Chapter VIII: Rickabaugh – Griffith – Lionberger Having established at long last that ADAM RICKABAUGH and CATHERINE {MCCOY} RICKABAUGH were the parents of Henry Rickabaugh, we can now explore what we know about them and their antecedents. Adam Rickabaugh was born in Virginia in 1790, probably on June 5 in 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, very 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 U.S. pension for Adam's military service.1 In both 1870 and 1872 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; the fact that Samuel and his family were enumerated in Henry Rickabaugh's household in Iowa 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 mystery.2 We do not know a great deal more about Adam and Catherine themselves, but 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 by Lieutenant John Rader of the Quartermaster Corps, United States Supply, gives us a clue about the nature of Adam's 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 during this war, it was generally used to keep the 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, who married soon after he returned from the war, must have lived in Gallia County for the next few years, but as we have seen in the previous chapter we cannot locate them in Ohio on the 1820 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 but as " Rickbock." He and his family were residing not where we would expect to find them, based on where they would 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 County for a time around 1827 and then moved on to Fountain County or this son was actually born in Fountain County but remembered it was Greene County because his family later moved there. On the 1830 census, Adam Rickabaugh is shown as forty to fifty years old (he was forty years old that year) and Catherine is shown as thirty to forty years old (she was thirty-one years of age in 1830). The profile of the children listed for this couple matches quite closely that of the children we are aware of from other sources Adam and Catherine had in 1830, with the addition of three older children whose given 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 other children before our Henry was born in 1819 or so; their existence is makes it even more unlikely that Henry was born as early as 1814. These older children had left the household by 1840, so Rickabaugh researchers also unaware of this 1830 census data for Adam's family have not known about them – or about our Henry, for that matter. Best of all for us, one of those three older children on the 1830 Indiana census was a male ten to fifteen years of age, which was right where Henry Rickabaugh ought to have been listed that year if he was born in 1819 as we believe. Research has turned up no deeds or public land entries for Adam Rickabaugh, so evidently he was farming someone else's land in Fountain County. The same was 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 he and his family resided in either county. 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 censuses here in 1850 and 1860. In both years, Adam Rickabaugh is described as a farmer, and the 1850 non-population census shows him having had 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 little we know about Catherine's McCoy family in a few words. One possible lead to the identity of her parents is that Adam's uncle, also named Adam Rickabaugh, served in the Virginia Line under a Colonel McCoy from the Shenandoah Valley during the Revolutionary War. Adam's service had begun with brief stints in 1777 and 1778, perhaps as a member of the Virginia militia, but also included his participation in an engagement against Lord Charles Cornwallis's troops at Little York, Virginia, in 1781. On this occasion, McCoy was his commanding officer. A son of this Colonel McCoy would have been the right generation to have been Catherine McCoy's father. 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 have been the John McCoy who later lived in Greenbrier County not far from John and Elizabeth {Griffith} Rickabaugh – whose son Adam married Catherine McCoy? Unfortunately, we do not know the given names of either Colonel McCoy or any of his sons, and the surviving records in the National Archives do not give us any information to identify this officer. 6 Pushing our speculation even further, could this Revolutionary War officer have been the same John McCoy who before then resided in Rockingham County, Virginia, also not far from various Rickabaughs? We know that a John and Nancy {Finch} McCoy from that county married (in 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 known children does not exclude the possibility that Catherine could have been born to them in 1799. Thus John McCoy of Kentucky could have been the son of Colonel McCoy, but we can only speculate about this. In this connection, though, we learn that an Alexander and Catherine McCoy of Adams County, Ohio (near where the Rickabaughs lived) owned property in Mason County, Kentucky. Although McCoys were relatively common throughout Virginia and the Ohio Valley and there is no specific evidence to link Alexander McCoy to Adam Rickabaugh's commanding officer, the circumstantial evidence cited here suggests that we might at least have identified the particular McCoy grouping from whom Adam's wife Catherine came even if we have not yet positively identified her parents and exact birthplace. 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 lived in this part of Ohio, but only a David McCoy resided in Gallia County itself – and he lived some distance from where we think our Rickabaughs 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, both about where Adam Rickabaugh was living and about the nearby McCoy families that might have produced a Catherine who was born in Kentucky in 1799, we are stymied again.
Fortunately, our information about Adam Rickabaugh's forebears is more extensive. His father, JOHN RICKABAUGH, was one of several Rickabaugh brothers, one of whom, believe it or not, was the same Adam Rickabaugh who was the second candidate we considered (and rejected) as Henry Rickabaugh's father in the previous chapter. John and Adam were both born in what was then Virginia's Frederick County (now Page County after having been part of Shenandoah County and Rockingham County for many years prior to its creation in 1831). 