VIII. Rickabaugh – Griffith – Lionberger

Having established that ADAM RICKABAUGH and CATHERINE {MCCOY} RICKABAUGH were the parents of Henry Rickabaugh, we can now explore what we know about them. Adam Rickabaugh was born in Virginia in 1790, probably on June 5 of that year. Based on what we know about his parents, he was likely born in what was then Shenandoah (now Page) County of that state before his parents moved further west to Greenbrier County, Virginia (now West Virginia). Adam died on June 30, 1865, probably in Marion County, Iowa. He is buried in Rees (sometimes called Reins) Cemetery near Pleasantville in that county. Catherine was born in Kentucky on March 19, 1799. She appears on the 1870 Iowa census and was still alive as of 1872, when she applied for a Federal pension for Adam's military service.¹ In both years she was residing with her son Samuel and his family in Marion County, Iowa. Evidently Catherine died sometime before 1880 because she is not listed on that year's census in Iowa or elsewhere, and the fact that Samuel and his family are in Henry's household in 1880 reinforces that conclusion. Adam and Catherine were married in Gallia County, Ohio, in 1813 or in 1814, but the exact date is another minor mystery.²

We do not know a great deal more about Adam and Catherine. Because of her 1872 application for a pension based on Adam's service during the War of 1812, we do have some knowledge of that episode in their lives.³ Adam volunteered in August 1812, soon after war was declared, and served – with monthly extensions of his enlistment – into February 1813. He was present at the army camp located near the rapids of the Maumee River (later named Fort Meigs and now Perrysburg, Ohio), where he was discharged at the end of February 1813. In August 1813 he again entered service, this time as a substitute for another man, but he was discharged just about a month later. Since the war in the west ended soon thereafter, Adam saw no further military service.

Adam's first unit was a company of the Gallia Volunteer Riflemen attached to the Second Regiment (Safford's) in General Edward Tupper's command. The fact that his company was led first by Captain Isaac Butler and then Lieutenant John Rader of the Quartermaster Corps, United States Supply, gives us a clue about Adam's actual service, as do the applications of various other Rickabaughs who also served during the War of 1812. Because the Ohio militia performed so unreliably in combat, it was generally used to keep supply routes open. What this meant in practice is that the militia ran wagon trains loaded with supplies, along with livestock on the hoof from southern Ohio up to the northern part of the state where most of the troops were encamped.⁴ Adam's second stint in uniform, though, was with Daniel Womeldorff's Mounted Regiment, which may have been something other than a supply unit.

Adam and Catherine, married soon after he returned from the war, must have lived in Gallia County for the next few years, but as we have seen we cannot locate them on the 1820 Ohio census. Between about 1824 and about 1827 they moved west to Indiana, which is where I finally located Adam Rickabaugh on the 1830 census – not as Rickabaugh, though, but as " Rickbock." He and his family are residing not where we would expect to find them, based on where they live in 1840 (Greene County, Indiana), but quite a distance further north in Fountain County. A son born to this couple in Indiana in 1827 was said to have been born in Greene County, which suggests one of two possibilities: either the Rickabaughs lived in Greene for a time around 1827 and then moved on to Fountain or this son was actually born in Fountain but remembered Greene because the family later moved there.

On the 1830 census, Adam Rickabaugh is shown as 40 to 50 years old (he is 40 years old that year) and Catherine is shown as 30 to 40 years old (she is 31 years of age in 1830). The profile of the children listed for this couple matches quite closely that of the children we know Adam and Catherine had in 1830, with the addition of some older children whose names we do not know. The presence of these older children in 1830 confirms our suspicion that Adam and Catherine, married in 1813 or 1814, must have had children before Henry was born in 1819 or so. Their existence is also an indication that Henry was not born as early as 1814. These older children have left the household by 1840, so Rickabaugh researchers have not known about them. Best of all, the 1830 Indiana census shows a male 10 to 15 years of age, which is right where Henry Rickabaugh ought to be listed that year. Research has turned up no deeds or public land entries for Adam Rickabaugh, so evidently he is farming someone else's land in Fountain County. The same is true in Greene County in 1840, where again there are no deeds or public land entries for Adam Rickabaugh; as a result, we do not know exactly where they resided there.

Adam and Catherine moved again in 1845, when they were among the earliest people to settle around Knoxville in Union Township of Marion County, Iowa. They would reside in this place for the remainder of their lives and are found on the census here in 1850 and 1860. In both years, Adam Rickabaugh is described as a farmer, and the 1850 non-population census shows him with 30 improved acres and 70 unimproved acres. The value of his real estate in 1850 was just $200; by the next census, in 1860, that value had increased six times, to $1,200, and he also had personal property worth $350 in 1860.⁵

We can describe what we know about Catherine's McCoy family in very few words. One possible lead is that Adam's uncle, also named Adam Rickabaugh, seems to have served in the Revolutionary War, including in an engagement against Lord Cornwallis's troops at Little York, Virginia, as part of a unit commanded by a Colonel McCoy from the Shenandoah Valley; a son of this officer would be the right generation to be Catherine's father. Based on this lead, we can wonder if this officer might have been the Colonel McCoy from Greenbrier County, Virginia, whose military service in 1780-81 would have coincided with this action. Could this Colonel McCoy also be the John McCoy who lived not far from John and Elizabeth {Griffith} Rickabaugh – whose son Adam married Catherine McCoy – in Greenbrier County?⁶

Pushing our speculation even further, could this man be the same John McCoy who before that resided in Rockingham County, Virginia, also not far from various Rickabaughs? We know that a John and Nancy {Finch} McCoy from that county later married (April 1793) and resided in Mason County, Kentucky, a plausible place for the birth of Catherine McCoy because it is across the Ohio River and not far from Gallia County, Ohio. Researchers studying this McCoy couple are not aware of a Catherine born to them, but the list of their children does not exclude the possibility that she was born to them in 1799. In this connection it is interesting to learn that an Alexander and Catherine McCoy of Adams County, Ohio (near where the Rickabaughs lived) owned property in Mason County, Kentucky. Although McCoys are relatively common throughout Virginia and the Ohio Valley, the circumstantial evidence cited here suggests that we have identified the particular McCoys from whom Adam's wife Catherine came even if we have not yet identified her parents.

Our other McCoy leads are inconclusive. It seems most likely that Adam Rickabaugh and Catherine McCoy met in Ohio, but how long before their marriage in 1813 or 1814 we cannot say. Several McCoy families live in this part of Ohio, but only a David resides in Gallia County itself – and he resides some distance from where the Rickabaughs presumably lived. During the War of 1812 a Joseph McCoy served in the same militia unit as did Adam Rickabaugh, which could indicate that his McCoy family lived near the Rickabaughs, but I have been unable to identify this man's parents. Without more information, about both where Adam Rickabaugh was living and the nearby McCoy families that might have produced a Catherine of the right age who was born in Kentucky, we are stymied again.

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Adam's father, JOHN RICKABAUGH, was one of several Rickabaugh brothers, one of whom, believe it or not, is the same Adam Rickabaugh who was the second candidate we considered as Henry Rickabaugh's father. John and Adam were both born in what was then Frederick County (now Page County after having been in Shenandoah County for awhile), Virginia. John was born sometime during the late 1750s and Adam in 1761. John Rickabaugh married ELIZABETH {GRIFFITH} RICKABAUGH in Shenandoah County, Virginia, on February 15, 1785.⁷ Elizabeth's year of birth is not known, but she is thought to have died (in Gallia County, Ohio) on January 25, 1834.

John Rickabaugh is said to have died in Gallia County, Ohio, evidently in 1836, but there is no documentary evidence for either the place or the date of his death. Nor does he appear in any Gallia County land or tax records. The only indication that John Rickabaugh ever came to Ohio, in fact, is a Gallia County history written a century later; it states that John was one of the first settlers of that county and voted there in 1805. By 1812, Elizabeth Rickabaugh is shown on the tax list, which may well indicate that she was now a widow. (A John Rickabaugh who was paid for a wolf scalp he produced – ridding the area of such predators was a governmental priority – in 1811 was most likely one of the two teenaged John Rickabaughs in Gallia County.)

Although a John Rickabaugh, "Sr.," is listed among the members of a Gallia County unit (Safford's) during the War of 1812, there is no firm evidence this man was Elizabeth's husband. Afterwards, the only John Rickabaughs who appear on censuses and tax lists are probably younger men. We cannot be certain the John Rickabaugh listed as 26 to 45 years of age on the 1820 census is not the one we are looking for – in a younger age category than he should be in, but I am inclined to think that this man is in actuality one of the younger John Rickabaughs in Gallia County. But Elizabeth {Griffith} Rickabaugh is very likely the older woman in the appropriate age categories on the 1820 and 1830 censuses who is living with her son Henry in Raccoon Township of Gallia County, and this suggests that her husband, our John Rickabaugh born during the 1750s, has disappeared. Those early censuses did not list individuals by name, however, and so we cannot be certain this older female is in fact Elizabeth. It is also possible that she remarried after the death of her husband. The upshot of all this sleuthing is that the John Rickabaugh who married Elizabeth Griffith probably died between 1805 and 1812, but we cannot be positive that this analysis is correct.

