Where was John Nicholas Graham born?

I recently received a message online from a Graham family relative.  She is my second cousin twice removed, the granddaughter of Harry August "Gus" Graham, who was the brother of my 2nd great grandfather John George Graham.  So we are both descendants of John Nicholas Graham & Frances America Clarkson (my 3rd great grandparents & her great grandparents).

This cousin had come across my genealogy blog posts about our Graham ancestors and sent me a message.  She shared some memories of the family, and she also mentioned that she was confused that my blog mentioned that John Nicholas Graham was from Germany, since she always thought he was of Scottish decent.

That got me thinking about where our Graham ancestors came from -- we have a number of ideas, including Germany and Scotland, but no definitive information about where John Nicholas or his parents were born.  It's been several years since I did any real research on this part of the family, so I hopped on my computer and took a look at my genealogy database and my sources to refresh my memory.  It looks like a puzzle that we definitely need to revisit.  Anyway, I wrote down notes about the information that I currently have about the birthplaces of John Nicholas and his parents, to organize my thoughts about the little that we do know about it at this time.  So I thought I'd share it here:

There has always been confusion about where John Nicholas Graham came from — I’ve heard that he was born in Germany or in New York. But I’ve also heard that his father was born in Scotland and his mother in either Germany or Pennsylvania. And  I don’t have any great original sources for any of their birth locations — mostly just US census records, handwritten notes I found in my grandparents’ family papers, emails from my grandpa’s cousin, etc. And his death certificate lists his birthplace just as “U.S.”  I just went back to take a look at my sources for his birth:

From the census records when John Nicholas Graham was alive, his birthplace was listed as New York — and the 1870 census also says that his parents were of foreign birth.  His family happened to be enumerated twice in the 1880 census, and on both of those it says his father was born in Scotland, and one of them says his mother was born in Germany and the other one says his mother was born in Pennsylvania.  And then there are lots of later census records of his children that list their father’s birthplace — out of the ones I have found for his children, 4 say he was born in New York, and 6 say he was born in Germany — and many of those say that his “mother tongue” was German.  

There was a handwritten note from my grandparents' family papers that says he was born in Scotland, then went to New York, then to Missouri.  But there’s also another handwritten note saying he was born in Seigelhoffen, Germany. And another one that says he was born in New York. So none of those are especially helpful (except to give a possible German town to do more searching in, although I haven’t had any luck there yet either). 

My assumption, from all the census records, is that he probably was born in New York after his parents immigrated to the US.  I would guess that his father was Scottish and his mother was either German, or born in Pennsylvania of German descent, and that they either spoke German in the home or at least had a strong enough German accent that his children later listed that as his native language. But there’s definitely a lot more research needed on this!