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; she is thought to have died (in Gallia County, Ohio) on January 25, 1834. John Rickabaugh is said to have died in Gallia County, too, 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. In fact, the only indication that John Rickabaugh ever went to Ohio 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 then 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 that year, not our John Rickabaugh.) Although a John Rickabaugh, "Sr.," was listed among the members of a Gallia County militia unit (Safford's) during the War of 1812, there is no firm evidence this man was Elizabeth's husband John and some reason for doubting he was: our John Rickabaugh would have been in his fifties in 1812. After the war, the only John Rickabaughs who appear on censuses and tax lists were also probably younger men. We cannot be certain the John Rickabaugh listed in the age category for 26 to 45 years of age on the 1820 census was not the one we are looking for – in a younger age category than he should have been in, but I am inclined to think that this man too was instead one of the several younger John Rickabaughs in Gallia County. Also, Elizabeth {Griffith} Rickabaugh was very likely the older woman in the appropriate age categories on the 1820 and 1830 censuses who was living with her son Henry in Raccoon Township of Gallia County, which suggests that her husband, the John Rickabaugh born during the 1750s, was deceased. (Those early censuses list only heads of households by name, though, so we cannot be certain this older female is in fact John's wife Elizabeth. It is also possible that she remarried after the death of her husband.) In the opinion of many Rickabaugh researchers, the John Rickabaugh who married Elizabeth Griffith probably died between 1805 and 1812, but we cannot be positive that this analysis is correct. We cannot even be positive that John was alive as late as 1805, since the only evidence he was comes from that county history written a century later. It seems quite possible that he died earlier someplace else, either in Virginia about 1799 or in transit to wherever the family intended to go after selling their Greenbrier County property in that year. Another possibility is that John died after they had arrived at their intended destination, perhaps northern Kentucky. If John Rickabaugh did die soon after 1799, perhaps after his demise his widow Elizabeth took their children to live near his brother Adam in Ohio. Alternatively, in 1799 John might have taken his family directly from Greenbrier County, Virginia, to Ross County, Ohio, where both Adam and another brother, Peter, lived for several years before the entire Rickabaugh clan (which would now include Elizabeth and her children) relocated to Gallia County in 1800 or soon thereafter. The most likely scenario, in my opinion, remains that John Rickabaugh died in Gallia County sometime between 1805 and 1812, but the lack of documentary evidence to support this means we will have to keep guessing about this matter 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 our John Rickabaugh purchased adjoining properties, 172 acres each, in that county on the same day in 1786. (These properties are in Page County today.) 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, in Frederick County and in Hampshire County – as long as two decades before 1785. There was at least one other man (and possibly were two other men) with that name in that same area of Virginia at that time, though, and without better 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 (recorded here as "Griffy") purchased 150 acres described as being in Camden Parish.8 Four and one half years later (in 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 sold grains and household items in December 1772, and other Frederick County documents mention a John Griffith in 1771 and 1773. To confuse the picture even more, we 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 in northern Frederick County have nothing to do with our John Griffith of Shenandoah County, who appeared there in 1785, except for what we learn two sets of documents. One of these sets is a series of other Frederick County land transactions that took place between 1765 and 1767. In them, a John Griffith obtained a warrant for land in October 1765, had the property surveyed the next month, and received 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 – possibly a valuable clue.9 We are especially interested in this Frederick County John Griffith because that very 1760s land grant was included in the second set of documents. This set was found in the chancery court records of Page County, where we are certain our Elizabeth Griffith's father lived; indeed, the grant was in a file for an 1835 case involving a member of her father's family. Why this earlier 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 our Elizabeth, the wife of John Rickabaugh), and then on to this younger John's own son, who was a party to the 1835 court case. It does not appear that the John Griffith who got the Frederick County land grant during the 1760s was the same man who showed up in Shenandoah County during the 1780s – the two men had wives with different given names (Margaret for the first and Catherine for the second) – and probably were of different generations. There must have been a direct connection between these two Griffith families five decades apart, however, if we can only figure it out. So far, Griffith researchers have been unable to solve this mystery, either. 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, where sons William and John were born in 1736 and 1737, respectively. They were Quakers at the Goshen Monthly Meeting. We cannot be positive they are the John and Margaret Griffith who were living in Frederick County later on, but they seem like plausible candidates: a son born to them would have been about the right age that John Griffith, the father-in-law of John Rickabaugh, was during the 1780s. Still, though, there is nothing definite to link this couple to Elizabeth's father. As it happens, however, there is another potential Griffith couple in Chester County at this same time. John Griffith married Mary Falkner, the daughter of Jesse and Martha Falkner (who were affiliated with the Uwchlan Monthly Meeting), in 1746. This couple lived on 175 acres in East Nantmeal Township, where they are seen in 1753 through 1758. In October 1768, their son John, Jr., was married – in Menalen Township of York County, Pennsylvania. With the evidence at hand, it is not possible to determine which of these Griffith couples (if either one) were related to the John Griffith we see in Shenandoah County, Virginia, during the 1780s. 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 this surname was also spelled Griffey) had daughters Rachel and Catharina who were baptized, respectively, in 1767 and 1775. This is important because we know that our John and Catharine Griffith of Shenandoah County 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 date of the former's baptism, though, would seem to cast doubt on John Griffith, Jr., and Mary Falkner – who married in 1768 – as possible parents of the man we see in Shenandoah County during the 1780s. So does the fact that the Virginia Griffiths were Lutherans, probably because that was the faith of Catherine's parents, whereas both of these Griffith couples appear to have been Quakers. Whoever her parents were, Catharina Griffith's baptism was recorded at the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Frederick, Maryland, in October 1775. 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 section of Chanceford Township in York County. Other evidence also suggests that John Griffith was living in this area by as early as 1748, but again we do not know when he arrived here – or where he came from. Both of these Griffith 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 themselves 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 on his circuit. 