Because of this uncertainty about John Rickabaugh's death, we must entertain the possibility that he actually died elsewhere – either in Virginia or in transit to wherever the family intended to go after selling their Greenbrier County property in 1799. Alternatively, he might have died in Ross County, Ohio, where his brothers Adam and Peter lived for several years before the entire Rickabaugh clan decided to relocate to Gallia County in 1800 or soon thereafter. If John did die between 1799 and about 1802, perhaps after his death elsewhere his widow Elizabeth took their children to live near his brother Adam in Ohio. The most likely scenario, in my opinion, is that John Rickabaugh died in Gallia County sometime after 1805 but before 1812. We will have to keep guessing until more information comes to light.

Elizabeth Griffith was the daughter of JOHN GRIFFITH and his wife CATHERINE, whose family name is not certain but may have been Schuele. Our first concrete information about this family comes when a John Griffith appears on a tax list in Shenandoah County, Virginia, in 1785. Then, he and John Rickabaugh purchase adjoining properties, 172 acres each, in that county on the same day in 1786. Where John and Catherine Griffith came from before this (and when) is unclear, but as we shall see there is good reason to suspect that this couple had been living in other parts of Virginia – specifically, Frederick and Hampshire Counties – more than two decades before 1785. The difficulty is that there is at least one other man (and possibly two other men) with that name in that same area of Virginia at that time, and without more information we cannot be certain which of them is which.

The first sighting of a John Griffith in Frederick County occurs in 1762, when a blacksmith with that name (though here it is recorded as "Griffy") purchased 150 acres described as being in Camden Parish.⁸ Four and one-half years later (November 1766), a John Griffith was sold 219 acres on Painterskin Run – only to sell that same 219 acres not even a year later, in September 1767. Subsequent information shows a John Griffith selling grains and household items in December 1772, and other Frederick County documents mention a John Griffith in 1771 and 1773. And, to confuse the picture even more, we also learn that a John Griffith received another land grant, this one for 214 acres on Bakers Run in neighboring Hampshire County, Virginia, on January 12, 1768.

Griffith is a fairly common family name, of course, and we might conclude that all these references to John Griffiths have nothing to do with the John Griffith of Shenandoah County we are researching, except for what we learn from a set of other Frederick County land transactions that took place between 1765 and 1767. In them, a John Griffith is seen obtaining a warrant for land in October 1765, having the property surveyed the next month, and receiving his grant – for 392 acres on Long Lick, a branch of Back Creek near Timber Ridge – a year later. When he sold this property in March 1767, the deed identifies his wife's name as Margaret – a valuable clue. ⁹

We are especially interested in this John Griffith because that land grant document was found in the chancery court records of Page County (created, mostly out of Shenandoah County, in 1831), where we are certain Elizabeth Griffith's father lived; indeed, the document was in a file for an 1835 case involving a member of her father's family. Why this document ended up there we do not know. The only good explanation, I believe, is that it had been passed down within the family from the John Griffith of Frederick County to his son John (father of Elizabeth, wife of John Rickabaugh), and then on to this John's son, who was a party to the 1835 court case. We do not believe that the John Griffith who got the Frederick County land grant during the 1760s is the same man who shows up in Shenandoah County during the 1780s – they had wives with different names (Margaret for the first and Catherine for the second) – and probably were of different generations. But there must be a connection between them, if we can only figure it out. So far, Griffith researchers have not been able to solve this mystery.

Reviewing other, earlier, sightings of various John Griffiths in America during the 1700s, we notice one who had come here from Wales about 1716 and married a woman named Margaret Jones. This couple, married probably during the 1720s or 1730s, lived at one time in Chester County, Pennsylvania. We cannot be positive that they are the couple we find in Frederick County later on, but they seem like plausible candidates – and a son born to them would be about the right age as John Griffith, the father-in-law of John Rickabaugh, would have been during the 1780s. Still, though, there is nothing definite to link this couple to Elizabeth's father.

Additional useful information comes from church records in Pennsylvania and Maryland, where we find that a couple named John and Catharine Griffith (though in one instance it is spelled Griffey) had daughters Rachel and Catharina who were baptized, respectively, in 1767 and 1775. Rachel's baptism was recorded at Christ Lutheran Church, York, Pennsylvania, in November 1767; Catharina's was recorded at Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick, Maryland, in October 1775. We know that John and Catharine Griffith, who were Lutherans, had daughters with these names who were likely born sometime during these two decades, although we do not know the exact years when they were born, nor where. The baptismal record in 1767 shows that Rachel's mother, Catharine Griffith, was the daughter of George Leonard Schuele (whose wife's name is not known) and that the Griffiths lived south of Fishing Creek in the Nelson's Ferry area of Chanceford Township in York County. Other evidence also suggests that John Griffith was living in this area by 1748, but again we do not know when he arrived here – or where he came from.

Both of these baptisms were evidently performed by traveling ministers who registered them at the nearest church or at the one with which the minister was affiliated, so we cannot assume that the Griffiths worshipped at these churches – or even lived nearby, since there were often long intervals between the times when the traveling minister recorded his work at the widely dispersed churches he had visited. This practice might explain why the two baptisms may have been recorded in Pennsylvania and Maryland well after the Griffiths had gone to live in Virginia, either in Frederick County or in Shenandoah County. In addition, if Rachel and Catharina's father had gone ahead into Virginia to purchase and plant newly acquired property, his family might have remained with family members further north for a season or even longer. Still we have no definite linkage joining these Griffiths of interest, but perhaps we have the makings of a tentative hypothesis and time line.

Let us suppose that it was this John and Margaret Griffith who were the parents of Elizabeth {Griffith} Rickabaugh's father John, who would have been born, very likely in Pennsylvania, sometime around 1730. This Griffith couple seems to have come from in Berks County (formed in part from Chester), where we know the Rickabaughs, Lionbergers, and other German families who would ultimately migrate to eastern Shenandoah County also lived. It is worth noting that the Schuele family also lived in this part of Pennsylvania. By about 1750 or so, young John Griffith would also be marrying, and we can imagine that his wife could have come from the German community nearby. Eva Catherine Schuele (born to Georg Leonhard Schuele on May 22, 1740) thus is a good candidate for his wife. By the early 1760s, John and Catherine would have begun having the first of their ten children, the last of whom would have been born just about when Rachel and Catharina were baptized.

Presuming that the older Griffiths migrated southwest toward Frederick County, Virginia (perhaps with prior residences in Pennsylvania and Maryland), their arrival in northern Virginia during the early 1760s makes sense. What we cannot say is whether the younger Griffith couple – that is, Rachel and Catharina's parents – took the same path, at the same time, but it is worth noting again that Schueles also seem to have lived in York County, Pennsylvania, and in Frederick County, Maryland, during these same years. The fact that John and Catherine Griffith had children baptized in York County, Pennsylvania, as early as 1766 and in Frederick County, Maryland, as late as 1775 may help to delineate their movements, but as we have seen there are reasons why we cannot be precise about them. We also cannot say whether the younger Griffiths moved further south in order to live near (or with) John's parents in northwestern Virginia; instead they might have stayed close to those members of Catherine's family, and the cluster of Germans with whom the Schueles had intermarried, who migrated from Pennsylvania to eastern Shenandoah County. Thus it remains possible that one or more of the Frederick and Hampshire County, Virginia, land transactions cited earlier did involve the younger John Griffith, Elizabeth's father, but without more information we cannot determine that.

By the 1770s, the older John Griffiths, in Frederick County, would have been nearing the end of their expected lifespans. If the younger John Griffith and his wife were living nearby, they might have decided after the deaths of John's parents to relocate to eastern Shenandoah County, probably because Catherine had kin there.¹⁰ In any event, by the early 1780s they are found living there, which places John Griffith in position to purchase his 172 acres alongside those of John Rickabaugh in 1786. Without more evidence we can only speculate further about the early movements of John and Catherine Griffith and their relationship, if any, to the John and Margaret Griffith of Frederick County, Virginia, but at least this tentative scenario makes plausible sense out of what we do know and incorporates some of the other information we have gleaned.

