The Letters of Harry E. Reiff

Attic, Douglass Mansion

Harry Reiff brought meticulous, objective, fair minded efforts to his work, just the qualities that make a good Ph.D. chemist, which he was. The thought of assembling all the genealogical detail in his Reiff Families, over so many years and without error, proves the point. He says in these letters that it has been 25 years since he has been down to the Philadelphia archives, the tombs, which indicates the amount of time and depth of inquiry he undertook. The value of his thought grounded in an empirical reality is that it is not gossip, but he will speculate. It was ever of value to provoke these moments, but he didn't jump to conclusions; one doesn't necessarily agree with one's own speculations. For a reader new or learned in these matters such exchanges can aid understanding of issues we may never resolve.  

As early as 1974, in passing through Pennsylvania on the way to London and Wales, I had a whimsy to drive through Skippack and not only found in a thrift there The Goshenhoppen Region mag of May 1974 with the article on the Jacob Reiff Homestead, but I contacted Arthur J. Lawton the editor and went to a dig he was conducting with his class at the Farm. My aunt and father were contributing background to Harry's work that appeared in 1986. For the non scientific writer the personal among all the facts and details is of paramount importance, and even also is the personal of the researchers themselves, especially when they become friends. In the end Harry was convinced I was well meaning, not an easy thing to show a Dutchman through mere correspondence, after which he made personal references to his military service in Germany in '44, when he began this work in 1960, and especially, how he came to be interested in genealogy in the first place (8 June 2003). His good judgment and taste are realized in his wit, his comments for instance on Fred Riffe's photo of the Confederate soldier. He maintains to the last that his background in science doesn't fit him to understand The Flowering Heart, but as he says, he was historian of the Boehm church and actually grew up and lived in that ethos, which of course, I did not. 

What thrills me most to walk alongside such men as Harry E. Reiff and Issac Horst, et. al., whether for a long or short a time in amity and fellowship and contribute mutually to their efforts, is the inkling of insight, the suggestion of a whole world beyond the sole fact, such as the bare mention that Harry spent 1944 in Germany, for it was not evident at first in his obituary or the almost accidental manner in which he reveals how he got started along the genealogical path.This is entirely a cooperative venture over many generations that is one of the exquisite pleasures of it, to join in a common venture. We all walk beside one another even if we don't know it. Along with crediting Andy Berky with first stirring his interest in these matters, Harry notes in Reiff Families that Berky "found a record of a purchase of a silver watch in 1717 in Philadelphia by Hans George" (1). A thrilling observation.

This acknowledgment appears at the end of Perkiomen Autographs: 

 

Modern works on the names here stem from the genealogy, Reiff Families in America (1986) by Harry Reiff (HER), a Ph.D. organic chemist (Minnesota, 1955) who long contributed to genealogy forums and corresponded at length with interested parties about Jacob Reiff's descendants. Reiff to Riffe (1995) by Fred J. Riffe pays tribute to him as does Emigrants, Refugees and Prisoners, Vol II (1997) by Richard Warren Davis. HER is the source for the first modern printed reference by Davis that Hans George Reiff “was in Pennsylvania by 14 Feb 1718 as he owned land next to Michael Ziegler at Bebber Twp. (later Salford twp.) according to the deed bearing that date.” Davis acknowledges this information in a footnote as a “letter from Harry E. Reiff of Ambler, Pennsylvania, September 1994."

 

Harry's influence extends beyond his printed work. He contributed much in the background and foreground of this effort. For example, in a letter about the Ziegler deed, he says "there is often confusion in the literature involving Mennonite Hans Reiff and German Reformed Church Hans George Reiff. Mennonite Hans Reiff's farm was about a mile or so from that of Hans George's home and even closer to Jacob Reiff's presumed home, now called the Jacob Reiff Home/Park." He has seen much of the writing here in manuscript, and though none of the errors likely to be found are his, he has saved the narrative a number of times with his meticulous attention to detail and reasoned judgment. HER says his book is "not a family history, but just a genealogical record of Jacob's descendants."

Obituary of Harry E. Reiff

 

Errors occur with the slip of a pen, a finger and the assumption of mind, fatigue of work, embarrassment of one's beliefs,  so let's admit it up front, take the good and leave the rest.

One gets much help from the like minded. Glenn Landis is one still alive, and Joel Alderfer, and Michelle Napoletano Lynch.  But many have gone on, Isaac Horst who translated the Andrew Mack letters, Elizabeth Reiff Young translated the whole milieu, and Dr. Harry Reiff, whose letters recounted here answer many questions. If I include mine to him it is just to encourage anybody walking to continue.

 

Valuable sources include the two volumes of Fred J. Riffe, Reiff to Rife Family in America. So much chronology would be vague without his inclusion of wills, narrative chronologies, clerical documents, grave sites consulted at every turn for these. Any writer knows how easily errors occur, that's why I like the blog form because corrections can always be made. A book however takes its stand and without the utmost editorial help fails perfection. Add  the encyclopedic Strassburger Family and Allied Families of Pennsylvania, which is where Harry found the 1717 deed of Hans George Reiff.

Jacob Reiff was both German Reformed and Mennonite

 

For a long time I puzzled over the lack of church trail for Jacob Reiff after his upset with the German Reformed Church. At one time (c. 1724 f)  this church met in his house. In 1727 however the Sunday school teacher Boehm, who the Reiff church had made its pastor, was dispatched by the arriving immigrant party including the ordained Weiss, with the Hillegasses. Within a year Jacob Reiff was commissioned to go back to Holland with Weiss to raise funds, but this effort was a failure in many ways, especially since Weiss did not know whether he would return. In any case, that story remains to be properly told, but there is as yet no specific record of Jacob Reiff's practice afterward, leaving inference to believe he became a Mennonite. These two faiths are not particularly close, but the Mennonites seemed to surround Jacob Reiff.

 

 Research is all about asking the right question. It is also somehow about luck. On a recent visit to Harleysville, September 2012, I saw the Skippack Alms Book on display in a glass case, so I asked if there was a photographic replica of it, thinking to photograph some of the signatures with my (now old) 15 megapix camera. The librarian, Joel Alderfer, brought out a translation with also the German text. I always start at the back and work front. But when I got to the first page I saw that Anna Reiff(in) had given ten shillings to the Mennonite Meetinghouse in 1738. The first page! With all the other incidentals it begins to seem as if, even if German Reformed, the first Reiffs were Mennonite also, pretty much like my Aunt Elizabeth who was a Presbyterian elder but, as she said, always a Mennonite. I found this detail really by accident so I am saying that merely to be interested in the subject can work wonders.