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 in order to purchase and plant newly acquired property, his family might have remained with relatives further north for a season or even longer. Still, we have no definite linkage joining these several Griffiths of interest, but perhaps we have the makings of a hypothesis and time line. Let us suppose that it was this John and Margaret Griffith of York County who were the parents of Elizabeth {Griffith} Rickabaugh's father John Griffith, who would have been born, likely in Pennsylvania, sometime around 1730. This Griffith couple seems to have come originally from Berks County (formed in part from Chester County), where we know many of the Rickabaughs, Lionbergers, and other German families who would ultimately migrate to eastern Shenandoah County also lived. The Schuele family too lived in this part of Pennsylvania, evidently until 1770, when George had 99 acres surveyed in York County. By sometime during the late 1750s or early 1760s, young John Griffith would also have been marrying, and we can imagine that his wife could have come from the German community nearby. Eva Catherine Schuele (born to Georg Leonhard Schuele, reportedly on May 22, 1740) thus is a potential candidate to have been John's wife Catherine, though one of her older sisters seems a likelier one. By the early 1760s, John and Catherine Griffith 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. Our Elizabeth, probably born during the early 1760s if she married John Rickabaugh in 1785, would have been among the earliest of this John and Catherine Griffith's children. Presuming that the older Griffiths migrated southwestward toward Frederick County, Virginia (perhaps with prior residences en route in Pennsylvania and Maryland), their arrival in that county during the early 1760s makes sense. Thus this John Griffith could have been the blacksmith in Frederick County also referred to as John Griffey. What we cannot say is whether the younger Griffith couple – that is, Rachel and Catharina's (and Elizabeth's) parents – took the same path, at the same time, but it is worth noting that Schueles also seem to have lived in York County and in Frederick County, Maryland, during these same years; George Schuele sold the 99 acres he had acquired in 1770 during the fall of 1772, presumably in preparation for a move further south either in company with the Griffiths or later on. The fact that this younger 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 then moved further southwestward in order to live near (or with) John's parents in Frederick County, 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 may have migrated directly from Pennsylvania to eastern Shenandoah County. There is just too much we do not know about the origins of this Griffith family. All we can say is that it remains possible one or more of the Frederick County and Hampshire County, Virginia, land transactions cited earlier could have involved the younger John Griffith, our Elizabeth's {Griffith} Rickabaugh's father. By the 1770s, the older John Griffith couple, in Frederick County, would have been nearing the ends of their expected life spans. If the younger John Griffith and his wife were indeed living nearby, they might have decided after the deaths of John's parents to relocate to eastern Shenandoah County, probably because Catherine had Schuele and other kin there.10 In any event, by the early 1780s they were in fact living there, which would have placed John Griffith in position to purchase his 172 acres alongside those of John Rickabaugh in 1786 soon after his daughter Elizabeth had married young Rickabaugh. Without more evidence we can only speculate further about the early movements of John and Catherine Griffith and their relationship, if any, to the older John and Margaret Griffith of Frederick County, Virginia, but at least this scenario makes 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, is on the drains of Dry Run in Shenandoah (now Page) County. This property, southeast of Luray, is 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.11 Returning now to the Rickabaughs, we observe that the brothers John and Adam Rickabaugh began to be mentioned in Shenandoah County records during the early 1780s, as they reached adulthood. From these records, we can conclude that they continued to live in that county through the rest of that decade. John was the first to appear in the records, in 1782, when he served as a member of a grand jury. Based on the tax lists they were on, we know that the Rickabaugh brothers lived in eastern Shenandoah County's Page Valley, which would become part of the new Page County in 1831. We know little more about the Rickabaughs and their lives, but because John was married by a well-known Baptist minister (John Koontz) whose efforts converted many of the German Mennonites in the Page Valley, we can guess that the Rickabaughs may have been among those 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. Remembering that the John Griffey seen in Frederick County in 1762 was a blacksmith, perhaps we should wonder whether Elizabeth's father John Griffith was one as well. If he and John Rickabaugh both worked with iron, perhaps that explains how the two families got acquainted. After their father Henry died in 1780, Adam and John likely resided together on their late father's property (which by the terms of his will they jointly owned) on Hawksbill Creek for a year or two. But the fact that it was John alone who in 1782 sold off 30 acres of their father's 199 1/4 acres there (which their mother Magdalene had inherited from her own father) suggests that Adam was no longer living in the Page Valley then. By early 1785, it seems, Adam was living in neighboring Rockingham County, Virginia. Not only did he drop off the tax lists in Shenandoah County but Adam married in Rockingham County in early 1785; he would purchase property there in mid-1788. Meanwhile, in April 1787, John and Adam (and their wives) sold the remaining 169 1/4 acres of their father's land and evidently decided to go their separate ways, presumably each having half of the proceeds of the sale. Adam's subsequent moves are described in his application for a pension for his Revolutionary War service between 1777 and 1781, but his statements in that document are not entirely accurate. Despite what he said on his pension application, Adam may have remained in Rockingham County through 1798 at least, or perhaps even until 1801. In the latter year, as we have seen, he moved to Ross County, Ohio, and by 1805 he had gone on to settle in Gallia County in that new state.12 John Rickabaugh remained in Shenandoah County longer, perhaps because he was still courting the daughter of John and Catherine Griffith, Elizabeth, whom he would marry in May 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 As we have seen, 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 Griffith couple's property. Presumably of the two men John was the active farmer, given his new father-in-law's advanced age, and the parallel Griffith purchase may have been in actuality a kind of parental assistance to the young couple.