Heinrich Rickenbacher (1696-1741) a.k.a.
Heini,
and Barbara Thommen (1701-1740)
“Heini”
was born in the Kilchberg – Zeglingen –
Rünenberg area of Canton Basel, Switzerland, a generation after the 30
years War which established the division between Catholics and followers of
Martin Luther. Subsequently, the Anabaptist movement (Zwingli) branched from
the new protestant sect. Heini was very likely an Anabaptist, and was a
“kirchenpfleger” (church caretaker, or an administer of church
lands) for the church at Kilchberg.
Their
belief that infant baptism was wrong, and that only adults should be baptized,
led to the general persecution of the Anabaptists. At the same time, there was
generally less and less farmable land available. Both factors encouraged Swiss
Anabaptists to consider migration, to either Germany, Prussia, Holland, or the
new British colony of America.
Somewhere
around 1735, 39 year old Heini and his 34 year old wife Barbara Thommen made
the decision to leave Basel Canton. It is not known what specifically made them
decide to leave, but likely they were persecuted for their Anabaptist beliefs.
At the time they had 7 children, ranging in age from 12 to a new infant (oldest
daughter Margareth died that year at age 13). By 1735 Heini was given
permission by the county magistrate to begin to sell his possessions at
auction, in preparation for their migration.
Probably
in early 1740 (now with two new babies, total of 10 children including 12 year
old Johan), Heini got passage up the Rhine River to Holland. In Rotterdam they
found passage on the ship “Friendship” bound for Philadelphia. This
journey probably took about 6 months, and was extremely difficult. I wonder
whether they knew how hard this ship passage would be when they decided to do
this. By the time they reached Philadelphia on 23 September 1740, the two
youngest children had died on the ship, and Barbara Thommen was very ill. She
died very soon after arriving in Philadelphia. Imagine Heini’s state of
mind by then – was this all worth it, and at what cost? By November,
Heini and his remaining 8 children made it to Germantown PA, in Lancaster
County (Hug 1992) – “everything is different here” he was
quoted as saying. Heini’s will was written in March 1741. I think, but
actually am not sure, that he died that year at age 45, I speculate by some
effect of the voyage.
Johan Rickenbacher
(1728-1782), a.k.a. John,
and Anna (last name
unknown) (?-?)
John
was born in Zeglingen and was a boy there. At the
age of 12, his family (led by father Heini) prepared to leave Switzerland.
John’s 14-year-old brother Hans Adam (aka Adam) was the oldest boy, with
two sisters older than Adam. John lost his mother within a month of arriving in
Philadelphia and two youngest sisters on the ship crossing the Atlantic. By the
end of the next year (1741), his father was dead too. At the time, they were
living in a new community of Amish in Lancaster County. Six children ranging in age from 17 to
6, newly orphaned, and John was 13 years old. Did another Amish family take
them in? Where did they live? I don’t know of any direct relations that
accompanied them to Lancaster County, but likely his father Heini came over
with other Amish from Zeglingen so maybe the children lived with friends from
home.
By
the mid 1700s, some Amish from Lancaster County and also from the
“Northkill Settlement” (decimated by Indian attacks) in central
Berks County (north of Bern Township) moved to the Conestoga Valley in
Caernarvon Township, originally a Welsh settlement. Caernarvon was at the time
part of Lancaster County (today in southern Berks County). It is not clear
where exactly in Lancaster County John raised his family. Bishop Jacob Herzler
organized an Amish congregation in Caernarvon in 1760, so perhaps John had
moved there by then. Or perhaps John was part of the Northkill settlement and
remained in Bern Twp along the Tulpehocken Creek, as did Jacob Hertzler’s
son John. In any case, by 1772, at the age of 44 with his wife Anna and eight
children, John purchased a large farm and house in
Caernarvon from John Light (this house still stands in Morgantown Business
Park). At this time, his oldest son Jacob was 15 years old, and youngest son
John was 2 years old (these two only sons of John would as adults live in Bern
Township on either side of the Schuylkill River). John died in Caernarvon ten
years later in 1782.
