A few weeks ago I came across a Reiff in my ancestral line. That was one I had not traced before and of course my nose itched to learn more. This week I pieced together information I had from various reliable sources and now have the line back to Hans Ryff who was born about 1528 in Switzerland.
Hans Ryffe and several generations after him lived at Wadenswil, Switzerland, which is the same area in which my Weaver ancestors lived. Hans Heinrich Ryff (known as Heinrich), who was born in 1622, was the first generation known to be Anabaptist. In January 1673, Heinrich, now 51 years of age, "secretly left the village" and escaped with his family to the Palatinate, Germany, where by 1680, he was living in the Ibersheim area. This is the same village in Germany where the Stauffers. The spelling of the surname was changed from Ryff to Reiff in Germany.
Abraham Reiff (grandson of Heinrich), who was born in Ibersheim about 1696, immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1719. He first lived in Montgomery County but then moved on to Chester County and finally to Lancaster County where he died in Upper Leacock Township.
After three generations of Abrahams, my line follows a daughter, Anna Reiff, who married Christian Horst. In the next generation the name became Nolt, and two generations later it changed again to Burkholder.
I am in the 15th generation descended from Hans Ryff in Switzerland, making this one of the longest lines I have worked out in my genealogy. I am in the 16th generation of Stauffers and 22nd generation of Baumans. Most of my other lines I have traced are at least ten or twelve generations. That is why it is so frustrating for me to be able to go back only seven generations in my Powell line. That tiny bit of English in me is proving much more difficult to document than the dozen Swiss/German lines I have traced. On the other hand, some of the things I have found about the Powells make me wonder if I really want to know more about them. They certainly are more colorful than my steady, stolid Swiss/German ancestors!
2 comments:
Hi. While working with my Dad on the North Dakota family album I became entranced researching 'our line'. I followed (your) Anna's brother Abraham,his son David, his son Samuel, his son Joseph, his son Maurice, his son, Randall (my Grandpa), his son Eugene-my Dad. We live in Mich. Somewhere along the path the name changed to Rife.
Thought you might get a kick out of the story. Maria (Rife)
The north dakota family has ties to the first rabbi in ND. Benjamin papermaster . Sincerely, Riffe Male from US
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