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). We do not know why they made this move, though it may have coincided with the death of John's mother, Magdalene. Members of numerous other Page Valley families – McCoys and Lionbergers among them – made this same migration into Greenbrier County at this time, and John and Elizabeth Rickabaugh must have decided to do the same. (Colonel McCoy, under whom John's brother may have served, lived in Greenbrier County.) As we have already seen, a little over a year later John and Catherine Griffith would sell their adjoining 172 acres and buy property on Piney Hill; whether they and the young Rickabaugh couple had parted amicably or not in 1791 we cannot say. 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 mid-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. (The McCoys also lived here.) Two years later, on July 7, 1796, John Rickabaugh added to this property another 12 acres, for a total of 177 acres. Greenbrier County has six surviving tax lists encompassing the period when the Rickabaughs may 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. John is on those for 1792, 1796, and 1799 – sometimes with still more novel 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 else 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 imagine that John Rickabaugh raised cattle while he and his family lived there. John appears in the county's court orders seven, possibly eight, times between November 1791 and March 1798. Four times he was 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 else. 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, though we do not find any reference to John Rickabaugh until 1805 and we cannot ignore other possibilities. 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 had been by the late 1790s. Since the McCoys and Lionbergers also ended up in Ohio, this may have been true for others who had been part of the exodus of young families from the Page Valley. 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 out 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 full decade before. Thus it also seems quite likely that the Rickabaughs did in fact leave Virginia for good during mid-1799, and John's absence from the 1805 Greenbrier County tax list would seem to confirm this. But we must return to this question: where did John and Elizabeth go 1799? Was it only a coincidence that during the 1790s, after having lived a decade or more apart, the two Rickabaugh brothers both decided to settle in Ohio and only later rediscovered one another and subsequently resettled in the same county there? Because we cannot be certain that John himself ever lived in Ohio, we must hold open the possibility that he took his family from Greenbrier County to some other place, probably northern Kentucky. It even seems possible that the Rickabaughs migrated from Greenbrier County to Kentucky with the McCoys about 1799, then lived near them until there was a later move into Gallia County, Ohio; this could help to explain how John and Elizabeth's son Adam would have come to know Catherine McCoy, whom he would marry in Ohio in 1813 or 1814, after both the Rickabaughs and the McCoys had relocated there from Kentucky. If John Rickabaugh died in Kentucky between 1799 and about 1802, perhaps his widow Elizabeth decided it made sense to link up with Adam and others in the Rickabaugh clan in Ohio. Scenarios like these must remain speculative, for there is no documentary evidence to confirm that the Rickabaughs ever lived in the northeastern part of Kentucky adjoining Gallia County, Ohio, and we cannot determine for certain where they lived for the years immediately after 1799.
We step back a generation now in order to examine the parents of Adam and John Rickabaugh. They were the sons of HENRY RICKABAUGH (spelled Riggerbacker in this instance), who mentions them in his will. We cannot be absolutely positive of the identity of this man, but my study of the Rickabaugh family 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 during the mid-1750s: he was 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 have documentary evidence of Henry in mid-1771, when he was a chain carrier in a survey. That year, too, a survey of the 199 1/4 acres that Magdalene had inherited from her father identified her as the wife of Henry Rickabaugh. (At Magdalene's request, Lord Fairfax on September 17, 1771, awarded her husband Henry Rickabaugh a deed to these 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.) 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) only existed only during those five years before it was renamed Shenandoah County. Magdalene and Henry's land was along Hawksbill Creek, and the portion of the militia list on which he appeared, as Henery Rickabecker, is now in Page County, Virginia, which was formed largely out of Shenandoah County. Henry and Magdalene's home, which still stands, is on the north side of Hawksbill Creek about three miles south of Luray. Henry died in Virginia sometime during 1780, having made his will (which identifies him as Henry Ricaboker) on June 22 in that year. It was probated in Shenandoah County, Virginia, on August 17, 1780.16 Henry Rickabaugh was only forty-five years of age when he died. He prepared his will very soon before his death, and one wonders if a sudden illness or an accident of some sort caused his premature death. In his will, Henry directed that his land be divided equally by his two oldest sons, John and Adam. After setting aside one-third of his estate for Magdalene, Henry specified that his six children (Henry, Peter, Barbara, and Margaret were the other four) 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 on his will, 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 two sons sold the last of the 199 1/4 acres that she had inherited from her father and ultimately left Shenandoah County forever. It is also possible, though, 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 her sons' separate 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 vessel was a bilander – a small ship typically employed in the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea, not the Atlantic Ocean – named the Oliver (Samuel Merchant, captain). It is shown arriving in Philadelphia 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 on board the Oliver the Lionbergers originated in the Schwarzenburg region of Canton Bern – in their case, in Grasburg. In addition, the passenger register for this ship is unusually explicit about passengers, and so we can see that this family consisted of Hans and Elisabeth (fifty and forty-five years old, respectively) and five younger members who were, one supposes from their ages, this couple's children: Hans (twenty-five), Elisabeth (twenty), Barbara (fourteen), Peter (eight), and Hannah (three). Other sources tell us that the Lionberger family can be traced to the Emmen Valley and Upper Aargan areas of Switzerland. One earlier member of this family 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 Hans who was twenty-five years old on the 1735 passenger list, thus had been 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 – migrated south. Their destination was the Hawksbill Creek of what was then Frederick County, Virginia, but is now Page County of that state.17 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 the Fairfax 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 signed 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, who received 199 1/4 acres. 