When researching the Guthmiller family name you will soon learn that there are several spelling variations. Most of this is the need to deal with the umlaut that exists in German but not in English. The most common spelling of the name in USA records is Guthmiller but you will also occasionally find it spelled Guthmueller or Guthmuller. Of course there are also many misspelling variations such as Goodmiller. Good miller is the literal English translation for the name.

The other thing that you will learn about is German naming traditions. During the period before the Guthmillers left Germany and for a while after leaving Germany it was very common for all the boys or almost all of the to have the same first name. This obviously would not work in day to day life except for the fact that they had different middle names that they went by.

Another practice that was common was that if an older child died at birth or while he was young the next child of the same gender would be given the same name. And last the list of acceptable given names was very small. Numerous fathers, sons, cousins, uncles and aunts would end up with the same first, last and middle names. I’m sure they figured out ways to deal with this in day to day life but it sure does not make it easy when you are doing research.

There may be a few Guthmillers that came directly to the USA from France and Germany but I believe that about 99% of the Guthmiller descendants in the USA came from German Colonies on South Russia (Ukraine).

As best I can I will try to lay out the linage of these descendants. My primary reference source is a book that Loranne (Guthmiller) Asmus put together about 20 years ago.