 

This has happened before, but who can predict it? In 1975, on the way to London, I took a stay in Philadelphia, declaring to my aunt, father and mother that I was going to drive to Skippack to find it out. They had a complete ancestry chart with dates from Hans George on, so they said not to bother, there was nothing more to find. Take this seriously, never, never listen to anyone but yourself. You can also get in trouble this way. So I drove the next day to Skippack, stopping here and there. At the first such stop I came upon that issue of The Goschenhoppen Region  of May 1974 with the article on the Jacob Reiff Homestead. My son is scandalized at how I will just call or knock on the door of people when I have an interest. He is so glad when they are not home. So I called the editor, Arthur J. Lawton out of the blue, and managed to get three earlier issues from him, but in so doing we met, and, as he was conducting a high school class in archaeology at the Jacob Reiff farm, invited me to join with them the next day. The site was all properly strung in squares and the students were brushing and sifting the dirt when he announced that a descendent of Jacob Reiff himself would join them that day. I think he enjoyed that. So that marked one of the beginnings to all these matters.

 

Harry did not want letters in email, he wanted the real thing, so consequently I have a whole folder of them. 

[From Perkiomen Autographs, here]

Please see also the photo memoir executed by Aeyrie Reiff: Time Travel in Eighteenth Century Pennsylvania, 1712-2012.

 14 Nov 2001

Dear Harry Reiff,

I have collected and meditated on the material included here for some time, but that is not to say I'm satisfied with its present form. However I feel the urge to give it form, hence this letter to you. I think perhaps that after Part 3 I should go right into Skippack and its concerns, so I just added Part 4 to print the material.

 

I imagine my audience to be my many nieces and nephews and their families and to them much of what I say here will be a revelation. Certainly you're more interested in what follows, which is the history of the four Reiff brothers, George, Peter, Conrad and Jacob, about whom quite a lot of information exists, although much of it is polemical. Oh why can't we all be loved?

 

I've started with Conrad because he raises in miniature many of the issues that seem to occur with Jacob, but presently, that would be in Ch. 2, Conrad is asking to be expanded into also an examination of lawlessness in religion and/or anti-churches in colonial Pennsylvania. This will require a wider reading than I've yet done. After Conrad I go right into Jacob, much of which I already have in draft, about three of four chapters. So that's about where I am at present. You can asume I am desperate to talk with somebody who cares about this material. I'm also sending of copy of this to my Aunt Elizabeth. 

 

Your truly,

Andy Reiff

21 November 2001. Harry E. Reiff

Dear Andy,

 

The chapter “On Peace and War” is a rather startling exposition on the appearance of the word ‘rife’ in ancient times, notably England, Scandinavia, Germany, etc. This certainly interesting-I never realized the word was used so often in so many ways/meanings. However, as a patrilineal surname, I’ve never seen its use before the 18^th century anywhere but German, Swiss and Austrian (Tyrol) records.

Perhaps you’ll let me add a few more variations from the book “Reif, Reiff, Reifer Familienchronik” prepared and published in 1976 by Werner Hug, and based on data from the Carl Ringer-Reif Familienorganization. The book was microfilmed in 1985 by an LDS team. Additional spellings are numerous.

 

The books lists the descendants of Hans Reiffer, a miller who took control in 1481 of a mill in Russikon (near Zurich). Descendants are listed up to 1925 if they remained in Switzerland but lines are not followed for those who emigrated to Germany or other countries.

Rather than make the laborious effort to translate the German initial pages, I enclose photocopies of them. You’ll note that the earliest date mentioned is 1375.

 

You’re quite correct-I’ll be much interested in the work you’ve done on the four brothers. If you’d like me to send additional data (or suggested corrections), I’d be glad to do so. Incidentally, do you have a copy of Henry Dotterer’s statement that he found evidence pointing to the possibility that Hans George married Anna Maria, the daughter of a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church? I’ve been unable to find my notes pertaining to this tidbit.

 

Regards,

Harry Reiff

5 Dec 2001

Dear Harry,

 

If Hans George married the daughter of a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church this must have been either in the old country or New York.Were it true it would not contradict the Reiff reformed ardor, but increase it. While I know of Henry Dotterer's fascination with Peter's girls, Anna and Catharine, as his possible forebearers, and of his other Reiff enthusiasms, I've not see any of the manuscript materials.

I haven't stopped thinking about the George Hendricks Reiff Mennonite connection you suggested.

If I backtrack then I know that my grandmother Anna Mack Reiff and her husband Howard were, with their respective parents, Jacob Landis Reiff and Henry Mack, members of the same Mennonite Church in Philadelphia and that Jacob L.'s father, Abraham Schwenk Reiff (1817-1879) was a deacon of the Worcester Mennonite Church. Jacob L. bought his son Howard a car about 1910 so that on Sundays they could all drive to Uncle George's farm to visit.

 

How we got to be Mennonite might be on the other side of Abraham S. unless Mennonites just spring full blown from the soil.

If we were to go down to the Tombs, the records would all be in German, yes? I'd be willing to try sometime. Are you game? I would bring my son, Aeyrie, the best tempered person that I know. He would be a big help.

We would be looking for evidence that George Hendricks's wife Elizabeth was a Mennonite and that through her he and his children became such?

 

Against this theory must be the fact that George Clemens Reiff, Abraham's father, apparently served  in the War of 1812, also apparently some of his brothers and sisters were Reformed.

I feel like the trail has evaporated again. I'd love to hear your thoughts upon these ramblings.

Conrad and I have reconciled him with the differing accounts of his life in Mittelberger, Muhlenberg (implicit) and his will. Happily the news is good. After an apparent middle age of worldliness and very ill chosen associates, Conrad, "the richest man in Oley" renders the most devout will possible, suggesting not only that Mittelberger's charges were essentially true, but also that they were not, since he lived to repudiate them. I am glad most of all for his ancestors!

 

 Yours truly,

Andy

11 December 2001

Harry Reiff

Andy;

Elizabeth Hendricks who married  George Reiff III was a daughter of Leonard Hendricks, who in turn was a son of the immigrant Lawrence Hendricks. The Hendricks were part of the so-called Krefeld group who settled/established German town in 1683 and later. These people were called Dutch Quakers - induced by William Penn to come to Penn's colony in America. Apparently there was a strong Mennonite population in the Krefeld/Munchen-Gladbach area, and Quaker-Mennonite-Reformed families at times were mixed. At any rate, Leonard Hendricks owned land in the Towamencin area of present Montgomery Co., and was considered a Quaker.

Lawrence [Laurentz] Hendricks; father William was a Holland Dutch Mennonite. He came with Pastorious in 1682 and brought is sons Lawrence and Henry with him. I never tried to sort out the Quaker/Mennonite relationships in this country. However I doubt that George Reiff III became a Mennonite because of his Dutch Quaker wife Elizabeth.

The archives in Philadelphia City Hall are not at all always in German - far from it. I haven't been there for 25 years and have no desire to go back. I'm not even sure you can go down there since Sept. 11. Perhaps some library research would be better. As I recall, the book "William Penn and the Dutch Quakers" will be as good a source to start looking for Hendricks.

As for George Clemens Reiff, his mother Elizabeth Clemens descended from the Mennonite immigrant Gerhard Clemens whose prolific descendants were mostly Mennonites. There are several books on the Clemens family.