The 172 acres that John and Catherine Griffith purchased on October 14, 1786, was on the drains of Dry Run in Shenandoah (now Page) County. This property, southeast of Luray, was south of Piney Hill. John Griffith and his wife sold this property on October 24, 1792, and moved to the north side of Piney Hill. Here they bought 336 acres bordering Piney Hill and Dry Run itself. On this property, both of them lived out their lives. John Griffith died sometime between August 28, 1816, when he signed his will, and September 11, 1820, when it was proven in Shenandoah County. Catherine died on July 13, 1824. Both John and his wife are most likely buried in the old Griffith Cemetery on their land; this cemetery is on the banks of Dry Run.¹¹p>

Returning to the Rickabaughs, we observe that brothers John and Adam Rickabaugh begin to be mentioned in Shenandoah County records from the early 1780s, as they reach adulthood, and from these records we can conclude that they lived in that county through most of the decade. John is the first to appear in the records, in 1782, when he serves as a member of a grand jury. Based on the tax lists they were on, we know that the Rickabaugh brothers lived in the Page Valley, which became part of the new Page County in the 19th century.

We know little more about the Rickabaughs, but because John was married by a well-known Baptist minister (Rev. John Koontz) whose efforts converted many of the German Mennonites in the Page Valley, we can guess that the Rickabaughs may have been among the Mennonites who became Baptists at this time. Koontz was pastor of the Mill Creek Baptist Church in White House, Virginia, not far from where the Rickabaughs and the Griffiths lived. This area is adjacent to what today is known as "the Iron Works District," which makes us wonder if John Rickabaugh was somehow engaged in the ironworking business.

After their father died in 1780, Adam and John may have resided together on their late father's property (which they now jointly owned) on Hawksbill Creek until they both married five years later. But the fact that it was John who in 1782 sold off 30 acres of the property there that Magdalene had inherited from her father suggests to me that Adam was not living in the area. Then, in April 1787, both Adam and John (and their wives) sold the remaining 169 1/4 acres and left Shenandoah County by separate paths. Adam had in fact already left Shenandoah County, moving to nearby Rockingham County, Virginia, by 1786 (when he disappears from tax records in Shenandoah County) and buying property there during mid-1788. His subsequent moves are described in his application for a pension for his war service between 1777 and 1781, but his statements there are not entirely accurate. Despite what he said on his application, Adam may have lived in Rockingham County through 1798 at least, or perhaps even until 1801. In the latter year he moved to Ross County, Ohio, and by 1805 on to Gallia County in that state.¹²

John remained in Shenandoah County longer, perhaps because he was courting the daughter of John and Catherine Griffith, Elizabeth, whom he married in 1785. That county's personal property tax rolls show him every year from 1782 through 1791 with two to four horses and two to seven head of cattle.¹³ On October 14, 1786, the same day John and Catherine Griffith purchased their 172 acres south of Piney Mountain, John and Elizabeth Rickabaugh obtained from the same seller his remaining 172 acres, which was located immediately to the west of the Griffiths' property.¹⁴ Shenandoah County property tax lists show John Rickabaugh with this 172 acres through 1791. On July 28, 1791, John and Elizabeth Rickabaugh sold their 172 acres and,we assume, moved west to Greenbrier County, Virginia (now in West Virginia).

John Rickabaugh first appears in Greenbrier County records in November 1791, so we can assume that he and his family had moved there sometime between July and then. They must have rented land until 1794, when (on June 30) John Rickabaugh – described in the deed as Joseph Ringsbacker – bought 165 acres in the Muddy Creek Settlement, south of Lewisburg and north of Alderson. Two years later, on July 7, 1796, John Rickabaugh added to his property another 12 acres, for a total of 177 acres. Greenbrier County has six tax lists encompassing the period when the Rickabaughs might have been living there. These cover the following years, sometimes combined on one list: 1782 and 1783, 1786 and 1788, 1792, 1796, 1799, and 1805. We find John in 1792, 1796, and 1799 – sometimes with still other variants on the name Rickabaugh (Rizabougher and Regaback among them) but clearly the right man. These tax rolls and the survey for the 12 acres tell us that the Rickabaughs resided on the east side of Muddy Creek near the dam on Mill Creek. John Rickabaugh is not on the tax list for 1805, and neither is anyone that year whose name even faintly resembles Rickabaugh.

Greenbrier County has six tax lists encompassing the period when the Rickabaughs might have been living there. These cover the following years, sometimes combined on one list: 1782 and 1783, 1786 and 1788, 1792, 1796, 1799, and 1805. We find John in 1792, 1796, and 1799 – sometimes with variants on the name Rickabaugh (Rizabougher and Regaback among them), but clearly the right man. These tax rolls and a land survey for 12 acres dated July 7, 1796, show that the Rickabaughs resided on the east side of Muddy Creek near the dam on Mill Creek. It is possible that John Rickabaugh actually was present in the Muddy Creek settlement as early as 1788, perhaps clearing some of the land he had recently patented or building a house, as a man whose name was recorded as John Ridingour is found on that year's Greenbrier County tax list. John Rickabaugh is not on the tax list for 1805, and neither is anyone that year whose name even faintly resembles Rickabaugh.¹⁵

Given what we know about the Rickabaughs, their land in Greenbrier County, and the economy of that part of Virginia, we can guess that John Rickabaugh raised cattle while he lived there. John appears in the county's court orders seven, possibly eight, times between November 1791 and March 1798. Four times he is on a jury; twice he was a party to a suit for debt, once as a plaintiff and once as a defendant; and once he was paid for five days of serving as a witness for someone. On another occasion, John Rickabaugh may have represented another man in a suit, acted as his surrogate, or provided surety for him – the language in the record is ambiguous.

In mid-1799, John and Elizabeth Rickabaugh sold their land in Greenbrier County. Deeds show one parcel of 107 1/2 acres of land was sold on July 29 and the remaining parcel of 69 1/2 acres was sold on August 26. Presumably they then headed for Ohio, where we find our first reference to John Rickabaugh in 1805. Ohio was just opening up as a new state, and the abundant land there was not only of better quality than that in Greenbrier County but likely to become more valuable over time. In addition, there was a growing market for beef in the part of Ohio to which John and Elizabeth now moved. Perhaps Ohio had always been their goal and Greenbrier County was only a temporary residence until the Indian dangers in Ohio were finally extinguished, as they were by the late 1790s.

Once again there is some doubt about timing, however, for an April 1808 deed for land in the Muddy Creek Settlement describes adjoining property as belonging to John Rickabaugh. Since he had sold all of his property in 1799, it seems likely that whoever wrote the deed in 1808 copied from an earlier document the metes and bounds and the names of the adjoining landowners, putting down John Rickabaugh's name among them though he and Elizabeth had actually disposed of that land a decade before. Thus it also seems quite likely that the Rickabaughs left Virginia for good during mid-1799, and John's absence from the 1805 Greenbriar County tax list would seem to confirm this.

Did they go directly to Ohio? We do not know how the two brothers, John and Adam Rickabaugh, came to reunite in Ohio after living a decade or more apart. Because, as we have seen, we cannot be certain that John himself ever lived in Ohio, we must hold open the possibility that he took his family from Greenbriar County to some other place, perhaps Kentucky, leaving it to his widow Elizabeth to link up with Adam and other Rickabaughs in Ohio after John's death. Or was it a coincidence that the two brothers both decided to settle in Ohio and only later rediscovered one another and resettled in the same county there? Again we cannot say. It is worth remembering that Catherine McCoy, wife of John and Elizabeth's son Adam, evidently was born in Kentucky, which may be a clue that the Rickabaughs met the McCoys in that state before both families moved north to Ohio. I have not, though, found any documentary evidence to establish that the Rickabaughs did live in the northeast part of Kentucky adjoining Gallia County, Ohio.

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We step back a generation to examine the parents of Adam and John Rickabaugh. They were the sons of HENRY RICKABAUGH (here, Riggerbacker), who mentions them in his will. We cannot be absolutely positive of the identity of this man, but my study of the Rickabaughs leads me to believe that he was the Henry Rickabaugh who was born in Canton Basel, Switzerland, in 1735, where he was baptized on May 22, 1735. (We will return to this topic later.) We do not know exactly when Henry came to Virginia, but a good guess would be the mid-1750s: he is never mentioned in Virginia before then but by 1758 or 1759 married MAGDALENE {LIONBERGER} RICKABAUGH, whose family was living in what was then Frederick County there. We first see Henry in mid-1771, when he is a chain carrier in a survey. That year, too, a survey of the 199 1/4 acres that Magdalene inherited from her father identifies her as the wife of Henry Rickabaugh. Then we see Henry on a militia (tax) list in Dunmore County, Virginia, sometime between 1772 and 1777 – a span we can calculate from the fact that Dunmore County (created out of Frederick County) existed only in those years before being renamed Shenandoah County.¹⁶

Magdalene and Henry's land lay along Hawksbill Creek, and the portion of the militia list on which he appeared, as Henery Rickabecker, is now in Page County, Virginia. Their home, which still stands, was on the north side of Hawksbill Creek about three miles south of Luray. Henry died in Virginia sometime during 1780, having written his will (which identifies him as Henry Ricaboker) on June 22 of that year. It was probated in Shenandoah County, Virginia, on August 17, 1780.¹⁷ Henry Rickabaugh was only 45 years of age when he died. He wrote his will very soon before his death, and one wonders if a sudden illness or an accident of some sort accounts for his premature death.