Jacob Rickenbach
(1757-1831),
and Barbara
Hertzler (1759-1838)
Jacob was the first boy of
Johan and Anna Rickenbacher’s nine children. He was born in Lancaster
County, very likely in Caernarvon Township around the time that Bishop Jacob
Hertzler organized an Amish congregation there. When Jacob was 15 years of age
(1772) his father Johan purchased the house in the Conestoga Valley (present
day Morgantown Business Park) in Caernarvon. According to unconfirmed DAR
records, Jacob (Rigabach) was a 4th class captain in David Morgan's company,
5th Battalion, Berks Co. PA militia during the Revolutionary War. However this
seems at odds with his pacifist Amish background, and this may well be a
different Jacob (census records suggest a family of ‘Rigabachs’ in
Womelsdorf). By around 1780, Jacob lived with his parents (in their mid 50s) in
Caernarvon, where he met an Amish woman of ‘solid background’ -
Barbara Hertzler, a daughter of John Hertzler whose father was Bishop Jacob
Hertzler. At the time, Barbara’s father John Hertzler had been living in
Bern Township. Jacob and Barbara were married in 1782, the year that
Jacob’s father Johan died. The just-married Jacob was to inherit his
father’s 289 acre farm in Caernarvon, but due to the war-wracked economy
he couldn’t pay the taxes and payments to his mother and siblings
(required by his father’s will) for the land. So in 1785, Jacob’s
father-in-law John Hertzler purchased the Caernarvon farm, and then
“sold” his Bern Township farm to Jacob and Barbara for a token five
shillings. It is not clear whether Jacob moved to Bern Twp in 1785, or whether
he lived on his father-in-law’s (John Hertzler) Caernarvon farm until
Hertzler sold in 1796.
In either case, Jacob and
Barbara moved to Bern Township along the
Schuylkill River no later than 1796. According to family lore, Jacob and his
younger brother John together farmed the land along the western boundary of the
Schuylkill River. After some kind of disagreement, John moved across the river
where he and his family remained. In 1800 Jacob was 43 years old, and John was
30. Jacob and Barbara’s oldest son John at age 20 was killed in a wagon
accident in 1803, Jacob and Barbara had 14 children, a huge family even by
early 19th century standards. The older children married people with
surnames like Yoder and Hertzler, so these were likely Amish. The older boys
(David, Joel, Jacob) ended up leaving Berks Co. (David to Ohio, the others to
Juniata Co. in central PA). The younger sons (Solomon, Abraham, Benjamin) all
remained in Bern Twp and settled on the family farm. Daughters Eva and Barbara
remained with their parents and later, unmarried, lived together until they
died in the mid-1860s. In 1817 Jacob built a stone house on the farm, prior to
that the family probably lived in a log house along the creek. By that time,
the Schuylkill Navigation Company had nearly completed the Schuylkill Canal along his property, and he may have been involved in
boating as early as the 1820s, or perhaps some of his sons. The canal certainly
shaped the destiny of his descendants. Jacob died in 1831.
Benjamin Rickenbach
(1809-1866); “Ben”,
and Christiana Ulrich
(1807-1885)
Born the youngest of 14
children when his father Jacob was 52 and mother Barbara was almost 50! He was
separated from his oldest siblings by about 25 years, so Ben was really in
another generation from them. Ben was a child at the time the canal was being
built, so he very likely was inspired by the construction to work with
machinery. He would have played in the newly build culvert under the new canal
as a teenager. He married Christiana Ulrich at the age of 20 in 1829, they
likely lived either with his or her parents. When his father Jacob died in
1831, Ben was 22 years old. Ben inherited from his
father the small strip of land adjacent to the canal, probably because of
his interest in transportation (his brother Solomon inherited the bulk of the
property, the farm). As the P&R railroad was being laid down in the mid
1830s, Ben opened a small store near the canal to cater to the rail workers.
Soon after the railroad was completed (around 1836 or so), Ben was offered a
position at the Baldwin Locomotive Company in
Philadelphia, very likely by connections he made during the building of the
P&R railroad in his backyard. Again, this does not sound like an Amishman,
so he was possibly a Mennonite. (the first generation of this family not to be
Amish?) His oldest child James was about 7 when Ben, Christiana and their 5
young daughters left Bern Township for Philadelphia. Young James stayed behind
and lived with his aunts Eva and Bevvy (Barbara). Their daughter Matilda died
at age 18.
In 1835-36, around the time Benjamin moved to Philadelphia, the Baldwin Locomotive Company built a substantial brick factory, surmounted by a cupola, fronting on Broad and Hamilton Streets in Philadelphia. This was one of the first assembly plants in the United States. They made boilers and engines, and began to manufacture locomotives. Benjamin developed one of the first boilers adopted by the company, which by the late 1840s employed some 400 men at the Broad Street factory. By 1854, they stopped building boilers and stationary engines, and built only locomotives. At some point, Benjamin was asked to go to Paris to supervise the manufacture of the boiler, presumably at a French subsidiary of the company. A model of a locomotive using this boiler apparently is on display in the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.