The Mennonite lines seem to me to be quite clear from George III down to my grandfather Abraham W. Reiff, a nephew of your Abraham Schwenk Reiff.

I've made a copy of a letter sent to me by Glenn Landes, the chap who found the estate settlement document bearing Annna Landes Reiff's signature. Perhaps that will be of use to you.

Regards,

Harry

3 February 2002

Dear Harry,

Thanks for the copy of that Anna Landes Reifff letter and for your thoughts on the Hendricks Mennonite connections. I take it that you subscribe to these facts.

It sounds like Glenn Landis might wonder whether Jacob the Elder went over to the Mennonites himself. Jacob doesn't seem to turn up on any of the other various church rolls, so, assuming he continued with the "Reiff Church' and its succession of pastors following Weiss: Miller, Rieger, Goetchy and Straub, after 1743, what?

I have finally obtained a copy of Emigrants, Refugees and Prisoners that you recommended. Other than proximity and similarity of name, is there reason to believe that Hans George Reiff "was probably related in some way" (347) to his neighbor, the Mennonite Hans Reiff? Speaking of Jacob the Elder, Davis says that "many of his grandchildren married Mennonites" (348). I guess this implicates besides the Hendricks, the Landis and the Clemens families.

The humor of your statement that "I doubt that George Reiff III became a Mennonite because of his Dutch Quaker wife Elizabeth," makes me want to ask, why did he become a Mennonite? Just to avoid all the fuss?

I enclose the following precis of what I had written regarding Conrad Reiff up until last month.

 There is a kind of spiritual odyssey in Conrad's beliefs. At the outset he is Reformed, lives in Skippack,signs the petition of 1728 (and 1731?) and is probably included in Boehm's general indictment that "Jacob Reiff and his brothers contend that the land belongs to them" (Letters, 1730, 217). Around this time he marries Anna Margaretha Kuhlwein and moves to Oley (c. 1733), site of the Newborn colony in which his father-in-law, Philip Kuhlwein was a leader. He inherited Kuhlwein's estate after his death in 1736 (Pendleton, Oley Valley Heritage, 108) and apparently was still one of the Newborn, although after Matthias Baumann's death in 1727 others of that cult (the Yoders, John Lesher, Casper Griesemer, Gabriel Boyer) "founded the Oley Reformed Church" (c. 1734-36, see Don Yoder, Yoder Newsleter Online, #5, April, 1985), but Conrad may have continued (out of loyalty?) with that unfriendly view of clergy, rituals and sacraments which the Newborn concocted. Many years later Mittelberger (1753) indicts Conrad Reiff and Arnold Hufnagel (who witnessed Kuhlwein's will, April 7, 1737) as "archenemies of the clergy, scoffing at them and at the Divine word...laughing at and denying Heaven and future bliss as well as damnation in Hell" (Journey to Pennsylvania, 84). This is thought to be a last gasp of the Newborn philosophy. In any case, the specifics of the charges against these "planters" stem from their religion not irreligion. The year 1753 is a busy one for such reports. Muhlenberg's funeral for the Lutheran Philip Beyer is disrupted by another Newborn. In ruminating about Reiffs on the occasion of Anna Maria's funeral, likewise in 1753, Muhlenberg states that "she had several married sons who are well thought of, and some of these profess the Reformed religion while others believe in nothing." Conrad and Peter, often identified together, are the likeliest candidates for those who "sought only transitory things of this world." Whether it was Mittelberger's (apocryyphal?) attack by a flight of golden eagles or simple maturity, a change of heart occurs at some point with Conrad, although the case is complicated by red herrings.

In 1763 Muhlenberg reports visiting with one Anna Margretha Reiss, Reiss being the way Muhlenberg spelled the name of Anna Maria Reiff, Jacob Reiff's mother. Anna Margretha is of course the name of Conrad's wife. Muhlenberg says that "she and her husband are Reformed and live in Kensington" (I, 606), but Kensington is not Oley. Another false lead occurs with the statement that Conrad was a "Mennonite preachr" (Sunday Eagle Magazine, January 12, 1969, Reading, PA). More striking however than this unsupported but potential renewed cordiality to clergy is the statement of faith in Conrad's will (1777) of his "certain hopes of a joyful resurrection through the merits of my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." This is just opposite the Newborn view reported by Boehm that "they claim that they have essential divinity in themselves" (Letters, 1728, 161). Thus he seems to have come full circle as many of these people did; Kuhlwein had once been Reformed himself. The phrase "through the merits of my Lord" echoes especially with arguments Whitfield reports in his Journals (November 25, 1740) about how "the Lord Jesus was to me our whole righteousness." This had been a point of contention in the revivals of the 1740s. Neither Hans George nor George Reiff made any such testament of faith in their wills, which is not to say they were not spiritually so inclined, to the contrary, but to show that Conrad may have wanted to settle any doubts he himself may have created.

Considering that so many of the Reiff family went there in later life we might say that Oley is like the afterlife, but it remains to be said whether the good or the bad. Whether it is the place or the people so constituted is a nice question, but how can we blame the geography? Yet we do. Blessed or damned. By most accounts the valley of Oley was prosperous; because it was available it attracted most of the many brotherhoods seeking a home at that time. But outsiders thought it ill. Muhlenberg, 1747, "a place were practically all the inhabitants are scoffers and blasphemers.' Rieger, 1755, "the haunt of the wildest and most unruly people and sects." Sects or insects? Shall we say, as Pendleton does, that that was just an extreme example of the many visionary German religious radicals "swarming" throughout the region (105)? Pietism a license to swarm?

The Newborn contentions are important for the Reiffs on several accounts.

Weiss, while pastoring the Reiff Church, published that early pamphlet, Der In Der Americani Schen Wildnusz (1729), against them. Sachse remarks that it it "a strange coincidence that both Boehm and Baumann came to Pennsylvania about the same time from Lambsheim, in the Palatinate (The German Sectarians, I, 157)." So here is Conrad Reiff about to marry into a sect against which both his pastors made significant railings. Boehm revisits their errors in his letters of 1728, 1730, and 1740, as does Muhlenberg. The issue affects Conrad, his sister (Anna Maria), their mother (who lived with her daughter), the daughter's husband, Conrad Gehr (in the Muhlenberg obsequies) and perhaps as well their son, Balthaser Gehr (cf. Pendleton, 137, 147) who was involved in Oley, not necessarily in a culpable sense, but was tried for assault and battery in 1767, and exercised a power of attorney for his infirm cousin Philip Reiff, second son of Conrad, in 1786. Also, it is important to remember that Peter Reiff moved to Oley (c. 1745) and lived near Conrad, as did George, their other brother, around 1757, and, according to Harry Reiff, Catharine, Jacob's daughter, was "a widow living in Oley at the time of her father's death," viz. 1782 (9). Holy Oley!

Yours truly,

Andy

13 /February 2002

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy;

Your precis on Conrad is well done. I'm impressed by the depth of your research, oftenin material not readily available to me.

