Probably all the Matherne families living within the state today can trace ancestry to a single progenitor-Johann Adam Materne, an Alsatian of German heritage, native of the town of Rosenheim, Upper Alsace, now in extreme northeastern France.* Among the earliest settlers in the colony, Johann Adam and his wife Regina Koenig arrived in Louisiana probably in 1721 with other Germans destined for the John Law concession in Arkansas.

Upon failure of that enterprise the Maternes, with most of their Roman Catholic compatriots, were settled by the French authorities in the first German Coast (St. Charles Parish) on the Mississippi above New Orleans.

Of Johann (Jean) Adam Materne's three sons, Jean, Jacques, and Nicolas, the latter appears to have done much more than his brothers to carry on the Matherne name on the lower Mississippi River and elsewhere in Louisiana.

Married to Reine Rommel (Rome) ca. 1759, Nicolas fathered five sons.

Whereas his brothers remained with their smaller families in the German Coast, in 1782 Nicolas sold most of his property in St. Charles Parish and soon thereafter moved upriver to St. James Parish, where he died in 1797.

There, his sons began their families. Sons Jacques (m. ca. 1785 Éléonore Poché), Noël (m. 1789 Charlotte Edelmaire), Pierre (m.

1793 Célestine Fontenot), and Emmanuel (m. ca. 1790 Charlotte Mayer) appear to have remained in St. James.

Son Adam (m. ca. 1788 Marguerite Martin), however, around the turn of the century moved his family to the Attakapas, where his sons Nicolas and Augustine lived near Lafayette and St. Martinville in antebellum days.

Today most of that Matherne line has died out or moved elsewhere.

It remained for the four sons of Jacques Matherne and Éléonore Poché to begin one of the most prolific branches of the family, localized in Lafourche and Terrebonne parishes, which today contain 35 percent of the state's Matherne households. In the 1810s and 1820s all four sons had gone to Bayou Lafourche, living first in Assumption Parish, subsequently moving down bayou.

Son Augustin (m. 1812 Marie-Antoinette Sevin) and his descendants settled along the lower Lafourche between Raceland and Larose; Jacques, Jr. (m. ca. 1819 Marie-Remelie Sevin) obtained land near Thibodeauxville; Mathieu (m. ca. 1818 Suzanne Poché) established a long line of descendants, most of whom settled along Bayou Terrebonne between Houma and Montegut and along Bayou Petit Caillou toward the coastal marshes; other descendants of Mathieu made homes along the lower Lafourche near Raceland, as did the sons and grandsons of his younger brother, Antoine (m. 1824 Céleste Dufrenay).

Little is known about the descendants of the Mathernes who remained in St. James and St. Charles parishes.

According to the U.S. census, Noël and a Paul Matherne lived in St. James during the 1820s,12 and in 1870 probable descendants Octave and Eugène Matherne operated small sugar mills near Convent.

The Mathernes currently living along Bayou des Allemands between the Mississippi and Bayou Lafourche, as well as the 160 households now residing in New Orleans, are probable descendants of the early settlers of the German Coast.

Fully three-fourths of the Matherne families of Louisiana are today clustered in the extreme southeastern part of the state