Ben died in
Philadelphia in 1866. Afterwards, his widow Christiana and at least some of
their seven daughters returned to Bern Township. Christiana lived with her son
James until she died in 1885. One
of their oldest daughters, Sarah, was known as “Granny” Young, died
at age 90 in 1925.
James
Rickenbach (1830-1891); “Jim”,
and
Eliza Hinnershitz (1835-1922)
James was born in a small frame house along the bustling canal in 1830,
at a time when his father Ben was capitalizing on the nearby rail construction.
When James was about 7 years old, his family moved to Philadelphia, but he
stayed behind, living with his Aunts Eva and Bevvy. He was very likely raised a
Mennonite, certainly speaking Pennsylvania Dutch. He never went to church
(consistent with being a Mennonite/Amish), however he was baptized as a
Lutheran at age 33 (just before enlisting in the Pennsylvania Reserves) and
near the end of his life was confirmed into the
Lutheran church. It is not known how often, if ever, he visited his family
in Philadelphia, but he likely did. He may have worked for Baldwin Locomotive Company
in his early 20s, but this is not confirmed. He met, then married, Eliza
Hinnershitz at age 22 in 1852, and they both lived with his Aunts Eva and
Bevvy. By 1859, James had built a frame house
along the canal, and he & Eliza and their four children moved there,
literally next door to the aunts. James and two of his cousins enlisted in the 42nd PA militia in June of
1863, answering a call by Gov. Curtin for volunteers for the upcoming Civil War
campaign at Gettysburg. James had 7 young children at the time. His regimen
camped near Reading but was not deployed to Gettysburg. Following the success
of the campaign James was discharged in August. He was a boatman on the canal
probably since a young adult. In 1874 James built a drydock
near his home for the purpose of repairing his own boats. But the drydock soon
expanded to include boat building and general repair. By the late 1880s, as the
railroad outcompeted the canal, James devoted more time to gardening. He died
in 1891 at age 61 of ‘neuralgia of the heart’, probably a heart
attack. You can find many more details of his life in a memoir
written by his daughter Becky.
Edwin Rickenbach
(1856-1894); “Ed”,
and Catharine Hoover
(1858-1910) “Kate”
Ed was born along the
Schuykill Canal, and like his father he was raised in the heydey of the canal
industry. Edwin passed the early part of his life as a farmer and a boat
builder with his father James. As a boy he made many trips on the canal with
his father and brothers to pick up freight and transport it to its destination.
He learned about boat design, what worked and what didn't, on these trips. One
such excursion was on the Union Canal to the upper Tulpehocken valley. They
picked up a load of whiskey, limestone (to be burned in limekilns and used as
fertilizer), and grain. The draft (depth) of the Schuylkill Canal was only
about 5 feet, so the loaded canal boat often dragged bottom.
At the age of 19 (in 1875),
Edwin decided to focus on being a boatman, and began to make his trade as a
boat builder and captain. He started by building a "laker" called the
"Silvery Wave", which had a squared bow and stern. It turned out
disappointingly, as the boat's squared shape did not allow for it to be easily
pulled in the canal by mules.
Probably around 1880 at the
age of 24, Edwin's father James then built him another canal boat, the "Tuckerton", which he
sold to his son to be paid in installments over two years. Income from hauling
coal, combined with help from his father-in-law John Hoover (a former
schoolteacher and farmer), would pay the loan. The
"Tuckerton" had a cabin in the stern and an area in the middle
for mule storage. The mule area turned out to take up a lot of valuable cargo
and living space.
Though amenities aboard a
canal boat were slim, captains often lived half the year on the boats with
their families. At age 23, Edwin had married Catherine Hoover in 1879, and
along with their first son Howard, born in 1880, this young family was no
exception. Over the next few years their family grew, with son John in 1881 and
daughter Stella in 1883. It soon became apparent that the "Tuckerton"
was not big enough for all of them to live on. When not on the boat, they lived
in Hyde Park, Mulhenburg Twp, just a couple of miles south of Ed’s
parent’s house.