Enclosed is a poor copy of the first page of the document Glenn Landis found. You'll notice the names on the lower left portion- Anna Reiff and Margreth Smith. The date of the document is Oct. 10, 1749. The second page you already have states that the estate of 366.10 (pounds) is to be divided between the widow and three children. One child is the oldest son, and then each of two daughters, apparently Anna and Margrath/Margaret, who signed/marked the first page. Note that some researchers have assigned Peter Reiff's wife to be Margaret Smith. If so she apparently was a widow when she married Peter.

Getting back to Jacob, he returned in 1729 from a trip to Europe to "fetch his relations," on the ship Mortonhouse with 'Jonathan' and 'Veronica'. I know nothing provable of these two, but it's easy to speculate that Veronica was Jacob's first wife (others have) who died shortly after the birth of Jacob's first son Jacob (Jr.), b. 1734. Jacob Jr. remained in the German Reformed Church and was one of the founders in 1760 of the Wentz's Reformed Church (now UCC) still an active church to this day. The church is often considered a successor to the 1725 Reiff German Reformed Church in nearby Lower Salford Twp., built on Jacob Reiff Sr's land and torn down by him around 1740, presumably because of a conflict with the first Reiff church parishioners and others. That's another long story about which you've heard, I'm sure.

As for the Dutch Quakers, apparently that term was used in the late 1600's / early 1700's in northern Germany/Holland to include Mennonites and Quakers. Anyhow, George III b. 1740 (6 years after brother Jacob) probably became a Mennonite when he was born. Actually I've wondered how strongly father Jacob followed Mennonite tenets. Nor firmly, I suspect, since he acted as a governmental representative, justice of the peace, etc. for some years.

One person I've not learned much about is Jacob and Anna's daughter Catharine. I don't know when she was born-perhaps between Jacob Jr. and George-but she was a widow when father Jacob's estate was settled (he died in 1782). I've often wondered if she married her first cousin Daniel, Conrad's son. Daniel also died in 1782, and the legal settlement of Jacob's estae a few years after his death notes that Catharine Reiff was a widow. Some researchers in Berks Co. say she married a man named Diese, but the estate settlement calls her Catharine Reiff, not Catharine Diese. Also, I've not seen proof of the Diese marriage.

Anyhow, getting back to your Conrad precis, I know next to nothing of the Newborn colony. Jacob buried his mother in the Lower Skippack Mennonite cemetery, and he asked the Lutheran Muhlenberg to preside at her funeral at the Lower Skippack Mennonite Meeting House. As for Muhlenberg's comments on Anna Maria's problems as she was living with her daughter and husband Conrad Gehr, the family knew about Conrad's peccadilloes, as indicated in the will of Hans George's son John George, who died leaving a legacy to nephew Balthazar with an admonition not to permit Conrad Gehr to have any of the legacy.

Further on the 'Newborn' problem and Boehm's concern (incidentally, my wife and I belong to Boehm's Reformed church now UCCC and I function desultorily as church historian) is that Boehm was having quite a problem/fight with Count Zinzendorf, a Moravian minister out of Bethlehem PA who was tryng to meld all Protestant sects into a single sect (of unknown beliefs, to me). Boehm was successful, of course, forcing Zinzendorf to go back to Bethlehem. I would be interested in hearing what connection Zinzendorf had with the 'Newborn' people.

Incidentally, son John George Reiff lived in Lower Salford Twp in the 1730s-1740s, during which period Conrad, Peter and of course Jacob also lived there. That was the area father Hans George had settled by 1717. Son John George moved into Germantown (had the Reiffs originally settled there? I don't know), where he died in 1759. I doubt he moved to/lived in Oley in 1757.

One final note-Peter's children didn't stay around Oley very long-legend says they tended to get away from the old man as soon as possible, males and females. Peter's wife Margaret apparently outlived her husband for several years, since there's a record of the death "Widow Reiff" around 1790 in the rocky Rockland Twp., Berks Co. where Peter lived.

Just one further thought on the Mennonite relationship of Hans George Reiff that Davis suggests-an article which describes the European origins of the three Mennonite immigrant brothers, Hans, Abraham and (John) Jacob Reiff is covered in the journal "Mennonite Family History Vol XI, No. 1 (Jan. 1992) published 5 years before Davis' Vol. 2 book. Two of the three lived for some years very near Hans George and his children. I'd be glad to send you a copy of that article if your wish.

Regards

Harry Reiff

3 November 2002

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy;

Since I haven't heard from you since February of this year, I presume your interests have strayed from your Reiff heritage. I hope not.

At any rate, I wanted to inform you the Fred Riffe (author of the 1995 tome, 'Reiff to Riffe Family in America') has now published another volume with same title, followed by 'Volume II' and then, on the cover, "Ancestors and Descendants of Mennonite brothers Hans, John Jacob and Abraham". Should you be interested, the book can be purchased for $49.00 from "Reiff to Riffe Family in America", Box 504324, Marathon Florida 33050.

Fred quotes both Davis' book and Mrs. Best's article in 'Mennonite Family History' for the European origins of the three brothers, but correctly states that the connection is not firmly proven. He does suggest that more research into the European origins of both Mennonite and Protestant Reiff family branches is needed.

There are already several internet web pages which unequivocally connect Hans George Reiff to the same 1600's family that produced the three Mennonite immigrants, as Davis' book suggests. No proof is cited in these web pages.

So the matter of the European parentage/origin of Hans George Reiff is still open, waiting for some searcher who has the time and access to German civil and church records for the 1600's, particularly for the Palatinate area. What a challenge!

Best regards,

Harry Reiff

4 November 2002

Dear Harry,

As you see I am enclosing another draft of Conrad Reiff somewhat amplified. There is still material I have not consulted, but I'm trying to move on in this saga.

I was very interested to learn from your last letter that you attend and are historian of the Boehm Reformed Church. i never meant to go so deep with Conrad since Jacob was the main issue. To me Jacob Reiff  presents a far more complex and textured problem which could take substantially longer.

I appreciate your question as to whether Catharine Reiff might have been married to Daniel, but I don't have anything to add about it as this time. What I want to know is what document did Anna Maria Reiff write "in a neat hand in English" in 1773 as reported by Mary Jane Hershey in the Mennonite Historical bulletin of October 1995 and etc?

I have come into the possession of Henry Mack's Ledgers of 1876-1898, given to me by my aunt Elizabeth, his granddaughter. She also gave some books with John B. Bechtel's signature and also his father's. I enclose a little precis of this connection. Withal it occurs to me that an antidote to Conrad Reiff would be the Bechtel-Mack Mennonite connection, one also that is a lot closer to me so I am presently collecting materials in that regard, the History of the Hereford Congregation, the Life of Noah Mack. I have Henry Mack's inventory of the graveyard at Bally and Noah's short life of Andrew Mack. I mention this in case you have been into these fields.

Meanwhile I'm continuing to read around in Skippack, etc.