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 made his will in late 1756.18 John Lionberger's father, the older HANS (or JOHN) LIONBERGER aboard the Oliver, was born in Canton Bern on April 29, 1681 (although his age is shown as fifty years old instead on that ship's register in 1735). Some researchers think he had first migrated to Conestoga Township, Chester County (later in Lancaster County), Pennsylvania, about 1720 (he was living in Conestoga or East Conestoga Township in 1721 and 1722), and then returned to Switzerland for his family. Whether or not this is so, John Lionberger was found in Leacock Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, by 1740 and seems to have died there during the 1750s. If one source is accurate, he died in an Indian attack near Tulpehocken, Bethel Township, Berks County, about November 15, 1755. 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 prepared his will in 1756. We do not have much information about the Burkhalter line, but undoubtedly her family was also part of the same Anabaptist community as the others we are discussing in this chapter. 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 given name. Hans departed for America in 1717 and was a Mennonite minister in Conestoga Township of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania; he died in Lancaster County 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 our Elizabeth might have been among them. Another possible father for her was 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, so that we can establish the identity of John Lionberger's wife of that family name. There does seem to be fairly good information about the Lionberger family, for which there is a long-lived family association. I have not seen the evidence to substantiate the lineage outlined here, so we should regard what follows as provisional pending further research and verification. According to some Lionberger researchers, the next earlier generation before our Hans born in 1681 consisted 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. This man's wife was Barbara {Leuthi} Lionberger, whom Ulrich 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 given name who was born in 1511. At that point our knowledge of the Lionberger family runs out.19 We turn now to the Bär half 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, Canton Zürich, on March 18 in 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 in 1717 Jacob was the first settler in Oregon, Pennsylvania, where he lived on the road from Lancaster to Reading. It was here, in Manheim Township, where Jacob Bär built two mills on Carter's or Lititz Creek. He undoubtedly was the Jacob Bear on the county's tax rolls in 1722 and in 1724-25, and in 1728-29 he was among those who petitioned for the creation of 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 show not only a Jacob Barr with 100 acres in Earl Township in Lancaster County but also another property holder named Jacob Barr in Warwick Township. They may or may not have been the same man.20 One account suggests that as early as 1730 and perhaps for years thereafter Jacob kept a tavern in Conestoga Township where Peters Road crossed the Horseshoe Road.21 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 the 363 Mennonites who emigrated to Pennsylvania in August 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 in 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 on December 30, 1610, in Signau. His wife was Elsbeth {Zurflü} Frederick. The earliest Frederick we know by name was this Isaac's father, Tobias, who was born about 1575 in Signau. His wife was Barbli {Schnyder} Frederick. There our information ceases, and so 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 we should not place too much confidence in this information until it is verified. The parents of Hans Jagely Bär, the immigrant to Pennsylvania, seem to have been 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, 1679.22 She was the first of several Huber women we will meet who intermarried with the Bärs, and we assume that they all came from the same 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, this time 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, where he lived from 1612 (he was christened there on July 4 in that year) to April 1659, when he died in the Ober Albis area of Hausen.23 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 born in 1612 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 known member of our Bär family was the father of Hans, born about 1545, also named Hans, whose lifespan 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 specifically about the Rickabaughs in Virginia. In the belief that this family, like so many other German and Swiss families, probably had migrated down the mountain valleys from Pennsylvania, I shifted my attention to that colony to see what I could learn about the Rickabaughs there. Information about the family is plentiful in Pennsylvania, I found, particularly in Berks County and Lancaster County, and much work has been done to compile a comprehensive and very helpful genealogy of the Rickabaughs and their related families. After studying that information, I am of the opinion that the father of the Henry Rickabaugh born in 1735 and later a resident of Virginia was another 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. His will was made on February 28, 1740, and proved on March 25, 1741. A Henry Rickabaugh is listed in the Gingerich source book referred to in the previous chapter as a member the family of Henry Rickabaugh the immigrant (1740), but nothing is shown for him except for his date of birth. The case for linking him to our Henry Rickabaugh the Virginian 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 was the son of the immigrant born in 1696. There were other Rickabaughs who were not Amish or Amish Mennonites, however, and there are other theories about the ancestry of the Henry Rickabaugh of Virginia.24 The Henry Rickabaugh born in 1696 and his family are on two lists that document their passage to America. One is a Swiss list of departees 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" when he signed the required oath of abjuration in Philadelphia on September 23, 1740. He was described as having lived in Switzerland in Zeglingen, a town in the district of Homberg just south of the Rhine River. Zeglingen is 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 during the fall of 1740. All we know about her family is that her father, ADAM THOMMEN, also of Zeglingen, Switzerland, died in 1743.25 According to the 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.
