The RIEBEL Branch

Welcome to the RIEBEL page! (Also ROSSMANN BLEIER REICHE REINHARD and others in case you didn't get here by clicking RIEBLE. Look below, you're probably in the right place.) Our family has preserved a letter, dated July 4, 1853, sent from Philipp ROSSMANN, Levana, OH, USA (west of Ripley on the Ohio River) to Johannes RIEBEL, Lindenfels [great maps of Germany prior to 1883, downloadable .pdf format], Grossherzogtum Hessen (Grand Dutchy of Hessen—central western Germany) in which Philipp greets Johannes as "dear brother-in-law" and encourages various family members to emigrate. See this quote from Blackbourn if you are interested in the general context of German emigration in mid to late 1800s. Here is a list of names culled from the letter:

• Adam
• Agnes
• Gordrunt
• Gorg
• Heinrich
• Jacob REINHARD
• Johannes RIEBEL
• Katharina
• Neister (surname?)
• Philipp
• Philipp ROSSMANN
• Sigfried
• Zambact or Bambact Family

I believe the Adam and Katharina mentioned in this letter were my gg-grandfather and gg-grandmother, Johan-Adam RIEBEL and Katharina RIEBEL nee STOUT who emigrated from Hessen via Rotterdam to New York on the Powhatan, arriving 29 Nov. 1853, as listed in Germans to America. Adam and Katharina settled in Bracken Co., Kentucky near the town of Augusta. They bought a farm at Stony Point in 1887 from John E. LUDWIG. They were burried in the Augusta Hill Cemetery, Katharina in the Catholic portion and Adam in the Presbyterian portion of the cemetery.

Adam and Katharina had one son, my g-grandfather George Henry RIEBEL and one daughter, Barbara who married George FREDERICK of Bracken Co. George and Barbara sold the farm at Stony Point to B. F. BARKLEY in 1900 after Adam died. George Henry RIEBEL married Caroline BLEIER, the daughter of Frank BLEIER, also from Germany, but we don't yet know where exactly. Frank came to the US with two older brothers whose names were lost. Caroline was raised in Cincinnati in the care of Julius REICHE (according to the 1880 US census she was adopted by REICHE, but the family thinks she was never formally adopted) and we believe she was also looked after by a family named HAHN after her father went to Chicago for unknown reasons.

George and Caroline lived with Adam and Katharina in Kentucky when they were first married. Caroline wrote some stories of those days. Later they moved to Chilo, OH where George ran the Chilo Bradford ferry. A scrap of paper has this note in my grandmother's handwritting:

Capt. George Riebel...operated these ferry boats between Chilo, Ohio and Bradford, Kentucky, where he met the train to pick up passengers, the mail bag, and newspapers. He had to have blind horses for the treadmills, two years, then the boat was replaced with the 'Good Luck,' which he used until 1907. He had a flat boat to attach to the ferry to accommodate vehicles, wagon loads of tobacco, and stock = cows, hogs, sheep, etc. The ferry bells were on shore to ring for service any hour of the day or night. Sometimes young couples were slipping off to get married, and he had to witness the weddings, usually at night.

According to the family's account book, George purchased the ferry in 1904 and sold it again to John A. SIDWELL on Oct. 3rd, 1906. It is unclear whether he ran the ferry before or after those dates of ownership. George and Caroline eventually moved into the city of Cincinnati where they lived out their days.

Here is a GEDCOM that includes these RIEBEL relatives.