving a family with a different name, but clearly still a Muller. While the last name was not the same, he was a direct descendent of Joseph Muller, the younger brother of George.
As we all know, sometimes life leads to hard decisions. This Ancestry user’s grandfather and grandmother weren’t in a position to have children in their youth. Today this is no big deal, but at the time the stigma and shame were devastating both to child and parent. As often happens, this child ended up being adopted by his maternal aunt. In my own family, circumstances generated a similar situation for the child of a cousin.
Whether motivated by this adoption or driven by a sense of wonder at discovering ancestral roots, the great-grand child of Joseph Muller (Ray) assembled an impressive family tree complete with siblings, village names, and copies of his father’s adoption papers explaining the saga. Thanks to his dedication our research opened wide.
It wasn’t until we got stuck again in late April that I reached out to him via Ancestry and asked for more information. At this stage we still struggled with the lack of details on where Charles went and why he seemed to disappear. Thanks to Ray’s hard work we had additional details on his branch, but since his father was adopted he didn’t have much to add from a personal knowledge.
When at last we’d exhausted our resources, fleshed out our tree, and discovered the sordid details surrounding Charles’ downfall, we hit rock bottom. Apart from this journey to New Orleans there was little chance of finding definitive proof that Charles became Clyde. Clyde was careful to leave no trace of his family behind, no names, no documents, and no photos. Without a paper trail or distant cousin to fill in the gaps we were left with a fascinating story that, while plausible, could not be corroborated.
Then it dawned on us we did have a way. The very same DNA test that began our quest could be used to discover the truth. I hemmed and hawed over asking, explored every alternative including finding other Mullers, but none of them produced the proof we needed. With no other alternatives we reached out to Ray and asked him the hard one. If we paid for his test would he submit a sample to Ancestry. His generosity in agreeing to the test became a beacon of hope.
As we watched the pristine white sands of the Gulf give way to the rolling swamp land of Louisiana we received a text from my wife. The kit was delivered safely and Snapper and I felt a surge of hope. In three or four weeks we’d know for sure. Buoyed by this news we cranked Pandora louder and sang 80’s pop tunes as bridge after bridge stretched out before us. Soon the New Orleans skyline came into view and its dingy, moist causeways snaked out in all directions. Finding the hotel proved easy and by the end of the day we were stretched out on our beds, relieved to be at our destination.
The Hotel Modern sits on St. Charles in New Orleans, right on the streetcar line. The reviews of the hotel warn you about the noise, but to be honest I found it comforting. There’s a scene in the Blues Brothers where Jake asks Elwood how often the train goes by, raising his voice above the din. “So often you don’t even notice it.”
For us you heard the beast coming as it rounded Lee Circle, a monument to Robert E. Lee. I wondered if that was the sound a tornado makes as it bears down upon you. Sometime after 5 AM each morning we’d wake to the rumble, the sound washing over you for a few seconds before your brain could put a word to it. I guess the locals didn’t have this problem, being as used to it as I was of the jets flying overhead at home. Living in the landing pattern of a municipal airport, the thought lingering in the back of your mind over the possibility that sound was a tragedy about to unfold, had to be something akin to this. One thing I learned years ago about staying in downtown New Orleans is you’re fine as long as your room is higher than 8 floors. It takes that many to rise above the smoldering beauty and madness that is New Orleans.
As with most city hotels, parking isn’t free and if you desire peace of mind you pay to park it where the hotel controls access. My aging van weakly offered to accept a spot in a lot two blocks away, but was clearly happier when I agreed to pay for her own spot at the hotel. The parrot in the lobby, Scarlet, greeted us to my brother’s delight.
“That’s so cool you have a parrot,” he told the desk.
The man looked up from running my card and beamed, “Would you like to hold her?” And just like that Snapper had a parrot on his arm while I got the room keys.
That’s how it is in New Orleans. I’ve been there twice before and each time marveled at the beauty and despair that is the Big Easy. It’s like the Vegas of the East with paid and voluntary debauchery. Open carry laws that have nothing to do with guns and everything to do with having a good time allow visitors and locals the ability to sink as low or rise as high as they wish. Everything can be within walking distance in the Crescent City if you choose so we struck out in search of food.
When we booked the hotel in May we didn’t know the area surrounding the hotel was actually the stomping grounds of Charles in his youth. He attended Soule College located near Lafayette Square, an important detail we learned. Clyde obviously possessed an education, even demonstrating a knowledge of accounting techniques as he managed his customers. Charles also had an accounting background, but until we found his graduation announcement for Soule we didn’t know how. In 1921 he even became a teacher for them, but he continued working for Cumberland Telephone & Telegraph around the corner where he eventually met Mathilda, the woman he married a year later.
An arrest account for him in 1919 listed his home in the same area on St. Charles. He’d been arrested for stealing coffee from a steamer ship, though he claims he and his cohorts who worked for a security firm had liberated it from another man. For a long time we doubted this was him, but one thing Charles always did was use his middle initial. But his home address listed on St. Charles, which I initially dismissed since his family lived on Magazine Street, turned out to be to be close to his school and jobs. The St. Charles area, located in the financial district, made perfect sense.
We spent most of the day in the New Orleans library looking for a clear wedding shot of Charles and Mathilda. We found the newspaper with the portrait and it was much clearer, but nothing more about him aside from a tidbit or two about his trial. We did, however, discover at long last who his maternal grandmother was, a secondary mystery. For so long she was just a name and her ancestors were lost to time. Because her father died a few months after she was born the record goes cold. In the 1840’s women were counted but often times not listed unless in a legal document.
The library had the marriage certificate on file for Elizabeth Legier, Charles’ grandmother and Honorine’s mother. Armed with the knowledge of who Elizabeth Legier’s father and mother were, we could finally guess how Honorine’s mother met her father. Elizabeth’s mother, Mary Catharine Bonnaly, remarried after the death of her first husband, Maurice Legier. The step-father, Ambrose Jannet, owned a bakery which eventually employed Honoré Moreau. The document indicates Honoré marries an underage Elizabeth Legier. Local directories show he eventually takes over the bakery. They have several children, one of which is Honorine Moreau.
In the late 1800’s George Muller opens a meat market close by; we can only assume he must have walked past the bakery on his way to work each day. How he meets and courts Honorine we don’t know. But by 1884 they were married and by 1892 were living in Bay St. Louis with Honore and Elizabeth.
With nothing more to learn that day we headed out into the French Quarter and spent the rest of the day sampling the food and fun of New Orleans. You can’t work all day in the city on the river without enjoying some part of it. We wore down our soles and filled our bellies, ducking in and out of shops until it was time to get some sleep. Shuffling back to our room, exhausted but satisfied, we wrote notes and compared theories. Tomorrow would bring a cemetery search and a drive home.
That night we slept like babes who’d come home at last from the hospital.