Thus it was that I discovered that the Virginia Rickabaughs,26 along with many of the families with which they intermarried, were in broad terms 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.27 It seems evident, though, that our Rickabaugh line (known as Rickenbach in Switzerland) originally 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 with each new generation of children. Switzerland being a rather poor country at that time, those in search of economic security had to look elsewhere. The neighbors of the members of these sects, who disliked and distrusted them because of their beliefs and also were envious of their agricultural skills, did not hesitate to make them feel unwelcome in Switzerland. 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 even stricter rules on attire and employed firmer discipline – using shunning and excommunication if necessary. Both sects were often persecuted for their views, and the authorities regarded them as subversive to social order and potentially disloyal because of their views about civil authority. 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.28 As we have seen in previous chapters, William Penn, eager to populate (and sell) his large land holdings in America, vigorously recruited Swiss and German settlers from the Palatine. This area along the Rhine River had been badly mauled during the Thirty Years War (1618-1648), another factor that made many Swiss and others willing to migrate to America.29 He made several trips there himself to drum up emigration to Pennsylvania. He could point to the Penn family's liberal views on religious tolerance, along with many thousands of acres of fertile land that were available for settlement. So it was that thousands of Swiss and Germans came to America,30 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 of this migration came in 1749 through 1754, when some 30,000 of these people arrived in Pennsylvania. We have already encountered some of these Palatine emigrants while examining others of our 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 our Rickabaughs were descended), from Rünenberg, requested his district council's permission to leave in 1735. He hoped to travel down the Rhine and then to "Carolina," a term the Swiss sometimes used in referring to America in general. The law required the district council to give such permission before emigrants could leave Switzerland, and Henry's council duly 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 any property that would be transported out of Switzerland, 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.31 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 other emigrants, and he paid the ten-percent tax on its value. It was this man, we believe, who was the antecedent of our Rickabaugh line. 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 have taken 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 along the river. Then the travelers typically had to remain in Rotterdam some weeks more until suitable 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 to Switzerland 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 an American port in what was still a British position. 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 – rarely fewer than seven. It was not uncommon for many of the passengers to die of hunger and privation in their crowded quarters. They also might be cheated by the merchants who had arranged for passage and provisions – or by the captains who were supposed to make those provisions available. Sometimes the 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, the survivors could be sold into indentured servitude.32 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 transoceanic journey or, if they had the funds, wished to husband their resources for later use in America. 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, after a health inspection) in an American port, the servants were displayed – not unlike slaves and transported convicts – on deck for potential buyers. These purchasers of laborers 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 owing to chronic labor shortages. 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 the ocean as "redemptioners," laborers who were given the opportunity to earn enough money after their arrival in order to repay the cost of passage and were then freed. If they failed to do so during the 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 or silver 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 and head for another part of America where he or she was unknown. Henry Rickabaugh and his family seem to have had sufficient resources in 1740 to escape the prospect of indentured servitude in America, but according to a detailed contemporary account of their journey 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 passengers did starve. These conditions may account for the deaths of Henry Rickabaugh's two youngest children during the voyage – and may also have contributed to the death of Henry's wife, Barbara soon after the family arrived in Philadelphia in September 1740. Henry, suddenly alone in that city with the six remaining children, subsequently moved to what the original account of their journey 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. Soon Henry too died in early 1741, perhaps having been fatally weakened as well by the terrible ocean voyage. According to his will, he was a resident of Leacock Township at the time. The two youngest children, Margareth (eight years old) and our Henry (five years old), were raised by guardians recruited from the Gerber family, to which the Rickabaughs were related. There are several men named Gerber living in Lancaster County at this time, including an Adam, two Gerbers named John, a Leonard, and a Joseph; in addition, the executor of Henry's estate, such as it was, was a Christian Gerber, and he would seem the most likely of the several Gerbers to have served as the guardian of Henry and Barbara's two youngest surviving children. It is not known how long Henry lived with the Gerber family that took him in.33 The process Henry would have undergone when he and his family arrived in Philadelphia in 1740 further enlightens us about what so many of the Palatine newcomers to America experienced. As immigration 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 record all adult males who were sixteen years or older, along with their families, if any, 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, located 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 adult male 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 did so. It is thanks to these recorded oaths of abjuration, which were bound in volumes, that we can identify so many of the 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 although Philadelphia was the major port of arrival of course other immigrants arrived at other American