Matthias and wife Maria Barbara baptized two children at Gau Heppenheim after 1709 (when the records begin). The timing suggests she maybe was a second wife for Matthias and maybe wasn’t the mother of Martin or Bernhard.

I first encountered Matthias’ name in a document someone copied at the Maintz (Germany) Archives. The document is what a genealogist would call “secondary research”. It looks factual but no real sources were identified.

I have encountered too many other instances over the years with similar documents that look authoritative at first but later prove to be totally erroneous -- so I have learned to be a skeptic.

But since the Archives document had a lot of exact birth dates -- the kind you would find in church records -- and since the events took place supposedly in Gau Heppenheim, Germany, I decided to see if I could find the actual church records that might verify this document. I was lucky that the LDS church, among its extensive collection of microfilms of church records from around the world, had exactly what I was looking for.

And I can say that the key findings of interest to me -- that Matthias was the father of Bernhard and Martin, that Bernhard had sons named John and Adam and Martin had a son named Anton -- the names of the three Hamscher immigrants to Pennsylvania whose birth dates correspond to the ages we had deduced about these men from American records -- that I now feel everything in the Archives document has wonderful credibility.

I believe I can now say it is proven that we descend from Matthias Hambscher who lived in Gau Heppenheim, Germany around the year 1700. It is always nice to figure out exactly where in Europe any ancestors lived -- though it is hard to do that in most cases with any confidence -- but in this case, I believe I can name the place.

I have not verified every fact found in the Archives document, but most are proven by things I found in the church records. So I am willing to assume the author of the document had sources for his other facts as well.