We have known for some time that Matthias Bruch, who arrived in Philadelphia on the Harle in 1736, had come from the village of Leistadt. He was the third child and second son of Matthes Bruch, a master cooper. But, like many in Leistadt at the time, the elder Matthes was an immigrant to Leistadt, arriving at some point after the village was destroyed in 1689 during the War of the Grand Alliance.
Matthes’s origins have, until recently, been a mystery. There were several Bruch families living in the region at the turn of the 18th Century, but none seemed to have had a Matthes among their number. A few years ago, my father, the late John M. Prugh, found a book that transcribed and translated records of a visitation made by the Deanery of Kusel in 1609 to a small village of Ellweiler, near Birkenfeld near the border between the modern German states of Rheinland-Pfalz and Saarland. In this record, a Thomas Bruch was listed, who was a cooper. Thomas would have been too old to have been Matthes’s father, but it was an intriguing possibility that Matthes came from this family considering that coopering was probably a family trade. In fact, there was a large Bruch population in the region around Ellweiler.
In August of 2019, I was finally able to view the microfilmed original church books of the relevant parishes. There was no birth record of a Matthes Bruch, but, starting in 1676, a Matthes Bruch of Ellweiler starts sponsoring baptisms. He never marries (and he does not die), but he appears once every few years as a baptismal sponsor, last appearing in January of 1696.
Perhaps not coincidentally, the year 1696 was when two prominent immigrants settled in Leistadt; Andreas Neu and Andreas Federkeil. Both men and their families were from the village of Remmesweiler, about a half day’s walk south of Ellweiler. Ellweiler, like Remmesweiler, was part of territory claimed and occupied by the French, so these villages were spared the destruction that other parts of the Palatinate, such as Leistadt, suffered in 1689. These areas were logical sources for immigrants to repopulate and rebuild the devastated villages to the east. Federkeil was a huntsman, and Neu was to become Leistadt’s new innkeeper and Hoffmann. Both men knew Matthes Bruch in Leistadt. So we have a Matthes Bruch, the only known of that name in the right time-frame, living in close proximity to two known Leistadt immigrants, who disappears from the records at the time we would expect him to have left for Leistadt.
A Google search for “Matthes Bruch Ellweiler” found the key piece of evidence that demonstrates that Matthes Bruch of Ellweiler and Matthes Bruch of Leistadt are almost certainly the same person. A local history periodical (in German) published in the town of St. Wendel in 1955 contains a discussion of tax revenue at the turn of the 18th Century in the district of Nohfelden, which included Ellweiler. It cites the fact that revenue was less than expected one year because Matthes Bruch of Ellweiler left “during the French period,” taking only his clothes and cookery with him. He did not sell his property, and he did not pay the necessary taxes to emigrate from the jurisdiction. The “French period” refers to the time when the French claimed and occupied the region. The French occupation ended in 1697.
So we know that Matthes Bruch of Ellweiler left his home village at the same time as two other men in the region left their village for Leistadt. Matthes Bruch must have come from Ellweiler. The evidence is circumstantial, but it is strong; we will likely never find an explicit mention of Matthes’s origin.
Sources: Matthes Bruch can be found as a baptismal sponsor in the church books of the Birkenfeld, Achtelsbach, and Wolfersweiler parishes. You can most easily view the originals in the Rhineland, Prussia, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1533-1950 collection on Ancestry (membership required). Contact me for specifics. The tax discussion that refers to Matthes’s emigration can be found here.
Bruch Family History 