ports. Even with these gaps and limitations, these Philadelphia ship lists are a treasure trove of information. Like Henry, most of the new arrivals who were not bound to servitude or persons with a trade or skill did not choose 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. It was probably far larger than the European towns and villages most of these people had come from, and most of Philadelphia's surrounding rural area was already owned and under cultivation. The newcomers thus generally fanned outwards from Philadelphia or whatever other port at which they had arrived and began the process of putting down roots. The search for cheap, undeveloped land – land that they could own – drove most of them outward until they found sufficient acreage to support their families and perhaps grow some cash crops, chiefly grain. Income from these crops enabled 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 by and large 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 immigrant families, for example the Zinks and the Funkhousers, and will encounter still more in other chapters. 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 flow of 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 what would become 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 Pennsylvania frontier.35 Following a massacre during an attack by Indian raiders in 1757, many of those in the Northkill Settlement retreated toward more settled areas. 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 located 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 this Rickabaugh colony likely included the surviving 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, Virginia (perhaps one reason Adam Rickabaugh went to live there about 1785). Around 1760 another Mennonite settlement was established on the east bank of the South Fork of the Shenandoah River near Hamburg.36 We can calculate that our Henry Rickabaugh had arrived in this part of Virginia by the late 1750s, when he married Magdalene Lionberger, even though it was not until the early 1770s that he began to appear in records there. Adam and John Rickabaugh's immediate forebears, then, had been among the Swiss 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. It is little 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, the wife of William R. Zink, about a century later.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: as in Europe, 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 beyond. Today they have spread even further.
Having identified the evident 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 complete the picture with what we know about the European origins of this 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. This Hans was born in Zeglingen, Switzerland, in 1653 and died in 1719. We know nothing about Elsbeth and her family except that she is said to have been born on March 24, 1665. She and Hans were married in Kilchberg, Switzerland, on January 26, 1692. Hans Rickabaugh was the son of another 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 role his son presumably inherited from him. A good guess is that both men 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. The elder Hans was the son of JACOB (nicknamed "MICHAEL JOGGI") RICKABAUGH, who was born in Zeglingen on July 25, 1593.39 His wife was BARBARA {WIDMER} RICKABAUGH, who was 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 have been recorded in Zeglingen, where he appeared 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 Überlinger was made a citizen of Basel in 1332 for his role in that city's struggle with Endingen. Beyond this we cannot go and so must move on to another of our families. 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 was undoubtedly the "C" Rickabaugh in her son Samuel's household on the 1870 census. Despite the fact that person is said to have been male, this person had the right age and state of birth – and was also "keeping house," a term typically applied to females. 2Two sources, including Catherine herself, gave the date as either September 13 or 30 in 1813; the county clerk, however, reported it 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) took place 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 actually 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 as part of these supply trains was a teenager named John Brown (1800-59), who would achieve fame and notoriety four decades later; 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 wartime duty. Return to text 5Adam Rickabaugh was tabulated on the 1850 non-population census as follows: two horses, two milk cows, two other cattle, twenty-two 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 (sixty years of age) and 1860 (seventy years of age) were correct. The post office nearest the Rickabaughs was Red Rock. Return to text 6Other officers Adam Rickabaugh named in his application for a Revolutionary War pension, besides Colonel McCoy, were 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 was 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 on my part. I have been unable to find at the National Archives a Revolutionary War service record for Adam Rickabaugh or any muster rolls on which he appears, nor any collaborating evidence about any of the officers he mentions in his pension application except for Michael Rader, who took a company of Shenandoah Valley militiamen to Fort Pitt in 1777. Adam's application for a pension was approved, however, which suggests that some evidence of his service exists. 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, and so John and Elizabeth's marriage must have occurred in 1785 as well. Return to text 8There was no Camden Parish in Frederick County. There were 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 possible clue, we 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 during the trek from Pennsylvania to Virginia, but we cannot rule out the possibility that they lived for a time in Frederick County 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 Griffith cemetery, home site, and property. All these photographs were taken in 2002. Return to text 12 In his pension application, Adam Rickabaugh declared that he had 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 of these counties 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 inadvertently related the sequence out of order when he filed for his pension many years later. (Might he have been living in North Carolina 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 Adam's 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 is silent about this matter. 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 Adam may have 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 have either, but the economic depression of the 1780s was probably the major factor in their decision to pull up stakes in Virginia and move west with their kin. Return to text 13The 1788 Virginia personal property tax list for Shenandoah County shows a black person sixteen 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 the slave's labor that one year, or that this person was a free black whom John had hired. 