So Edwin designed a larger
canal boat, which featured a portable mule shelter, holding up to three mules,
on deck. His father James built this new boat at his boatyard, which Edwin
named the "Rattler". Edwin's trade was cabin building. When he layed
over in Philadelphia on his way to or from a destination, Edwin built cabins at
Peter Hagan's yard near Gray's Ferry Ave. on the west side). After fitting the
"Rattler with a larger cabin, Edwin, Catherine and their three children
continued their nomadic life on the canal. Their fourth child, Edwin, was born
aboard the "Rattler" in 1886.
One spring day in 1894
(probably earlier, maybe 1890), the "Rattler" had taken on 250 tons
of coal, loaded onto the deck, at Port Richmond in Philadelphia. While on New
York Bay they encountered a terrific storm, which pounded the canal boat with
strong waves. One particularly large wave caused the stove to overturn, which
started a fire in the cabin. Another wave doused the boat with so much water as
to extinguish the fire.
Edwin's wife Catherine had
had enough. She was furious, and insisted that she and the four children return
to Rickenbach Station when they reached port. Edwin was angered and felt that
he was being abandoned. So at Hagan's yard in Philadelphia, he completely
rebuilt the cabin, placing it flush with the stern and replacing the tiller
with a steering wheel on top of the cabin. He soon found that after the
redesigned cabin was installed, the "Rattler" could no longer
navigate the Schuylkill Canal.
So Edwin traded in the
"Rattler" for three old canal boats and cash. He brought these three
boats back to Tuckerton to his father's drydock to salvage the best of each and
built a new boat. This he did shortly after the death of his father James in
1891, around the time of the birth of his fifth child Roger. Edwin's brother
Curtin now operated the drydock. So the two brothers salvaged iron, cleats,
chalks (a double cleat), and seasoned timber from the boat bottems. Together
they built a large new boat, which was named the "Mars". This boat
was built as large as the docks would permit, and was twice as high as typical
canal boats on the Schuylkill Canal, and could hold 400 tons of freight. At
Tuckerton they built the boat itself, but not the cabin, rudder and caping
(which was probably installed by Edwin at Hagan's Yard in Philadelphia).
The "Mars" proved
to be a successfull enterprise, navigable with heavy loads on the shallow
Schuylkill Canal, with room enough for his now large family. By this time, they
lived in Shoemakersville, north of Leesport, during the winter when the canal
boats did not operate. Everything seemed to be finally going well.
In the springtime of 1894,
the family set off from New York City after dropping off a load, to return to Philadephia
along the Raritan Canal. After entering the Delaware River north of
Philadelphia, they stopped north of Port Richmond,
where Catherine and the children stayed ashore, leaving Edwin and the boat's
first mate, 74 year old John Ogden (who was the father-in-law of Edwin's
younger brother James). Late that Monday (28 May 1894), the "Mars"
joined a line of canal boats in tandem, towed down the Delaware River by a tug.
Somewhere near Bridesburg, the convoy encountered a strong thunderstorm. The
captain and first mate were forced inside the cabin by the strong rain and
closed every window. They lit a coal oil lamp as the skies grew black and heavy
with rain. Just then, light and sound overwhelmed them as the "Mars"
took a direct lightning strike, down the stove pipe and into the cabin. The
bolt struck Edwin in the face, passing down his back, chest, and legs leaving
him with serious burns and knocking him to the floor. The lightning exploded
the lamp, which set fire to the cabin.
Soon after this, at Port
Richmond just north of Philadelphia, the convoy stopped and each of the canal
boats were hailed to give them orders as to their next load. When Edwin and
John were called, no one answered. Thinking this odd, an official boarded the
"Mars", and was met by thick billowing smoke after pulling back the
slide entrance to the cabin. Just then he heard Captain Rickenbach across the
cabin at the foot of the stairs crying "For God's sake get me out of
here!!" They lifted Edwin to the deck and towed the "Mars"
quickly to the dock at Port Richmond. Only after reaching the dock did firemen
notice the first mate, John Ogden, sitting upright in a chair near the window.
His body was entirely without clothes, burnt to a crisp with his long white
beard and hair burned away. John's body was filled with shards from the
exploded glass oil lamp.
Edwin was rushed to the
Episcopal hospital in Philadelphia. His outer clothes were unharmed, but when
they were removed his charred undergarments attested to the extent of his
burns. Edwin was able to recount what had happened, but did not survive the
night. He was buried at Hinnershitz Church in
Tuckerton.