Best Wishes,

Andy

20 November 2002

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy,

The draft is quite a comprehensive review of the Oley valley and the individuals therein. Most interesting, particularly about Conrad Reiff, about who I'd never researched much. Enclosed is a review by Don Yoder of a book which describes the village of Lambsheim (in the Palatinate) and some of the persons who lived there in the late 1600's and early 1700's particularly Bauman and Kuhlwein. Note that John Philip Boehm lived there for some time (he was born in Hochstadt in Hesse), married Anna Maria Stehler in Lambsheim, and then moved to Worms around 1715, from which town he emigrated to America. Although Boehm wasn't ordained until 1729 (by the Dutch Reformed Church in New York), he vigorously denounced those persons who encroached on his "turf". Particularly, he battled Count von Zinzendorf, the Moravian church founder in Bethlehem Pa., who attempted to collect all sects in southeast Pa. into one grand church, presumably the Moravian church. Boehm defeated him, and he returned back to Bethlehem.

The statement that "Anna Reiff wrote in English" was first made in print in the James Heckler book published in 1888-"The history of Harleysville and Lower Salford Township". The entire quote from that book is "There has been some inquiry as to who his [Jacob Reiff] wife was, but it is not known. She probably was a woman of some distinction because she wrote a neat hand in English, which German women could not do".

The only document in English that I know of that may have been written by Anna Reiff is the Hans George Reiff will, now in the files in Philadelphia City Hall. Since the will was probated in 1727, it is unlikely that it was written by Jacob's wife Anna, but possibly by Jacob's mother Anna Maria. No proof of who or when; and, additionally, I've heard that the original will was in German, but no proof of that either. Some years ago I read one of Henry Dotterer's reports from his European travels in which he noted the possibility that Hans George Reiff married Anna Maria, the educated daughter of a Dutch Reformed church man. I'm still searching in my files for the copy of that report, and if/when I find it I'll send you a copy.

Best regards,

Harry

February 13, 2003

Dear Harry,

Those are some momentous things you have said.

Boehm says the church met in "Jacob Reiff's private house" before Weiss came.

What I'm trying to find out is could the pre-Weiss church also have first met in Hans George's house? Didn't all the brothers (and sister) live with the father before he died, especially if he owned those 200 acres by 1717?  Or had Jacob established his own place before the father died, as you guess, and they never met at Hans George's? Heckler says he thinks the church met at Indehaven's. If Jacob had his own farm that would be good reason for George to get the father's place. Of course Heckler says Jacob owned it by 1741.

The reference to the 1717 Ziegler deed with one boundary on the border of Hans George Reiff—you don't mean Hans Reiff but Hans George, yes? And this was Michael Ziegler? Where is this deed? Forgive me, I'm just double checking. 

As to the 1727 recording of the 534 acres, you agree that Jacob would not have sailed in December, but you are saying that he wouldn't have had to be in Philadelphia for the recording of the deed?  But Boehm says that it was Jacob Reiff who introduced Weiss into the Skippack congregation. Reiff says he left in 1727, Weiss arrived in Philadelphia September 21, 1727 so the earliest Reiff could have sailed was the fall. Not a lot of difference, but was it even possible to sail in the winter?  Help!

About Hans George's mark. He would not have to write English to sign his name. Pennypacker says that his was "a neat signature" on the Mennonite trust agreement of 1725. I just pose questions cause I don't know anything about it, but what if he made the 'mark' because he was too sick to sign? You have seen all these things first hand, but apparently he signed Hans George Reiff on that prior occasion. Is there another explanation for the JR? If the J stands for John that implies he is writing English.

This is important to me because of what Riffe says: "In the time when many of the colonists were unable to read and write, John George Reiff was considered an educated man…he was more then helpful in assisting the poorer immigrants, particularly those of the Mennonite faith…he helped organize and build the Salford Mennonite Meetinghouse" (19).  Is this just hyperbole. What other poor immigrants did he assist? How did he help organize and build besides signing his name?

What I was looking for here was that he did write English, like his son, Jacob. I'm sinking badly on that I think.

Was the Mennonite Trust Agreement written originally in English or German? Nobody ever says who translates this stuff, leaving the question open in a sort of a way.

That he married an educated daughter of the Dutch Reformed minion is really provoking. It would establish his education too. I wish somebody could get that Dotterer ms. into the open. Establishing his education establishes Jacob's too. It adds a fact to all this conjecture. The facts are few.

Here follows a sample of the directions I was tracking before your letter. Maybe it helps you understand why I'm asking these questions and trying to combine father and son.

"In his witnessing the momentous Mennonite Meetinghouse Trust there is evidence that Hans George was educated, trusted and well known. His early involvement with the German Reformed church of Skippack also suggests citizenship.

According to Heckler what set Jacob apart from his fellows was a "great force of character." This would become more evident in the religious tests he was to face. But Heckler also cites him among the "reasonably well educated" men of Lower Salford Township including "Rev. George Weiss and Rev. Balthasar Hoffman in the Schwenkfelder denomination; Dielman Kolb and Henry Funk in the Mennonite denomination and Jacob Reiff, the elder, in the Reformed church" (108).

In any event when he served as deputy for the probate of wills for the then undivided large area of  Philadelphia County including "the interior townships, such as Salford, Hanover, Amity, Oley, Perkiomen and Skippack, Towamencin, Maidencreek, Saucon, Rockhill, Colebrookdale, Worcester, Providence and Franconia" (Dotterer, 31),  "the object in having a German-speaking deputy located here, was doubtless, to accommodate those German inhabitants, who lived a great distance from Philadelphia and were ignorant of the English language" (Heckler, 31).

Jacob Reiff spoke and wrote English and German fluently and probably Dutch  since he traveled for those years in Holland. An example of how he was groomed by birthright by his father for his responsibilities may be seen in his probating among others, the will of Claus Jansen, the first Mennonite minister at Skippack. Jansen was a settler in Skippack as early as 1703, a "tax collector in 1718 before the township was organized" (Pennypacker, 30) and one of the seven trustees  of the 100 acres Van Bebber gave the Skippack Mennonites in 1725. This was of course the same trust which Jacob's father, Hans George Reiff had witnessed. Claus Janson's will,  "dated June 1, 1739…was proven before Jacob Reiff, of Lower Salford, deputy register, October 30, 1745" (Heckler, 15). He was obviously acquainted with many of the associates of his father.

The first mention of his name, in the diary of Gerhard Clemens, July 2, 1723, confirms he was "a man of enterprise and public spirit" (Dotterer in Heckler, 33), for Dotterer says that since he "was entrusted by the Colonial government as agent to go around among the settlers to collect partial payments on their lands in 1723, he must have been here some time before, well acquainted, and in the confidence of the leading men" (31).

He judges him thus to have been "a man of superior intelligence" (30). And Heckler  agrees that he "stood high in the estimation of the leading men of the county" (27).

The Mennonite Trust Agreement

There is some tradition in Jacob Reiff's background for trustee work, specifically in the life of his father. The odds are that he was educated because his father was.