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 was 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 existing property. See the USGS map for Asbury/West Virginia for the location of Muddy Creek and Mill Creek and 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 in a later chapter, Abraham Vanderpool and his family seem to have lived somewhere on or near this same Muddy Creek during the 1750s, until Indian attacks compelled them to retreat to a safer area. Return to text 16For Henry Rickabaugh's property in Page County, see slides 09967 and 09968, taken in 2001. The 1787 deed mentioned earlier refers to the location as Little Hawksbill Creek. At Magdalene's request, Lord Fairfax on September 17, 1771, awarded her husband 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 17See Appendix IV for a discussion of migration into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. 18The 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. It appears that John Lionberger never received title to this property. In August 1756 he wrote to Fairfax asking for one, stating 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 apparent absence of a title, John's property was successfully divided among his heirs. Return to text 19 If the theory in the text about the Lionberger line is not correct, the Virginia 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 the Johannes Leinberger who completed the same journey as a passenger on The Brothers on September 16, 1751. According to family lore, the Funkhouser and Lionberger families were on bad terms, the result of a feud that had begun at an athletic contest in Trub, Switzerland. The story is unconfirmed, and there is no evidence to suggest that any feud continued in America (although the two families did live 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 two Funkhouser and Lionberger descendants (our William R. Zink, who had Funkhouser blood, 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 20This seemingly simple surname has been spelled in various ways, and Magdalene's father Johan Jacob Bär could have been one of the two men named Johannes Bair who had 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 could find no sign of the arrival of Hans Jagely Bär. 21These roads do not meet today, but it seems clear from an old map that they once came together near what is now Bareville, Pennsylvania, which is where Jacob's tavern must have been located. The Horseshoe Road once was the main route between Lancaster and locations in Chester County. Return to text 22Hans married Barbara Hauser after Verena died. Return to text 23One source says Hans died on July 4, 1659. Return to text 24Some researchers believe that the Virginia Rickabaughs derived instead from various other Swiss immigrants. These would include a John Rickabaugh who arrived in Philadelphia aboard a small pink (as we saw in an earlier chapter, 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 for our John's father would include a Johannes Reichenbach, who with his wife Catherina arrived aboard the Mary from Rotterdam and Deal on September 29, 1735, and Jacob Reigenbaehr, who came to America 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. Not all the Rickabaughs were Amish or Amish Mennonites themselves; the Gingerich source book and others dealing with these two groups include families that extensively intermarried with Amish and Amish Mennonite families. I believe the Henry described in the text is the most likely candidate, however.Return to text 25Several generations earlier, in 1602, Hans Thommen, the miller in Zeglingen, had vainly protested to the authorities about the plans of another Rickabaugh, a cousin of our Rickabaugh line, 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, or lasting ones at any rate, since Henry Rickabaugh and Barbara Thommen would be married a century later. Return to text 26I am continuing to use the spelling of Rickabaugh, but it should be remembered that some of those persons 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. The most famous American Rickenbacher (another spelling variation) was the aviator and businessman (1890-1973) whose first name was Eddie and whose surname he changed to Rickenbaker in 1918, but his family came to America much later than ours did. 27There is a well-known Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland, the main feature of a Swiss national park (and the place where Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes would meet 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 28Some Amish and Amish Mennonites were imprisoned in Pennsylvania (generally quite tolerant) during the American Revolution because they refused to take loyalty oaths to the new regime or to join the militia and fight for the new country. Return to text 29The German areas included Württemberg, Baden, and Alsace. 30Approximately 4,000 Swiss came to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, alone between 1710 and 1750. Return to text 31When 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 32 The "indenture" arrangement was named after the document that recorded its terms. After all the signatures were placed on it, the document was physically separated (usually, torn) in a way that created two uniquely matching portions that could be correctly rematched only to one another, for only then would the "indents" meet exactly to reconstitute the original document. Return to text 33A son of the Henry Rickabaugh who emigrated to Philadelphia in 1740 was named Hans Adam. Presumably, he was the oldest of the six Rickabaugh children who had survived the trying ocean voyage. 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 he arrived in Switzerland, Hans Adam was sent away to obtain the proper documents. Described by one source as a "harmless, even timid young man," he was compelled to leave the canton and wait in Germany and the Netherlands until he could secure 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 having helped to stimulate increased emigration from that area in the years that immediately followed. Henry's eldest brother, John, is shown as "poor" and with no acreage on the Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, tax list in 1756. The spelling of his last name on the tax list provides yet another variation on the name Rickabaugh: "John Ricken Backer." Return to text 34For 2002 general views of the Philadelphia waterfront and the site of the courthouse in that city, see slides 10026 and 10027, respectively. Return to text 35The Northkill Settlement 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 near Hamburg where Route 340 westward crosses the South Fork of the Shenandoah River en route to New Market. Return to text 37Once again, see Appendix IV for a discussion of migration into the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Return to text 38This family name is variously written as Buser or Buserin, 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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