Were they backed up to iCloud?

Let me guess, you didn’t backup to iCloud?

I’m shocked at many people don’t backup to iCloud and then wonder why stuff isn’t on their new phone or disappear when they do a reset.

100%

You cannot merge backups, no. You would’ve needed to transfer them when setting up the phone.

They were not, but I do have the old phone with everything on it, if that changes anything?

[deleted]

I did not, but I do have the old phone with everything on it, if that helps

On the old phone, go to Settings, tap your name, ICloud, iCloud Backup and turn it on and let it back up COMPLETELY. iPhones rarely “freeze”, it’s the user that gets impatient and expects things to happen instantly. And if you have to pay $.99 to get 50Gb of iCloud storage, just do it. Then once it completes go to the new phone, Settings, General, Reset or Transfer and then Erase All Content and Settings. Once it’s done you can either set it up using the quick setup (which has always worked for me) and be patient to let it finish, or restore from iCloud and point it to the backup you just made.

Either way you have to let the phone do it’s thing and download everything. If you don’t have fast Wi-Fi that’ll make it worse. But trust the process and all of your messages will be there when it finishes