Correct written English was in short supply in Lower Salford in that day. Compare the German-English of the will of Christopher Dock: "my order is dit, to chose Man, two upright Man can do it, let them bring it in two like part and worth as good she can, and so likewise if any fruit, every a thing shall come in two like part to Receive each of my Children one part" (The Perkiomen Region II, 25). Referring to Dock's literacy in English, Heckler says his "education was in German" he "did not know what constituted good English" (Lower Salford, 52).

Samuel Pennypacker argues that it was Heinrich Pannebecker who set up the trust agreement, March 30, 1725, using the forms and seal of Pastorius (6). He believes that the Mennonites must have been "acting under the guidance of some one more or less familiar with the forms of conveyancing" (6). Although it is granted Pannebecker wrote a conveyancer's hand and drew deeds" (1) and that he spoke three languages, Dutch, German and English (1), that does not mean he could write them. His written English was as bad as Dock's,  a Dutch-English dialect, evident in a letter of 1742: "M. Frend Ed Ward Shippen. My keind Respek too Juer too let Ju under Stan tha I haffe spoken with the totters of Abraham op den Graff an by ther words are willing too singe Jur dees as ther broders haffe don…"(31).

Riffe (I, 20) suggests that Hans George Reiff "assisted in the preparation" of the  trust agreement that he also witnessed." "In the time when many of the colonists were unable to read and write, John George Reiff was considered an educated man" that is, we infer he was an educated man because he witnessed the agreement. Further,  "he was more than helpful in assisting the poorer immigrants, particularly those of the Mennonite faith," and that he "helped organize and build the Salford Mennonite Meetinghouse" (19). Can we accept this proprietary claim that Hans George Reiff could read and write (English) merely from the assertion of Pennypacker (6) that he "wrote a neat signature?"

In designing the trust agreement, March 30, 1725, the trustees sought "to extend its purposes that the land should be held for the benefit of the poor of the Mennonites, and for the erection of a meeting house for the people of that sect, and, on the other hand to so restrict it, that only members in good standing in this meeting could act as trustees" (Pennypacker, 6).

Much was at stake in the agreement,  Mennonites being a particular people, it is impossible to think that  the witnesses were not carefully selected: "the witnesses were Hans George Reiff; a member of the German Reformed Church, who wrote a neat signature, and Antonius Heilman, a Lutheran living at the Trappe. Whether this selection of witnesses was the result of chance alone, or had some purpose, it is impossible to determine" (Pennypacker, 6). You would choose a man for this job based on his reputation as a man of honor, but you would also allow that he might help you in its execution. As an educated man Hans George might have been the hand that Englished the document, for while Pennebacker knew the conveyancing business, he could not have written the English of the trust agreement."

That last sentence is very desperate, especially if he didn't know English, especially if it wasn't written in English. What say you?

Thanks very much for sharing your expertise.

Sincerely,

Andy

1 March 2003

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy,

You raise a lot of good points, many of which, perhaps, can't be proved without legal or other records. There are very few of those, copies included, which are still available. There are some 'reliable' sources for some records or events.

One, a photocopy of the Michael Ziegler deed, is in the 1922 book by Ralph Beaver Strassburger titled "Strassburger Family and Allied Families in Pennsylvania". In the boundaries description, the Reiff land abutting the Ziegler land is named 'of Hans George Reiff', not just Hans Reiff. As you have noticed, there is often confusion in the literature involving Mennonite Hans Reiff and German Reformed Church Hans George Reiff. Mennonite Hans Reiff's farm was about a mile or so from that of Hans Georg's home and even closer to Jacob Reiff's presumed home, now call the Jacob Reiff Home/Park.

Another point is in the 1937 book "History of the Mennonites of the Franconia Conference", by J.C. Wenger. The Franconia Conference contains the Lower Salford Meetinghouse near Harleysville. According to Wenger, the firt Mennonite meetinghouse in this area was begun in 1705 very near the present village of Skippack. Both Skippack and Salford congregations used this location until the 1730's (ca. 1738) when Henry Ruth donated land near Harleysville for the Salford meetinghouse. Obviously, Hans George Reiff had no part in this since he died 10-11 years before that. It's doubtful that he had anything to do with the Skippack meetinghouse/congregation, even though he signed the Mennonite agreement as a witness. Certainly, he was not buried in the Salford Mennonite Cemetery, and there is no evidence that he was buried in the Skippack Mennonite cemetery, although his wife was. But, she died after her son Jacob (with whom she lived for the last years of her life) had changed from the German Reformed Church to the Skippack Mennonite meetinghouse, possibly because Jacob may have married Mennonite Anna Landis. I believe I told you of the Anna Landis theory that Jacob married the daughter of Skippack Mennonite Jacob Landis. Also, Jacob had become disillusioned of the German Reformed congregations after he was accused of thievery of the proceeds from his trip to Holland, Germany with the minister Jacob Weiss, and he may have changed religions in disgust. Back to Hans George, perhaps he was buried in his son Jacob's Skippack German Reformed Church on Jacob's land.

Finally, records show that a Dutch Reformed Church pastor from Bucks County held a meeting in 1710 in Whitemarsh Twp. in present Montgomery Co. (about 15-20 miles southeast of Skippack). And 10-15 persons (some Mennonite?) attended, but the Skippack area was still largely Mennonite. Refer to "The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography" No. XXXI No. 1, 1907 article entitled "Bebber's Township and the Dutch Patroons of Pennsylvania" by Samuel Pennypacker, with the help of Franklin Reiff. Incidentally, the German (not Dutch) Reformed Church had no official minister in America until about 1727, when ordained Rev. George Weiss arrived. Two years later (1729) John Philip Boehm was ordained in New York by the Dutch Reformed Church. Before 1727, the non-ordained school teacher John Philip Boehm helped organize and baptized, married, buried German Reformed parishioners in over 29 southeastern Pennsylvania churches he helped or organized.

The last (desperate) sentence in your letter suggests that Hans George Reiff, if he could read and write English may have been the main writer of th Mennonite Agreement. Perhaps so, but I'm skeptical: It is known that several of the early immigrants to germantown and then later in Bebber's/Skippack Twps. would read/write English. Unfortunately, I don't have good references for this, but enclose is a copy of an article on the early  (late 1600/s early 1700/s) Duche/German immigrants, which (in the footnotes) may provide you with more references.

Andy you've done excellent work. I hope you keep it up.

Best regards,

Harry . No Need to return the enclosed article.

March 31, 2003

Dear Harry,

Thanks for your recent communiqués. May I raise two different questions herewith? The first concerns a legitimate problem about the identity of  Jacob Landes Sr., but the second seems to me a wholly illegitimate confusion created by the Fred Riffe research team about Hans George Reiff's first appearance in the land records. Please help.

First I seek clarification over the identity of Jacob Landes Sr., putative father of Anna Reiff.