In his will, Henry left his land to be divided equally by his two oldest sons, John and Adam. After setting aside one-third of his estate for Magdalene, Henry directed that his six children (Henry, Peter, Barbara, and Margaret were the others) should divide his appraised moveable property equally. That property was substantial and highly valued, too: nine horses, sixteen head of cattle, ten sheep, nine hogs, fourteen geese, a wagon and several saddles, a windmill, a smooth-bore gun, two plows and considerable other farm equipment, and a sizeable list of household goods – including a clock and eighteen books. Henry's signature, reflecting his European origins, is in German script.

Magdalene {Lionberger} Rickabaugh was born about 1738 and was still living in December 1785 when she gave her permission for a daughter to be married. We are probably right to conclude that she had died by April 1787, when her sons sold the last of the 199 1/4 acres that she had inherited from her father and left Shenandoah County forever. It is also possible that one of them, John or Adam, took Magdalene into his household and that she died some place other than in Shenandoah County at a later time following their departures from that county.

It seems likely that the Lionberger family was from Canton Bern in Switzerland, where the name was spelled either Leinburger or Lyinburger. Members of this family were among the passengers who arrived in Philadelphia on August 26, 1735. Their ship was a bilander – a small ship typically employed in the North and Mediterranean Seas, not the Atlantic Ocean – named the Oliver (Samuel Merchant, captain). It is shown arriving from South Carolina, where there was a Swiss colony at Purysburg – and where, presumably, some of its passengers had disembarked. No doubt the voyage had originated in Rotterdam and the Oliver had touched at an English port as required.

This particular group of Swiss emigrants has received more attention than most, which is why we know that like many of the others the Lionbergers originated in the Schwarzenburg region of Canton Bern – in their case, from Grasburg. In addition, the passenger register for the Oliver is unusually explicit about passengers, and so we can see that this family consisted of Hans and Elisabeth (50 and 45 years old, respectively) and five younger members who are, one supposes from their ages, this couple's children: Hans (25), Elisabeth (20) Barbara (14), Peter (8), and Hannah (3). Other sources tell us that the Lionberger family can be traced to the Emmen Valley and Upper Aargan. One earlier member is said to have been Niklaus Lionberger of Ruderswil, who led a revolt of Swiss peasants in 1653.

Magdalene's father HANS (Americanized to JOHN) LIONBERGER, the younger of the two men of that name on the 1735 passenger list, thus was born in Switzerland in 1710. He lived for some years in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where he was naturalized in 1739 and married BARBARA {BÄR or BAER} LIONBERGER. Sometime during the 1740s, probably, the Lionbergers – like so many other Germans in Pennsylvania – moved south, in their case to the Hawksbill Creek of what was then Frederick County, Virginia, but is now Page County of that state.¹⁸ Here John helped to survey Lord Fairfax's lands (he was a pilot and a chain carrier). On September 19, 1749, he and his brother together obtained 1,100 acres of these lands for themselves. Later, on September 7, 1756, John secured another 150 acres on the west side of Hawksbill Creek that had also been surveyed in 1749. John wrote his will on November 26, 1756, and died between then and June 7, 1757, when his will was probated and his land was divided among his heirs – including Magdalene, as we have seen. John Lionberger's wife, Barbara, evidently was born in Ratisberg (or Ratlisberg), Canton Zürich, about 1711; she was still alive when her husband John Lionberger wrote his will in late 1756.¹⁹

John Lionberger's father, the older HANS (or JOHN) LIONBERGER was born in Canton Bern on April 29, 1681 (although his age is shown as 50 years old on the register of the Oliver in 1735). Some researchers think he had come to Conestoga Township, Chester County (later in Lancaster County), Pennsylvania, about 1720, resided there for a few years, and then returned to Switzerland for his family. Whether or not this is so, John Lionberger is found in Leacock Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, by 1740 and seems to have died there during the 1750s – possibly in an Indian attack near Tulpehocken, Bethel Township, Berks County, about November 15, 1755, if one source is accurate. John's wife was ELISABETH {BURKHALTER} LIONBERGER, who was born in Canton Bern in about 1690; she, too, was still living at the time her son John wrote his will in 1756.

We do not have definite information about the Burkhalter line, but undoubtedly her family was also part of the same Anabaptist community as the others we are looking at in this section. One possible father of Elisabeth was Hans Burkhalter, born in Oberdiessbach, Canton Bern, Switzerland, on September 25, 1670. He was the son and grandson of men with that same name. Hans went to America in 1717 and was a Mennonite minister in Pennsylvania, dying in Lancaster County there in 1744. His wife was a woman named Catherine, but the names of most of this couple's children are unknown. It is only a guess that Elizabeth might have been among them. Another possible father for her is Joseph Burkhalter, born about 1628, who lived with his wife (Elisabeth Widmer) and family at Rüderswil in Canton Bern. This couple did have a daughter named Elisabeth, born on September 3, 1686, but nothing more is known of her. At least one of Joseph and Elisabeth's other children came to America, and perhaps their daughter Elisabeth did as well. We can hope that we learn more some day about the Burkhalter line, and that we can establish the identity of John Lionberger's wife of that name.

There does seem to be fairly good information about the Lionbergers, although I have not seen the evidence to substantiate the lineage outlined here. We should regard what follows, therefore, as speculative and provisional pending further research. According to some Lionberger researchers the next earlier generation before the Hans born in 1681 consists of Ulrich, born on January 15, 1642/3, and his wife Margaret Oberlin, whom he married on March 23, 1670. Ulrich's father was an older Ulrich Lionberger, born in November 1611 in Canton Bern. His wife was Barbara {Leuthi} Lionberger, whom he married on March 5, 1631. Her family is unknown. Ulrich's father was Hans Lionberger, born in 1586. He married Elsi Moser, born in 1589. Her family is also among the unknowns. The father of Hans Lionberger was Niklaus Lionberger, born about 1536, who married Anna Rothenbuehler. Anna's family is unknown, too. Niklaus's father was another Lionberger bearing that name who was born in 1511. At that point our knowledge of the Lionberger family runs out.²⁰

We turn now to the Bär side of the ancestry of Magdalene Lionberger, wife of Henry Rickabaugh. The parents of Barbara, Magdalene's mother, are said to have been HANS JAGELY (usually Americanized to JOHAN JACOB) BÄR and ANNA BARBARA {FREDERICK} BÄR. Hans was born in Hausen, in Canton Zürich, on March 18 of 1675/6 or 1676/7 and died in Lancaster Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on July 3, 1759.

We do not know exactly when the Bär family arrived in America, but Jacob was the first settler – in 1717 – in Oregon, on the road from Lancaster to Reading. It was here, in Manheim Township, that Jacob Bär built two mills on Carter's or Lititz Creek. He is undoubtedly the Jacob Bear on the county's tax rolls in 1724-25, and in 1728-29 he is among those who petitioned for the new Lancaster County; he was naturalized as a citizen in 1739. The evidence indicates that Jacob owned considerable land in various townships, but by the late 1740s he seems to have sold much of this land and the mills (grist, oil, and saw) that he owned. As late as 1756, though, the tax lists for Earl Township in Lancaster County show a Jacob Barr with 100 acres, along with another property holder named Jacob Barr in Warwick Township.²¹ One account suggests that he kept a tavern in Conestoga Township where Peters Road crossed the Horseshoe Road.²² Jacob Bär was a member of Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster.

Jacob Bär's wife Anna was the daughter of Isaac Frederick, who was born in Eggiwil, Switzerland, on June 13, 1680. He probably was one of 363 Mennonites who emigrated to Pennsylvania in August of 1717, for he is on the 1718 and 1719 tax lists in Conestoga Township of Chester County (later Lancaster County); he lived on Mill Creek. Isaac Frederick died in Lancaster County about 1721, since his will was probated on November 30 of that year. Isaac's wife was a woman known to us only as Mary, who also died in that county. Beyond that we know nothing of her family

There is additional information for the Frederick line, however. Isaac's father was Jacob Frederick, born in Eggiwil about 1647, and his mother was Catharina {Stram} Frederick. They were married in Eggiwil on December 18, 1668, and lived at Dieboldbach in that community. Jacob's father was Isaac Frederick, born December 30, 1610, in Signau. His wife was Elsbeth {Zurflü} Frederick. The earliest Frederick we know by name was this Isaac's father, Tobias, born about 1575 in Signau. His wife was Barbli {Schnyder} Frederick. There our information ceases and we return to the Bär line.

