This site is a collation of descendants of Martin Mechling of Alsace, France.

Since we have no ancestors or collateral relations of his wife, Margretha Daeffler, that descent is recorded here as well.

The information comes from various Mechling descendants, both in my line and others, but much of the credit goes to Dorothy Mercy in her compilations of Mechling descendants. Special credit should also go to Roland Stoll who, just recently, was able to move the genealogy back in time by two generations.

Until he sent his information, the genealogy stopped at the brothers Theobald and Jacob Mechling and there were questions about their origin. They were listed as Palatines aboard the ship that brought them, and one theory was that they were from the area around St. Goar between Mainz and Koblenz. However, the term "palatine" was not always applied strictly. The ships carrying them to the New World often simply listed all German-speaking Protestants as "palatines", and another theory — based upon how Theobald named his properties in Pennsylvania — was the Mechling brothers were from the state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania in northeastern Germany.

However, Roland Stoll and Rémy Maechling knew there was also a Mechling family in Alsace, France stretching back to 1492 and tried to find a link. Alsace (German Elsaß) had been part of the Holy Roman Empire until the middle of the 17th century when its various pieces were sold to or conquered by France. Its inhabitants spoke a dialect of German and, like the Lower Palatinate, this area had been hit extremely hard by the Thirty Years War. So, when large numbers of emigrants travelled down the Rhine to Rotterdam to seek a new home, Alsatians were often termed palatines.

In 2014, Roland found documents that tied the Alsatian family to Theobald (Diebold) and Jacob. These documents showed their origin as the town of Hœrdt in the Alsace and linked them back through their father, also Diebold Mechling, to their grandfather, Martin.

On Rigobert Bonne's 1771 map of that region, we see Hœrdt (spelled Hoert) just about due north of Strasbourg, a distance of maybe seven miles. The family later moved to Hohwiller, which is in the commune of Soultz-sous-Forêts, which can be seen (spelled Sultz) fifteen or so miles north-northeast of Hœrdt.