[Ger-Poland-Volhynia] German form of Meychlow

[AlbertMuth at aol.com]

Given something like z Meychlsw, I would have created the spelling
Meichel, myself.

I would rule out a connection with Polish Michal~ or German Michael--
the first two vowels are two dissimilar.  Historically, there might be a
connection

I use a couple of sources to check on possible German names.  Michigan
has a very high percentage of people with German ancestry, so I have been
surrounded by the surnames all my life.  But there are hundreds of names that
I have never seen before, so I like to check the possibilities on a couple of
websites.

The first is the rootsweb/ancestry.com database at
http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi
Here, you will find 20 individuals spelled Meichel, many from Bavaria.

The second one is the SSDI (Social Security Death Index)--with so many
Germans and Poles coming to the USA, you will find a really good
representation
there.  The best URL I can come up with is
http://www.ancestry.com/search/rectype/vital/ssdi/main.htm
but it seems to me that I access this through my university account, which
has paid access to ancestry.com  I cannot vouch that this URL will work
from a normal email account.

al muth