The earlier portions of the Bär line are more uncertain. I have developed a composite picture of Barbara's ancestry based on information I have received from several researchers, but I have less confidence here that this speculation is accurate. The parents of Hans Jagely Bär were Hans Bär and Verena {Huber} Bär. He was born in Hausen, Switzerland, on January 23, 1646/7 or 1647/8; was christened in Rossau, Canton Zürich, on June 6, 1660; and died on July 1, 1715 or 1717 either in Hausen or on the London Company's Tract in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. He was a wagoner. Verena was born on October 5, 1644 or 1651 in Schweickhof, near Hausen, and died in Hausen on October 20, 1679.²³ She is the first of several Huber women who intermarried with the Bärs, and we assume that they were all of one larger Huber family. Verena's parents were Jacob Huber, born in Hausen in January 1591/2 and died in the same town on February 3, 1659/60, and Vren {Frey} Huber, born in Zwillkon in 1597 and died in Hausen on February 5, 1659/60. Jacob Huber's parents were Jacob Huber, born in 1560, and Barbara {Ringger} Huber, born in 1568.

We return again to the Bärs, now to the parents of Hans born in 1646/7 or 1647/8. They were another Hans (although some researchers give him the name Heinrich instead) and a second Verena Huber. The older Hans was born in Hausen, living from 1612 (he was christened there on July 4 of that year) to April of 1659, when he died in the Ober Albis area of Hausen.²⁴ Verena was born in Mettmenstetten, Canton Zürich, on May 13, 1613. She was christened there on October 15, 1615, and died in Hausen on March 28, 1676. Hans and Verena were married on November 16, 1634. Her parents were Heinrich Huber and Barbara {Frick or Funk} Huber.

For a final time we return to the Bär line, which we can now follow to its earliest known member. The father of Hans or Heinrich Bär was Lorenz Bär, who also was born and died in Hausen; his dates were July 10, 1580 (also his baptismal date), through December 9, 1617. Lorenz's wife was Anna {Strehler} Bär, born in Hausen in 1590, who died sometime before 1634. Lorenz's parents were Hans Bär, who lived from about 1545 to sometime prior to 1614, and Katrina {Huber} Bär, who lived from about 1545 or 1549 until April 22, 1622. Both members of this couple lived their entire lives in Bruder, Albis Ober Ratisberg, also in Canton Zürich. The earliest member of the Bär family was the father of Hans, also named Hans, whose dates and spouse we do not know. Here even this unverified information finally gives out and we can return to the Rickabaugh family into which Magdalene {Lionberger} Rickabaugh married about 1758 or 1759.

I found scant information about Rickabaughs in Virginia. In the belief that this family, like so many other German and Swiss families, had migrated down the mountain valleys from Pennsylvania, I turned there to see what I could learn about Rickabaughs. Information about the family is plentiful in Pennsylvania, I found, particularly in Berks County and Lancaster County. After studying that information, I am of the opinion that the father of the Henry Rickabaugh born in 1735 was HENRY RICKABAUGH), who was born in Zeglingen, Switzerland – evidently on March 8, 1696, which was also the date on which he was baptized. He died in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1741.²⁵ His will was written on February 28, 1741, and proved on March 25, 1741.

Henry Rickabaugh and his family are on two lists that document their passage to America. One is a Swiss list of departees dated in mid-March 1740. The other is a list of passengers who arrived in Philadelphia (from Rotterdam with a stop in Cowes) aboard the Friendship of Bristol, Captain William Vettery commanding, although the officer who made the list wrote Henry's family name as Rickembacker. Henry himself wrote "Heinrich Rickenbacher" in his own hand when he signed the oath of abjuration in Philadelphia on September 23, 1740. He was described as having lived in Zeglingen, a town in the district of Homberg just south of the Rhine River about halfway between Zürich and Basel where the Rickabaugh family had deep roots.

Henry's wife, BARBARA {THOMMEN} RICKABAUGH), who was born in Switzerland about 1701, died soon after the family arrived in Philadelphia in the fall of 1740. All we know about her family is that her father, ADAM THOMMEN), also of Zeglingen, Switzerland, died in 1743.²⁶ According to a genealogy of the Rickabaugh family, Henry and Barbara were married in 1722, probably in Kilchberg, Switzerland, a nearby town in which Zeglingen's parish church was located. Both the Rickabaughs and the Thommens had been millers for many years.

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Thus I discovered that the Rickabaughs,²⁷ along with many of the families with which they intermarried, were part of the Amish and Amish Mennonite settlement of Pennsylvania that took place during the first half of the 18th century. Information that has been contributed to the LDS identifies one Rickabaugh family (Reichenbach, in this case) in Switzerland as far back as the 16th century, mostly in the Lauenen and Gsteig areas near Bern.²⁸ It seems evident, though, that the Rickabaugh line in which we are interested (known as Rickenbach in Switzerland) came from the area of Zeglingen and Kilchberg, near Basel. How the various Rickabaugh families were related in Switzerland (and possibly in Germany), if they were, cannot be determined.

A large percentage of the Swiss immigrants to America during the 18th century were members of small religious sects, not only Amish and Amish Mennonites but many others (Anabaptists and Pietists for the most part) who left Switzerland in part to seek religious liberty and in part because their large families required more and more land. Switzerland was a rather poor country at that time, and those in search of economic security looked elsewhere. The neighbors of the members of these sects, who disliked them because of their beliefs and were jealous of their agricultural skills, did not hesitate to make them feel unwelcome.

The Mennonites, named for the 16th-century Dutchman named Menno Simons who was their founder, espoused an evangelical and severely simple religious outlook. They opposed infant baptism, insisted on the Bible as the only spiritual authority, tried to keep their marriages within the Mennonite community of faith, believed in pacifism, refused to take oaths, and dressed very plainly. The Mennonites came to be concentrated in the Jura Mountains and along the Rhine River in Switzerland and southern Germany.

The Amish, named for the followers of Jakob Ammann, believed much as the Mennonites did but favored stricter rules on attire and employed firmer discipline – using shunning and excommunication if necessary. Both sects were often persecuted for their views, especially because the authorities regarded them as subversive to social order and potentially disloyal. From about the middle of the 17th century on, both Amish and Amish Mennonites were expelled from Switzerland or fled before they could be forced out.²⁹

William Penn, eager to populate (and sell) his large land holdings in America, enthusiastically recruited Swiss and German settlers from the Palatine, the area along the Rhine River that had been badly mauled during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648).³⁰ He made several trips there himself to drum up immigration to Pennsylvania. He could point to the Penn family's liberal views on religious tolerance, along with thousands of acres of fertile land that were available. So it was that thousands of Swiss and Germans came to America,³¹ some directly and some passing through the Netherlands. There was a steady flow of Palatines throughout the first half of the 18th century; some of them were actively recruited by Penn and others, but some came because of other publicity about the new land called America. The peak came in 1749 through 1754, when some 30,000 of these people arrived in Pennsylvania. We have already encountered many of these Palatine emigrants while examining other families.

The experiences of two second cousins, both named Henry Rickabaugh, who emigrated from the Zeglingen area five years apart, show the obstacles emigrants typically encountered when they decided to leave Switzerland. The first Henry (not the man from whom Sarah Elizabeth Rickabaugh was descended), from Rünenberg, was granted permission to leave by the district council in 1735 and started off down the Rhine to "Carolina," a term the Swiss sometimes used in referring to America in general. The law required the district council to give permission before emigrants could leave Switzerland, and so Henry's council investigated why he wished to go to America before giving its reluctant approval. The inquiry noted that a pamphlet was being used to recruit settlers for the Carolinas, but Henry said he was induced to go by conversation, especially with his brother-in-law.

Henry Rickabaugh and some of the others who left when he did asked for a waiver of the manumission dues (serfdom still operated in Switzerland) and of the ten-percent tax on property being transported, but this request was refused. In 1739, Henry asked for the release of some money owed to him, but for decades no action was taken on his request.³² The second man named Henry Rickabaugh departed, along with his family, soon after March 16, 1740, when the same district council granted them permission to do so. This Henry took with him property with a fairly high value, compared with that of others, on which he paid the ten-percent tax. This man, we believe, was the ancestor of Sarah Elizabeth Rickabaugh.