According to his son John,
Edwin was a believer in strict discipline, practiced total abstinence of liquor
and tobacco, was kind and good natured, loved hard work, found much joy in his
chosen occupation, and was an exceptionally good provider for his family. He
was also fearless in any water, saved many lives at his own risk. He was only
38 years old when he died.
The fact that two of Ed's
children were given the names of Edwin's grandparents (John BENJAMIN and
CHRISTIANA Estella) suggests that Edwin may have been close to grandparents
Benjamin and Christiana. Edwin was 10 years old when his grandfather died, and
about 30 when his grandmother died.
and
Mary Emma Gallagher (1885-1964) “Emma”
John was born in Hyde Park
(Mulhenberg Township) where his parents Ed and Kate lived, just a couple of
miles downriver from his grandfather’s drydock,
where lots of his aunts and uncles lived and worked. As a child, John, with his
brothers Howard and Ed and sister Stella, probably spent more than half of the
year, from April to November, on one of his dad’s canal boats. They would
travel as a family, their boat pulled by mules along the Schuylkill Canal to
Philadelphia from the coal regions to the north, through New Jersey along the
Raritan Canal to New York City, hauling coal, lumber, limestone, and even
whiskey. River pirates and dockworkers, canal locks and
port authority docks must have given John quite an early education. The little
formal schooling he had was at the Rickenbach
schoolhouse next to his grandfather’s drydock just for a few of the
winter months. From school, the 2 young brothers John and Howard must have run
along the canal with their teenage aunts Lizzie and Becky to eat his
grandmother Eliza’s ham,biscuits and cherry pie, watching the drydock
workers pounding nails and pouring pitch.
In 1894 at age 13,
John’s life was turned upside-down. His father Ed had just let Kate and
the 5 children (including 3 year old Roger who died the following year)
disembark at a small port just north of Philadelphia, while he and his first
mate “uncle John Ogden” tied up in a convoy to be unloaded. In a
flash of lightning his father was taken away forever. John and his 14-year-old
brother Howard had to assume the role of family provider. Howard worked as a
machinist to help make ends meet, while John took a job as a day laborer in
Jamesburg, New Jersey, where the canal had often taken them and his father had
many business acquaintances. He worked side by side with 15-year-old Frank
Gallagher, whose father was a coachman from an Irish family, and they became
good friends. John sent money to his mother Kate when he could, who now lived
in Fleetwood with her children Stella and Ed, where her son-in-law Charles
Adams found work as a machinist. By and by John took a liking to Frank’s
little sister Emma, and in 1903 at age 21 he married the 17-year-old girl.
Soon after, John and Emma had
their first child, Russell. John’s mother Kate had since remarried, and
his brother Ed had just found work across the river at the Stunzi knitting
mill. So John and Emma found a small
townhouse on Linden St, in Reading, not far from the Buttonwood bridge, and
moved there with their young family. He crossed the bridge each day on his way
to work with Ed at the mill in West Reading. It was a huge faceless factory,
filled with workers sewing and cutting cloth. Ed was a weaver while John was a
silk warper. In Reading another son came along, who they named Howard after
John’s older brother. In 1910 their mother Kate died, and that year they
moved across the river to Penn Avenue in West Reading, just two blocks away
from the mill. The young boys were delighted to have their “Uncle
Ed” living with them, and they grew very close to him.
About 1910. Front: Howard F. Rickenbach (left), Russell Rickenbach (right).
Rear: Their grandparents, likely stepgrandfather Franklin Bagenstose and grandmother Kate Hoover Rickenbach Bagenstose.
By the 1920s, many of the
textile mills began to shut down, the Stunzi knitting mill among them. At age
50, John lost his job and had to find work where he could, as the country
entered the Great Depression. He got a job at the Works Power Authority (WPA)
in the 1930s, part of President Roosevelt’s “New Deal” to put
the country back to work. With their children grown, John and Emma moved around
the corner to a small rowhouse on 6th Street. Though he never said
so, he was proud of his son Howard, educated at a private university in upstate
New York, who now worked as a civil engineer in Philadelphia.
About 1930. Left to right: Emma Gallagher Rickenbach, Howard F. Rickenbach Sr., Howard F. Rickenbach Jr., John B. Rickenbach
Emma was delighted when in
1938, Howard moved his family back to West Reading, just down the street from
their new apartment, to become the manager of the growing borough. John died of
a stroke in 1948 in his late 60s, but Emma lived for another 16 years and took
pleasure in her grandchildren and even two
little great-granddaughters.
