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THE MATTICE and / or MATTIAC FAMILY

came in for special mention by the ancient historian, because they were right on the frontier of the Roman Empire, directly across the river from a Roman outpost. They were not hostile to the Roman garrisons as so many other tribes were.

This would enable a tolerable surmise that the tribe stayed undisturbed for centuries, during Roman times. The surmise isn't so easy as to how they remained there throughout the Dark Ages without participating in the migrations of German tribes generally--but we must recall that on the Rhine there were no such pressures as the German tribes on the Slav front were under, (today they call it "iron Curtain, ") but that frontice and that pressure is ages old. So it was that the migrating tribes came on from the East and from the Baltic regions, as any historical atlas will show. Thus the Mattiaci, being an old settled community, with cultivated fields, some commerce, etc., like the near-by Helvetans and Trevei were by-passed and didn't go moving about.

All of the above shows that a certain gens, the Mattiaci were identified with a certain locality, and must have been, at that time the dominant folk there-abouts, else they would, not have attracted notice of the Romans. While it conveys no distinction, it is interesting to know that the family name was known to the Romans, and is proof of the definite, point of origin twenty centuries ago. The spelling and locality, taken together are too precise to be dismissed as romance--yet there is no intervening evidence, during the period after Roman times to give needed continuity. (*) All we are certain of besides is that the migrations from that very region, at the time of the French invasions in the late 17th century, down into the low Gounttieri:--did include the forebearers of the Matrices that later settled in Schoharie. Yet there is the problem of the family name, with its variant spellings, but not of that alone can too much be built up, there is enough in it to make talk about, :and there is at least as much ground as most families have of their Antiquity.


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