Most of the emigrants traveled down the Rhine to its mouth at Rotterdam, then as now one of Europe's principal ports. This journey would ordinarily take only seven to nine days but probably took the emigrants far longer (perhaps five to six weeks) because of various inspections and payments at the more than two dozen customs houses. Then the travelers had to remain in Rotterdam for some weeks until passage to America could be arranged. This was an economic as well as physical ordeal for the emigrants, all the more because they had to leave much of their capital in escrow with the government back in Switzerland until they could prove they were successfully settled – and working – elsewhere and would not return home as paupers. The next stop for emigrants was a week or two in a port in England (typically Cowes on the Isle of Wight), where the captain received official clearance to take the passengers to what was still a British colony.

Finally the ship could sail for America, usually destined for one of Philadelphia's sixty or more docks along the west bank of the Delaware River. This arduous ocean crossing typically took eight to ten weeks – never less than seven. It was not uncommon for many of the passengers to die of hunger and privation in their crowded quarters, or to be cheated by the merchants who arranged for passage and provisions – or by the captains who were supposed to make those provisions available. Sometimes survivors were forced to pay the costs of passage for those who had died en route; when they could not come up with the funds, survivors could be sold into indentured servitude.

Those unlucky ones joined many others for whom indentured servitude was a certainty: would-be emigrants who lacked the cash to cover the expenses of the journey or, if they had the funds, wished to husband their resources. In their view, three to five years of their labor was a fair trade for having someone else get them to America and take care of them while they became acclimated and perhaps learned a skill. Having signed a written contract before departure, the servant's labor was now a commodity. The captain, a merchant, or a labor agent agreed to transport, feed, and otherwise see to the care of the indentured servant, whose value could be expressed in quite tangible terms.

Upon arrival (and, often, a health inspection) in an American port, the servants were displayed – not unlike slaves and transported convicts – on deck for potential buyers. These buyers assessed each servant's likely skills, character, intelligence, reliability, and other qualities. Weeks of inadequate food, exercise, and medical care did not flatter the servants, to be sure, but there were usually plenty of buyers. The negotiations with the captain or other owner of the servant's indenture complete, the successful buyer paid in cash, credit, or produce and led the servant away to his or her new home. At the close of the contractual period, the indentured servant generally received a little cash and perhaps some clothing and was free to pursue his or her fortune in America. (Some persons were allowed to cross as "redemptioners," laborers who were given the opportunity to earn enough money after their arrival in order to repay the cost of passage. If they failed during an agreed-upon length of time, they too had to accept indentured servitude for a period based on what they still owed.) Thus freedom to make one's way in America came with very real costs: if not gold coins to pay the fare, then years of labor to repay what it had cost to get here – unless of course one simply chose to vanish during the term of indentured servitude.

Sarah's ancestor Henry Rickabaugh and his family seem to have had sufficient resources to escape the prospect of indentured servitude in America, but their ocean passage was exceptionally stormy. Many of the provisions were destroyed or lost, along with the cooking kettles. As a result, some of the immigrants starved. These conditions may account for the deaths of Henry Rickabaugh's two youngest children during the voyage – and may have contributed to the death of Henry's wife, Barbara, too, soon after the family arrived in Philadelphia in September 1740. Henry, suddenly alone in Philadelphia with the six remaining children, subsequently moved to what the original account calls Conestoga, Pennsylvania – presumably the township of that name in Lancaster County. The surviving Rickabaughs arrived there – suitably enough, by means of a Conestoga wagon – on November 4, 1740. Here Henry himself died in 1741, perhaps fatally weakened as well by the terrible ocean voyage. The two youngest children, Margareth (8) and Henry (5), were raised by guardians recruited from the Gerber family, to which the Rickabaughs were related.³³

The process Henry would have undergone when he and his family arrived in Philadelphia further enlightens us about what the Palatine newcomers to America experienced. As emigration from the Swiss and German portions of the Palatine increased during the 1720s, the authorities in Pennsylvania decided they should collect information about how many German and Swiss newcomers they were receiving, as well as ensure that those arriving would become loyal citizens of the colony. Beginning in 1727 ship captains were required to list any adult males 16 years or older, along with their families, and these adult males themselves had to swear an oath of abjuration. Immediately upon their arrival, the newcomers were supposed to be taken in person to the courthouse, found in the middle of High (now Market) Street on the west side of Second Street, in order to take oaths forsaking their previous loyalty, swearing fealty to England and its ruler, and renouncing the Roman Catholic Church.³⁴ Each immigrant was expected to sign the oaths, or to have the clerk sign for him. Those who were ill upon arrival were expected to complete the process when well again, though many never not.

It is thanks to these oaths of abjuration, which were bound in volumes, that we can identify so many Palatine immigrants, for both the original lists of passengers prepared by the captains and most of the signed oaths of loyalty have long since disappeared. The remaining records represent only a fraction of all those persons who arrived in Philadelphia, and of course others arrived in other ports – although Philadelphia was the major port of arrival. Even so, they are a treasure trove of information.

Like Henry, most of the new arrivals who were not bound to servitude did not wish to remain long in Philadelphia: small as it was (extending only from the river westward to Seventh Street and from between a little beyond South Street to about Vine Street), Philadelphia reigned during the 18th century as the largest urban area in America and so was probably far larger than the European villages most of these people had come from. The newcomers generally moved outwards from Philadelphia or whatever other port in which they had arrived and began the process of putting down agricultural roots. The search for cheap, undeveloped land – land that they could own – drove them outward until they found sufficient acreage to support their families and perhaps grow some cash crops, chiefly grain, that would enable the settlers to purchase the few things (gunpowder, sugar, and salt, for instance) they could not produce themselves. Having selected locations near abundant water, they began to clear the ever-present forests (a few acres a year at best). In time these isolated farmsteads, often two or three miles distant from one another, were turned into thriving agricultural enterprises.

In Pennsylvania, the Amish and Amish Mennonites lived amongst one another but kept separate; both were in turn intermingled with Lutheran and Reformed neighbors, usually also of German and Swiss origin. We have already met several such families, for example the Zinks and the Funkhousers, and will encounter still more. Gradually the Susquehanna Valley northwest of Philadelphia filled up. Crossings of that great river were established at Harris's Ferry (now Harrisburg) and Wright's Ferry (now Columbia). When the newcomers reached the Juniata River, geography began to steer them first westward and then increasingly toward the southwest.

Rickabaughs were among the first settlers who reached Upper Bern Township of Berks County, Pennsylvania, in 1737; they were known as the "Northkill Settlement." At the time, this area, set in a notch in the Blue Mountains, was the very edge of the frontier.³⁵ Following a massacre during an attack by Indian raiders in 1757, many of those in the Northkill Settlement retreated. Some of them later returned but others, including a number of the Rickabaughs, moved further south to the eastern part of Lancaster County during the 1760s; here they lived in Honey Brook Township (now in Chester County). Other families settled in an area east and south of Reading, along the Wyomissing Creek in what is now Cumru Township of Berks County, Pennsylvania. A Jacob, John, and Adam Rickabaugh all were part of the latter group, and these Rickabaughs very likely include the children of Henry and Barbara {Thommen} Rickabaugh.

Other Amish and Amish Mennonites (particularly the latter) were drawn south across the Potomac River and into the northern reaches of the Shenandoah Valley. Rickabaughs were apparently numbered among them, too. By the mid-1700s there were Rickabaughs living in Virginia – by the 1760s, near Broadway and Tenth Legion in what is now Rockingham County. Around 1760 another Mennonite colony was established on the east bank of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River near Hamburg.³⁶ As we have learned, tax records in Shenandoah County record Rickabaughs (the name is spelled Richebaker) during the 1780s.

Thus Adam and John Rickabaugh's forbears had been among the Amish and Amish Mennonites who by the middle of the 18th century had arrived at the northern end of the Great Valley and found it beckoning them southwestward into Virginia and beyond.³⁷ By about 1810, the Amish and Amish Mennonite tide in Pennsylvania had also flowed westward across most of that state, and soon groups were crossing into Ohio. In both instances the Amish and Amish Mennonites were impelled to migrate partly because they disagreed on some doctrinal matter and decided to strike out on their own and partly in search of fresh land: large families like theirs meant many children who needed acreage to develop into their own farms. When they could, those moving sought out another Amish or Amish Mennonite community to attach to. By the middle of the 19th century Amish and Amish Mennonite clusters had sprung up in a broad band across Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, and even beyond. Today they have spread further.

