Proof

What an odd word that is--to prove something is to "show proof", and in this instance, it takes the form of two obituaries. Anton Hesch died in 1911, Mathias Hesch died in 1931, and their obits give us Where They Were From in Bohemia.

(I found these in the HESCH folder at the Weyerhauser).

Here's Antons obit, from the Pierz Journal, 2 November 1911:

..."the village of Niedermuhl, Kreis of Budweis, Bohemia". Niedermuhl is the next village north of Oberschlagles--less than a mile--and they were living in Oberschlagles #2 when he was born. He may have remembered Niedermuhl better, we don't know.

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And, here's the obituary of his brother Mathias, from the Pierz Journal on 15 January 1931:

Neuhaus was the nearest "big town", but still within 5 miles of Oberschlagles. It would be like saying we were "from St Cloud". Neuhaus was on the map and perhaps Oberschlagles wasn't.

Clickable

With this information, we looked for a village called Niedermuhl on JEWISH GEN, a listing of villages and towns in Eastern Europe. There are MANY Niedermuhls there, but only one that was near Neuhaus. THIS had to be it, and it proved to be when we looked at the Church Records of the parishes of Horni Pena and Jindrichuv Hradec (Neuhaus). See?

Up to this point, we didn't KNOW if Paul was a brother of Mathias and Anton, but according to the record books, they all had the same parents, and we found that Paul was actually 2 years older than he claimed to be once he got here.

Pretty darn COOL!