Claire Lincoln of Durham, N.C., a descendant of Matthias Lampman, was asked to help with the effort to discover what we could about Matthias Lampman and his wife. Claire suggested she contact the Ancaster Historical Society to inquire about any information thay might have about Matthias Lampman.

The Ancaster Historical Society informed Claire that all the files created by the original writers of its book are now stored in the Fieldcote Museum in Ancaster, Ont. but they did send the following note:

“Matthias Lampman, born November 4th, 1761 in New York State. the sixth son of Frederick and Catharine. He came to Canada with his father in 1784 and was a Loyalist in his own right. He stayed with his father until his marriage to Eve Bowman, daughter of Jacob Bowman, also a Loyalist.”

There were no sources offered for the assertions in this note but if it is true, we see that it dates the Matthias Lampman marriage to the time when he was still living with his father.

Mrs. Lincoln contacted a local researcher, Lynne Kerr, in Ancaster to assist further. Her attempt to locate a source for the Lampman-Bowman marriage were summarized in an e-mail to Mrs. Lincoln from Ms. Kerr on 19 June 2009:

“Yesterday I went to Fieldcote and actually there were three of us working for you. They have a lot of Lampman stuff but there is really only that one little paper you have already seen about Matthias...seriously he seems to be an enigma. There is an indication of a marriage record in an appendix but when you go to the appendix there is not a single marriage record for anybody!!!!”

The earliest mention found to date of a Lampman-Bowman marriage appears in the Grimsby (Ont.) Historical Society book of 1954 entitled “Annals of the Forty” (cover). It states (pg. 6):

“Matthias (Lampman), born 1761, d. 1830, married Eve Bowman and settled in Ancaster.”

There is no mention of a marriage date nor of the ancestry of Eve Bowman in this publication. When contacted, the Grimsby Historical Society could offer no source for this assertion.

The two earliest sources for information about Matthias Lampman’s marriage agree on two things:

1. Matthias Lampman married someone named Eve Bowman.
2. The marriage occurred before Matthias left his father and went to Ancaster.

Even though there is no substantiation offered for these assertions, later authors adopted and  built on them to create an elaborate family story.

There has been no reliable source discovered that can substantiate the marriage of Matthias Lampman.