It is no wonder that Henry Rickabaugh, an orphan living with his Hans Gerber foster family, would be particularly attracted to seeking his fortune in Virginia as soon as he was old enough to leave Pennsylvania – probably sometime during the late 1740s. Doubtless he trekked south with other Swiss and German Pennsylvanians who also found Virginia beckoning. Here he would marry Magdalene Lionberger and begin the line that would give us Sarah Elizabeth Rickabaugh.

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Having identified the probable links between Sarah Elizabeth's father, Henry, and his namesake the Henry Rickabaugh who arrived in America as a child in 1740, we can now turn to the European origins of this interesting family. Henry Rickabaugh the immigrant (1696-1741), said to have been a church caretaker in Switzerland, was probably the son of HANS RICKABAUGH and ELSBETH {BUSS}³⁸ RICKABAUGH. Hans was born in Zeglingen, Switzerland, in 1653 and died in 1719. We know nothing about Elsbeth and her family except that she was evidently born on March 24, 1665. She and Hans were married in Kilchberg, Switzerland, on January 26, 1692.

Hans Rickabaugh was the son of HANS RICKABAUGH and ANNA {GYSIN} RICKABAUGH, who were married, also in Kilchberg, on December 1, 1646. The elder Hans lived between May 27, 1626, and March 12, 1711; he was born and died in Zeglingen. We know nothing more about Anna and her Gysin family, except that they may have come from the village of Oltingen. Hans Rickabaugh was an innkeeper in Zeglingen and from 1668 until his death the village's Kirchmeier, which translates as "steward" or "renter" of the church. A good guess is that he had the responsibility for administering the church's extensive property, perhaps leasing it from the church and then renting it out in smaller parcels to those who actually worked the land. Hans was the son of JACOB "MICHAEL JOGGI" RICKABAUGH, born in Zeglingen on July 25, 1593.³⁹ His wife was BARBARA {WIDMER} RICKABAUGH, possibly born about 1591. They too were married at Kilchberg, on April 27, 1623.⁴⁰ Jacob may have died in 1659. Once again we know nothing more about the female line, except that the Widmer family may also have come from the village of Zeglingen.

Jacob's father bore the name MICHEL RICKABAUGH, a man who may have been born in 1550. We do not know the name of his wife. According to one Rickabaugh genealogy, Michel was the son of MARTIN RICKABAUGH, born about 1512. Martin in turn was the son of JACOB RICKABAUGH, who lived between about 1480 and about 1530. Jacob is the first Rickabaugh to be recorded in Zeglingen, having appeared there between 1503 and 1530 after having lived in Basel. Once he arrived in Zeglingen he may have lived in the Gelterkinden region of that town, then in a nearby village bearing the name Rickenbach.

Earlier Rickabaughs are known to have lived in the old Roman town of Augusta Raurica near Liestal, where a Henman Rickenback was a miller in 1439, and even earlier in Rhinefelden on the Rhine River – not far from Liestal – where a Rickenbach Castle (actually, a bishop's residence) once stood. Here a Rudolfus Rickenbach was a minister in 1305. A Fritzchi Rigkenbach of Úberlinger was made a citizen of Basel in 1332 for his role in that city's struggle with Endingen. Beyond this, we cannot go and must turn to another of our families.

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rev. 7/27/10

Notes

¹Adam is buried in Row 15, Grave 2 of the cemetery, which is found in the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 4 in Union Township, Marion County, Iowa. Rees Cemetery adjoins Adam's property. Catherine is undoubtedly the "C" Rickabaugh in Samuel's household on the 1870 census, despite the fact that person is said to be male: she has the right age and state of birth – and is also "keeping house."

²Two sources, including Catherine herself, cite either September 13 or 30 of 1813; the county clerk, however, reported the date as February 1, 1814. The county's marriage book, though, is said to show the ceremony (conducted by a justice of the peace named Robert Armstrong) was on September 30, 1814 – a fourth date. Several possibilities come to mind. Catherine might have had a memory lapse. Someone might have confused the dates 13 and 30, which can sound alike. The wrong year might have been written down. The marriage might have been entered in the records later than it occurred. Possibly there were in fact two marriages, one before an itinerant minister and another before a justice of the peace to ensure that the marriage was recorded locally. Return to text

³ Catherine was awarded $8 per month commencing February 14, 1871. Return to text

⁴A civilian who joined in driving the animals on these supply trains was a youngster named John Brown; one wonders if Adam ever met him. Surely the young Rickabaughs had had experience with livestock in Greenbrier County and so Adam was a natural candidate for this duty.Return to text

⁵Adam Rickabaugh is shown on the 1850 non-population census as follows: 2 horses, 2 milk cows, 2 other cattle, 22 sheep, 210 swine, and the production for sale of 20 bushels of wheat, 800 bushels of Indian corn, 100 pounds of butter, and some miscellaneous household manufacturing. The value of the animals he owned was $290, and the value of those slaughtered was $80. The ages shown on the census for Adam Rickabaugh in 1850 (60 years) and 1860 (70 years) are correct. The post office nearest the Rickabaughs was Red Rock. Return to text

⁶Other officers Adam Rickabaugh names in his application for a Revolutionary War pension, besides Colonel McCoy, are Captain John Seeton or Sehorn, Colonel Brown, Captain Reynolds, Captain Michael Reeder, Colonel Abraham Bird, Captain George Preene, Lieutenant Aubrey? Keener, Ensign Isaac Gore, Lieutenant George Leath, and Ensign Fred Comer. Many of these men can be identified in lists of Revolutionary War officers or in Shenandoah County records as coming from one part or another of the Shenandoah Valley. Captain Michael Rader was the commander of the militia company in which Henry Rickabaugh was listed during the early 1770s (see below), and Colonel Abraham Bird was also associated with this company. It may also be noteworthy that a George McCoy is another member of that militia company. In addition, there are hints of a relationship between John McCoy of Augusta County, Virginia (possibly the colonel in question), and a Griffith family, perhaps the one to which Catherine {McCoy} Rickabaugh's mother-in-law belonged (see below). This is purely speculative. I have been unable to find at the National Archives a Revolutionary War service record for Adam Rickabaugh. Return to text

⁷Some sources give the date of this marriage as 1784, but a close examination of the minister's return and other evidence reveals that another couple married about this time by the same man received their license in 1785. Return to text

⁸There is no Camden Parish in Frederick County. There are parishes with that name in Augusta County, to the west, and the new county of Loudoun, created out of Fairfax County, to the east just a few years before, so we cannot fix this location with precision. Return to text

⁹In another clue, we also learn from a will in Frederick County that one other John Griffith there at this time was married to a woman name Rebecca Loyd. Return to text

¹⁰John Griffith's family worshipped in a German Lutheran church in Shenandoah County, so it would appear that he had allowed himself to be absorbed into the culture of his wife's Germanic heritage. In my opinion, this argues for the couple's having remained with her German kin, but we cannot rule out the possibility that they lived for a time in Frederick and/or Hampshire County, Virginia. Return to text

¹¹The first Griffith property lies to the east of county route 668 today. See the USGS map for Big Meadows/Virginia for the location of this property and slide 10257 for a view of it. The later Griffith property is just north of county route 669 today. See the USGS map for Luray/Virginia for its location and slides 10249-53 for views of the cemetery, home site, and property. All these photographs were taken in 2002. Return to text

¹² In his pension application, Adam Rickabaugh claimed to have lived in Lincoln County, North Carolina, from 1792 to 1795; in Stokes County, North Carolina, in 1798; and near Harrisonburg back in Rockingham County, Virginia, until 1801. The records in the last county show, however, that Adam was a taxpayer there from the late 1780s through most of the 1790s and that he sold his property in that county in mid-1798. Perhaps he moved to North Carolina then but got the sequence out of order when he filed for his pension many years later. (Might he have been there when John alone sold the 30 acres in 1782?) It is also possible that Adam retained the property in Rockingham County while taking his family to live in North Carolina, where, it should be noted, his son said he was born in 1794. The only record of his presence in Stokes County, North Carolina, during the 1790s is a 1793 tax list where Adam "Rickenpoh" is shown with 213 acres. Some sources state that Adam Rickabaugh was one of a group of about forty men who in 1790 and 1791 scouted the part of Ohio that would become Gallia County, at which time Adam trapped beavers with Daniel Boone, but Adam's pension application does not refer to this activity. Adam Rickabaugh may have moved to Rockingham County because it was south of the Fairfax Line, which marked the southern boundary of Lord Fairfax's huge holdings. Many people preferred not to be living on an English lord's estate, and the Rickabaughs may be been among them. The Rickabaughs may have left Virginia for Ohio in part because the former had both slavery and an established church whereas Ohio never would, but the economic depression of the 1780's was probably the major factor in their decision to pull up stakes and move west. Return to text

¹³The 1788 personal property tax list shows a black person 16 years old or older in John Rickabaugh's household, but this is probably a recording error: there is no other evidence, from the other nine lists, that he owned a slave. We cannot rule out the possibility, however. Another is that John was just renting that slave's labor that one year.