I.                   Heckler (Franconia, 38-9) gives a Jacob Landes, miller, who settled in 1727 in Franconia. He calls him Jacob Landes Sr. but says "the names of father and son being the same we cannot always distinguish which it was." On the one hand he says that Jacob Sr. sold the 187 acres on Indian Creek to his son Jacob in 1748 (39) and on the other that he and his wife Mary granted 113 acres, bought in 1734 with the mill, to son Jacob on 12/28/1772. 

Is this just proof of confusion or is it a contradiction that this Jacob Sr. did not die in 1750?

II.                Strassburger says that  3 Landis brothers, Benjamin, Felix and John emigrated in 1717 and that John Landis settled in Bucks Co. where he died in 1749-50. His daughter was Veronica Landis Bauer, his son Jacob his executor. Are a John and a Jacob are here confused?

Joel Alderfer says of the 1727 Jacob Landes that he was an early Salford settler who died in 1749, and that: "Jacob Landes is the ancestor of all the Landes-Landis' in the Franconia-Salford-Skippack area" (Hist. of the Salford Mennonite Cong., 21).

Query: which, if any of these, is the Jacob Landis refereed to who died in 1750 and whose settlement Anna Reiff signed?

III.             Wenger (Franconia Conference) cites a Jacob Landes of Franconia who received a deed of trust with 16 others for the Salford Mennonites on 1/25/1738 who is also the one cited by Alderfer.

I need a push in the right direction.

Now the second problem concerns Mr. Riffe.

In Vol. II he reports a deed of 2/18/1718 where Hans Reiff bought 270 acres. Then he says that others have "mistakenly related that the 1718 purchase of land was made by John George Reiff" (34), but as you have alerted me, the deed of David Powell to Michael Ziegler, 1717, of 100 acres (reported by Straussburger, 419) says that "there is a certain Tract …Beginning at a reputed Corner of Hans George Reiff's land…." So his John George Reiff did already own land before Hans Reiff, but Riffe just doesn't know it? Please comment on this confusion.

Didn't you ever tell Riffe about Strassburger?

Another conundrum, Riffe says "John George Reiff's name is frequently written Hans Reiff or Hans George Reiff."

What? When was there ever a contemporary reference to a John, it was always Hans, yes? And likewise, when was it ever just Hans? Isn't he confusing the past with the present?

The problem for me is going to be establishing fact in the face of this confusion. Riffe says about the wrong 1718 purchase that it wasn't Hans George's and that only in 1724 did John George Reiff purchase and homestead "a tract of land that bordered the farm of Hans Reiff."

Meanwhile I'd like to push Hans George back even further.

Thanks again,

Where did they live before the land purchase of 1724?1) If the building was finished in 1728, and Boehm says they met before that in the private home of Jacob Reiff, here did the church meet from 1720 on? "says Hon. Jones Detweiler, who is considered good authority, "that the Skippack Reformed church was first organized in Skippack, and that for some time religious services were held in private houses among the settlers." Rev. Joh Philip boehm, who commenced his ministry about theyear 1720, undoubtedly was instrumental in orgainizing the church right here in the public house of Gerhard In den Hoffen, for if he had room enough to accommodate travelers, he also had room enough to hold religious services. "Heckler, Hist of Skippack, 8. Also, p. 7 ",the In den Hoffens were not Mennonites but Reformed, and were instrumental in organizing the Skippack Reformed Church."2) Was it at Hans George's? Did they then move to Jacob's after the father's death? 3) Did not Jacob, brothers and sister live with their mother and father at the time of his death? Jacob's land of 1727 was next to his father's of 1724. 4) The will does not say George gets the property. Why does Heckler say George got the 200 acre homestead?5)  How can the inventory of it all come only to 170 pounds when Jacob has to pay 175 pounds to his mother, and anyway Hans George paid 485 pounds for the 200 acres?6) Jacob's first land, bought December l, 1727-then bang off to Holland?Jacob Reiff was the youngest of four brothers, the favorite of his father.

More about the JR: the more I think about it the more it seems like this is Jacob Reiff witnessing his father's mark, or if you like, Jacob Reiff applying the seal, implying his father's infirmity.

15 Mach 2003

Harry Reiff

Andy,

I thought the enclosed reprint might be of some interest to you. It was sent to me some years ago by John Ruth, a Mennonite historian/writer/publisher who lives near Lower Salford Twp., Montg. Co.

The reprint concerns essentially the three immigrant brothers, about who much is already known.

At the least it will refresh your German language translational abilities.

Regards,

Harry Reiff

March 31, 2003

Dear Harry,

Thanks for your recent communiqués. May I raise two different questions herewith? The first concerns a legitimate problem about the identity of  Jacob Landes Sr., but the second seems to me a wholly illegitimate confusion created by the Fred Riffe research team about Hans George Reiff's first appearance in the land records. Please help.

First I seek clarification over the identity of Jacob Landes Sr., putative father of Anna Reiff.

IV.             Heckler (Franconia, 38-9) gives a Jacob Landes, miller, who settled in 1727 in Franconia. He calls him Jacob Landes Sr. but says "the names of father and son being the same we cannot always distinguish which it was." On the one hand he says that Jacob Sr. sold the 187 acres on Indian Creek to his son Jacob in 1748 (39) and on the other that he and his wife Mary granted 113 acres, bought in 1734 with the mill, to son Jacob on 12/28/1772. 

Is this just proof of confusion or is it a contradiction that this Jacob Sr. did not die in 1750?

V.                Strassburger says that  3 Landis brothers, Benjamin, Felix and John emigrated in 1717 and that John Landis settled in Bucks Co. where he died in 1749-50. His daughter was Veronica Landis Bauer, his son Jacob his executor. Are a John and a Jacob are here confused?

Joel Alderfer says of the 1727 Jacob Landes that he was an early Salford settler who died in 1749, and that: "Jacob Landes is the ancestor of all the Landes-Landis' in the Franconia-Salford-Skippack area" (Hist. of the Salford Mennonite Cong., 21).

Query: which, if any of these, is the Jacob Landis refereed to who died in 1750 and whose settlement Anna Reiff signed?

VI.             Wenger (Franconia Conference) cites a Jacob Landes of Franconia who received a deed of trust with 16 others for the Salford Mennonites on 1/25/1738 who is also the one cited by Alderfer.

I need a push in the right direction.

Now the second problem concerns Mr. Riffe.

In Vol. II he reports a deed of 2/18/1718 where Hans Reiff bought 270 acres. Then he says that others have "mistakenly related that the 1718 purchase of land was made by John George Reiff" (34), but as you have alerted me, the deed of David Powell to Michael Ziegler, 1717, of 100 acres (reported by Straussburger, 419) says that "there is a certain Tract …Beginning at a reputed Corner of Hans George Reiff's land…." So his John George Reiff did already own land before Hans Reiff, but Riffe just doesn't know it? Please comment on this confusion.

Didn't you ever tell Riffe about Straussburger?

Another conundrum, Riffe says "John George Reiff's name is frequently written Hans Reiff or Hans George Reiff."

What? When was there ever a contemporary reference to a John, it was always Hans, yes? And likewise, when was it ever just Hans? Isn't he confusing the past with the present?

