First things first: Happy Birthday, Mom!!! xoxo
Some time ago I wrote about Mom’s grandmother, Clara Waldeck Mulder, and her family in “I Uncovered a Stunning Clue in My Search.” I explained that I had had difficulty discovering any information about Clara’s mother. Her name was Alvena, and I had a photo with her in it, but her last name seemed to lead to a dead-end–as they say in specific genealogy jargon, I’d hit a brick wall. Heh.
My mitochondrial DNA comes to me from her: Alvena to Clara to my grandmother Edna to my mother (who turns XX years old today) to me.
Alvena married Gottfried (Godfrey) Waldeck, and they had perhaps ten children. Clara was the youngest. Eventually I found that Alvena’s maiden name was Noffke, and I discovered on Ancestry that there are lots of descendents of Alvena and Godfrey throughout southern Michigan.
I have made contact with two people who share this ancestry. The female relative and I have DNA hits on both Ancestry and 23andme. She is from this Waldeck/Noffke branch. I also “met” a man with the last name Noffke and we are actually related in the same way, except that his dad was adopted so when he takes the DNA test, his results won’t help us narrow in on anything.
When I found the female relative, she gave me a copy of the minutes from years of family reunions. This report documents births, deaths, etc. I felt at that time that I was closer to finding out more about the Noffkes and to discovering where the Waldecks and the Noffkes came from.
We’ve always been told they were from Germany, although some documents I’ve read online say “Prussia.”
Germany at the time that Alvena’s parents were born
But what now?
The concept of “Germany” could mean different things to different people in the 19th century, when the family emigrated. My 23andme report shows that I have at least one Polish gene. Could it be from that branch of the family?
How can I locate the area of Europe, even the town or village, that my ancestors came from?
I do have the names of Alvena’s parents. They are Ludwig (Louis) and Dora Couch. Couch doesn’t sound like a German name to me. It seems to be an English name. But where could that come from?
Brick walls are crazy-making.
The Family Kalamazoo 
I assume you have the Ancestry account that includes Europe. What you want to try to find are documents which show locations such as birth, marriage and death. Also look at military records. Unfortunately, these may be in foreign languages…not so good if you don’t speak the language.
You are right, Germany was listed as place of origin for many countries. I have searched through family trees to get connections but there are a lot of pitfalls in doing that. The biggest being that some people automatically add people to their tree who are not really connected. I try to choose people who have a high number of documents attached to them but even this can be misleading. A person could have 9 documents attached to their tree but if you actually look at their documents, they are all someone else’s family tree. Look for people who have birth, death, marriage, referenced work such as books, news articles and pictures. There are many thorough genealogists out there who have accumulated a wealth of information. You will be looking for them.
I don’t advise adding anyone to your own tree unless you can confirm a connection. It’s a lot of tedious work fixing a tree that has a lot of wrong information on it. Good luck. Feel free to ask more questions if needed.
I’m always surprised that Germany wasn’t unified for much of the 1800s. I haven’t done much research on my ancestors that goes back to Europe, but whenever I do I almost immediately need an old map to figure out where places like Palatinate were.
Exactly! Do you have ancestors from the Rhineland-Palatinate, too? Yes, it’s all very odd to think of Germany not having been, well, Germany for that long!
My Lenderink ancestors immigrated from Uelsen, Germany and are listed that way in records here. However, I discovered they were really from the Netherlands, just moved to Uelsen from Denekamp, Overijssel, Netherlands, a move of just a few miles. Anyway, point is you might find your family listed in the new Dutch system that has replaced Genlais, https://www.wiewaswie.nl/. Maybe you are already working with it. I worked it this morning and was able to obtain a copy of the marriage document for our common ancestor Adriaantje Pieters Nieuwsma & Aldert VanderPloeg. I’ll email a copy to you.