¹⁴Whereas the property of the Griffiths is to the east of county route 668, that of the Rickabaughs lies mainly on the west side of that route. See the USGS maps for Luray/Virginia and Big Meadows/Virginia for the location of the Rickabaugh property, and see slides 10255-56 and 10258-59 for views of that property in 2002. John Rickabaugh also appears on the Shenandoah County tax roll for 1782, doubtless for the tax on his late father's property: the number of acres taxed is 200 and his father had owned 199 1/4 acres. Return to text

¹⁵The survey for the 12 acres states that John was adding vacant land adjoining his property. See the USGS map for Asbury/West Virginia for the location of Muddy and Mill Creeks. See slides 10569 through 10576 for 2003 views of the Rickabaugh property; parts of the dam are still visible. In 1792 and 1799, John Rickabaugh was the only tithable in his household (son Adam was born in 1790); he had three horses the first year and two in 1799. As we shall see later, Abraham Vanderpool and his family possibly had lived somewhere on or near this same Muddy Creek during the 1750s, until Indian attacks compelled them to move to a safer area. Return to text

¹⁶Henry Rickabaugh is listed in the Gingerich source book, in the family of Henry Rickabaugh the immigrant (1740), but nothing is shown for him except for his date of birth. Some researchers believe that the Virginia Rickabaughs derive instead from a John Rickabaugh who arrived in Philadelphia aboard a small pink (a type of ship) called Lady on September 29, 1733. This man had four sons, including a Henry who might have gone south in time to sire John and Adam about 1760. Other candidates would include Johannes Reichenbach, who with his wife Catherina arrived aboard the Mary from Rotterdam and Deal on September 29, 1735, and Jacob Reigenbaehr, who came on the Phoenix (from Rotterdam and Portsmouth) on September 25, 1751. A family tradition has the Adam Rickabaugh born in 1761 the son of another Adam Rickabaugh of Pennsylvania. One Adam Rickabaugh of Pennsylvania, who like most Rickabaughs of that state lived there his entire life, had it is said fourteen sons, and it is possible that one or more of them went to Virginia. Return to text

¹⁷For Henry Rickabaugh's property in Page County, see slides 09967 and 09968, taken in 2001. It is interesting to note that the 1787 deed mentioned earlier refers to the location as Little Hawksbill Creek. There is an interesting twist to this story: at Magdalene's request, Lord Fairfax on September 17, 1771, awarded Henry Rickabaugh a deed to the 199 1/4 acres on Little Hawksbill Creek that she had inherited as a portion of her father's estate. Henry Rickabaugh did not receive a Fairfax grant for himself. Return to text

¹⁸See Appendix IV for a discussion of migration to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

¹⁹The property of the Lionbergers is about two miles south of Luray, Virginia, between county routes 633 and 638 along what is now U.S. Business Route 340. See the USGS maps for Big Meadows/Virginia and Luray/Virginia. John Lionberger never received title to this property, it appears. In August 1756 he wrote to Fairfax asking for one. He stated that he was sickly and would like to settle the matter during his lifetime. (The fact that John sold 424 acres on October 28, 1756, not long before he died, also suggests that his health had failed.) Despite the absence of a title, John's property was successfully divided among his heirs. Return to text

²⁰ If the theory in the text about the Lionberger line is not correct, the Lionbergers may trace instead to one of two men – father and son? – named Nicholas Leinberger/Leyenberger who arrived in Philadelphia from Rotterdam and Deal on the snow (a type of ship) Betsey on August 27, 1739, or perhaps to Johannes Leinberger who completed the same journey as a passenger on The Brothers on September 16, 1751. According to oral history, the Funkhouser and Lionberger families were on bad terms, the result of a feud that began at an athletic contest in Trub, Switzerland. The story is suspect, and there is no other evidence to suggest that any feud continued in America (although the two families lived in different parts of the Shenandoah Valley and may not have come into contact with one another.) The story is worth mentioning because much later their offspring (William R. Zink and Sara Elizabeth Rickabaugh) would meet and marry. Some researchers link the Lionberger immigrants with another Lionberger line from Ruderswil, Switzerland. See my notes for the details. Return to text

²¹Alternatively, Magdalene's father Johan Jacob Bär may have been one of the two men named Johannes Bair who arrived in Philadelphia in 1728 or the Jacob Baer who arrived there the year before, but we cannot be sure. Other men named Bär arrived in later years, but I have seen no sign of the arrival of Hans Jagely Bär.

²²These roads do not meet today, but it seems clear from the map that they once came together near what is now Bareville, Pennsylvania, which is where the tavern must have been located. The Horseshoe Road once was the main route between Lancaster and locations in Chester County. Return to text

²³Hans married Barbara Hauser after Verena died. Return to text

²⁴One source says Hans died on July 4, 1659. Return to text

²⁵The case for linking Henry Rickabaugh the Virginian to Henry Rickabaugh the immigrant is largely circumstantial, but it should be noted that the only Rickabaugh male mentioned in Gingerich's source book who cannot otherwise be accounted for is this Henry born in 1735 who is the son of the immigrant born in 1696. There were other Rickabaughs who were not Amish or Amish Mennonites, however. Return to text

²⁶Several generations earlier, in 1602, Hans Thommen, the miller in Zeglingen, vainly protested to the authorities the plans of another Rickabaugh, a cousin of the Rickabaugh line we are exploring, to build a second mill in the town. Thommen said such a mill would destroy the good relationship and friendship between the two families. The mill was built anyway, and evidently Hans was wrong: the families did not become rivals, lasting ones at any rate, since Henry and Barbara were married a century later. Return to text

²⁷I am continuing to use the single spelling of Rickabaugh, but it should be remembered that some of those included in this account spelled their names Rickenbach, Reichenbach, and otherwise. The name Rickenbach derives from a description of the small, twisting streams common in the part of Switzerland where the family originated; the name means "raging" in High German. There may be a connection between the name and the fact that some of the early Rickenbachs were millers. In addition, not all of the Rickabaughs were Amish or Amish Mennonites themselves; the Gingerich source book and others dealing with these two groups frequently include families that extensively intermarried with Amish and Amish Mennonite families.

²⁸There is a well-known Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, the main feature of a Swiss national park (and, incidentally, the place where Sherlock Holmes met his death). The falls is near the village of Reichenbach, which I have visited. Here the proprietor of a centuries-old restaurant said that the Reichenbach families actually came from Gsteig and Lauenen, which confirms the information that has been contributed to the LDS. Return to text

²⁹Some Amish and Amish Mennonites were imprisoned in Pennsylvania (generally quite tolerant) during the American Revolution because they refused to take a loyalty oath to the new regime or to join the militia and fight for the new country. Return to text

³⁰The German areas included Württemberg, Baden, and Alsace.

³¹Approximately 4,000 Swiss came to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, alone between 1710 and 1750. Return to text

³²When this other Henry Rickabaugh left Switzerland for America he sailed directly to South Carolina and settled there, which is why he is not listed among the Palatine Germans who arrived in Philadelphia. Return to text

³³A son of the Henry Rickabaugh who immigrated to Philadelphia, Hans Adam, returned to Europe in March 1749 in order to collect an inheritance left by his grandfather, Adam Thommen, upon the latter's death. When Hans Adam Rickabaugh arrived in Switzerland, he was sent away for the proper documents. Hans Adam, described by one source as a "harmless, even timid young man," was compelled to leave the canton and wait in Germany and the Netherlands until he could obtain the proper documents and return to Switzerland in 1750. Hans Adam's return to Zeglingen (a rare reappearance on the part of someone who had gone off to America) is credited with helping to stimulate increased emigration from that area in the years that immediately followed. Return to text

³⁴For 2002 views of the Philadelphia waterfront and the site of the courthouse in Philadelphia, see slides 10026 and 10027, respectively. Return to text

³⁵The area today is near Shartlesville, Centerport, and Bernville, in what is called the Irish Creek Valley. See the USGS maps for Bernville/Pennsylvania and Strausstown/Pennsylvania for this part of Pennsylvania. Return to text

³⁶The Mennonite house of worship still stands where Route 340 crosses the river en route to New Market. Return to text

³⁷Once again, see Appendix IV for a discussion of migration to the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Return to text

³⁸This family name is variously written as Buser or Buserion, as well as Buss. Return to text

³⁹Another source gives the year as 1585.

⁴⁰Another source gives the year as 1624. Return to text

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