Vera,
I completely agree about the unproven information on those family trees and that some of it is nonsense. That's why I've been searching for primary source or good secondary source documentation. My background is library science, research, and records management, so, to me, documentation is very important to substantiate the information. I admit that it's challenging looking at church book records written in languages I don't know with the 18th century script, and (frankly) often bad handwriting , but the names and dates are usually recognizable.
Thank you again for your help. I have been trying to find out where Pastor Henzen served in between his tenures as Alcheriede and Fischbeck. I had come across the Hannover Parish History earlier and found the pastor list at the Alcheriede page listing him as serving from 1718 -1731. The title page of the Fischbeck church book (1677-1777) lists Pastor Henzen as serving there for 10 years or from 1738-1748. So, I really appreciate learning where he served from 1731 to 1738. I might now be able to find his youngest daughter's birth record, probably in 1736 (Maria was confirmed in 1750, as noted by her brother Daniel in the Fischbeck church record).
I'm still on the search for a documented connection between Johan Wilhelm and Pastor Hentzen because that's the connection between my mother's family line and the Hentzen family line. His 1750 marriage record to Mette Magdalene Asmussen at Gelting, Schleswig, doesn't list his father either. I haven't found his second marriage record to Mette Christiansdatter yet, although that might be in the Danish records. Wilhelm re-married in his early 60s and had a second family of six children in Denmark. It's the names of his children that indicate a connection: Heinrich Hieronymus, Friedrich Christian, Daniel Christian, Elsabeth Magdalene, Jens Christian, and Sophia Maria. However, I'd still like to find some written documentation backing up the connection.
My mother's family did a lot of genealogical research but never traced this line past Johan Wilhelm Hentzen probably because they could not find any more records for him in Denmark, not having access at the time to the Danish censuses. My mother's line is Danish/Swedish (or so they thought) while my father was a first generation German (his parents immigrated as children with their respective families in the mid-1890s from Poznan and Volynia. Although I've traced the Poznan records as far back as I can go online, I don't know where the families came from in Germany originally or when they left as colonists.).
I hope that you don't mind my going on about my research and family. If you do, let me know and I'll stop. I just find genealogical research and the resulting stories so interesting.
Thanks again,
Dori