The problem for me is going to be establishing fact in the face of this confusion. Riffe says about the wrong 1718 purchase that it wasn't Hans George's and that only in 1724 did John George Reiff purchase and homestead "a tract of land that bordered the farm of Hans Reiff."

Meanwhile I'd like to push Hans George back even further.

Thanks again,

Where did they live before the land purchase of 1724?1) If the building was finished in 1728, and Boehm says they met before that in the private home of Jacob Reiff, here did the church meet from 1720 on? "says Hon. Jones Detweiler, who is considered good authority, "that the Skippack Reformed church was first organized in Skippack, and that for some time religious services were held in private houses among the settlers." Rev. Joh Philip boehm, who commenced his ministry about the year 1720, undoubtedly was instrumental in organizing the church right here in the public house of Gerhard In den Hoffen, for if he had room enough to accommodate travelers, he also had room enough to hold religious services. "Heckler, Hist of Skippack, 8. Also, p. 7 ",the In den Hoffens were not Mennonites but Reformed, and were instrumental in organizing the Skippack Reformed Church."2) Was it at Hans George's? Did they then move to Jacob's after the father's death? 3) Did not Jacob, brothers and sister live with their mother and father at the time of his death? Jacob's land of 1727 was next to his father's of 1724. 4) The will does not say George gets the property. Why does Heckler say George got the 200 acre homestead?5)  How can the inventory of it all come only to 170 pounds when Jacob has to pay 175 pounds to his mother, and anyway Hans George paid 485 pounds for the 200 acres?6) Jacob's first land, bought December l, 1727-then bang off to Holland?Jacob Reiff was the youngest of four brothers, the favorite of his father.

More about the JR: the more I think about it the more it seems like this is Jacob Reiff witnessing his father's mark, or if you like, Jacob Reiff applying the seal, implying his father's infirmity.

[no date,

reply to letter of 31 March 2003]

Andy,

Re your e-mail, my responses to your questions are:

 #1. Hans George's house was in present Skippack Township, not too far from the present "Reiff Homestead" property. George was Hans George's oldest son, but he died without issue, and I suspect the house may have gone to Jacob's second son George. I have no proof of that.

#2. As for Jacob's house, I suspect that it was the present "Reiff Homestead" house. I believe but can't prove that he bought the 534 acres (in several pieces) before his father died. The date 1727 reflects the recording of the purchase, not the date of purchase. The  land was still in Philadelphia Co., and often years went by before the farmers went all that distance to Phila (quite a trip in those days) to record the purchase/ownership. Thus, Hans George's property was not recorded until 1724, but a 1717 Ziegler deed notes one boundary was "land of Hans George Reiff".

#3. I've never seen any data on these two persons-Johannes and Veronica. Speculation is that she was Jacob's wife, but if so, she must have died quickly after arriving in America.

$4. The JR on Hans George Reiff's will was in red wax, rather a cockeyed mark, and I believe represents Hans George's 'mark' since he apparently couldn't write in English. Note that he doesn't write HR nor HGR, but the J, for English John. More about that below.

Now for your problems with Fred Riffe and his two books. I assume you've gotten the second one, which covers the descendants of the three emigrant Mennonite brothers. It also describes the European origins of the three brothers. I should mention that Fred follows the suggestion of Richard Warren Davis that Hans George was the son Uli (Ulrich) Ryff and Cathri Zashler, who migrated from Switzerland (Wadenswil) to the Pfalz and were of the German Reformed faith. Sever Reiff websites have picked up on this and extended the relationship back to the 1580 Hans Reiffer as noted in the LDS book, "Reif, Reiff, Reifer Familienchronik", by Werner Hug. I think I've mentioned that book to you before.

Getting back to Fred Riffe and his book (Vol. 1), he's made a number of erroneous assignments, particularly in the early 1700's. He's made mistakes, too, in his second book. A humerous one is the picture on p. 200 of an "Unknown Confederate Soldier and Family". A friend of mine told me the picture was posed by her nephew and his wife some years ago, and she gave Fred the picture, noting that it was posed.

In spite of Fred's errors, he has done considerable work in local public records throughout many of the states east of the Mississippi. He reports these sources, and also the names of the individuals who have given him their family data. He's the first Reiff biographer to publish such a broad base. For example, my Reiff book was quite narrow-not a family history, but just a genealogical record of Jacob's descendants. And informing him of the errors would not accomplish anything.

Finally, about Hans George Reiff's wife Anna Maria. If indeed she wrote Hans George's will, she was surely educated. Now, the historian Henry Dotterer wrote several books in his historical journeys. Two the the published books are in the stacks of the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia, but there is a third unpublished one which I saw about 10 years ago. They wouldn't let me make a copy of it, but as I recall, Dotterer recounted his visit to the Netherlands and the Dutch Reformed Church archives, where he found data that Hans George married an educated daughter of a church minion. I'll continue to try to find that info again.

Regards,

Harry Reiff

[at the time I wrote these sources on the bottom of this letter:

-Hist notes relating to the PA Reformed Church. Ed by H. Dotterer, 201p., 11900. The Balch Institute, BX 9496. P4#5

-Whitemarsh REformed Cong. in the Holland Archives. Microform. 7p.

-In the Albert M. Greenfield Microform and Media Center.

Call number BX 9496. P4 #5 1899. 1300 Locust St.]

7 April 2003

Dear Andy,

As always, you raise interesting questions. Let me respond with references. First, the Landis/Landes matter:

1. Certainly our Jacob Landes was not alive in 1772-that is another Landes or a date mistake.

2. John Landis of Bucks Co., d. ca. 1750, had a son John and a son Jacob. Sone Jacob d. in 1806 near Jersey Shore, Lycoming Co. Pa. Son of John Landis went to Montgomery Co.

There is a full chapter on John Landis in the Strssburger book, which I referred to in my last letter. I don't think there is any confusion-this John does not belong to the Jacob Landes that Joel Alderfer cites.

Enclosed is a brief article that Joel wrote and published. Note particularly page 7 on Yellis Landes, the sonof Jacob Landes Jr. and Mary Cassell,  and grandson of Jacob Landes Sr. I hope that straightens out your concern about "our" Jacob Landes.

Incidentally, keep Joel's article-I have no use for it.

As for the land owner question, I agree that Hans George probably bought his land before Hans, and that Fred Riffe didn't know of the deep photo in the Strssburger book. (incidentally, enclosed is a copy of the deed itself from the Strassberger book). Fred doesn't hesitate to jump to conclusions, and so I ignore some of his conclusions like this one.

However, the possibility that Hans George may have been the child of Uli Ryeff/Reiff and his wife, who migrated to the Pfalz and joined th German Reformed Church there, cannot be ignored. I hope somebody can find the records (if they exist) which could confirm this. Possibly church and/or municipal records may be in the the LDS files in Salt Lake City. Perhaps a visit to Germany ala Davis might benecessary. Nor for me, however, I was there once in '44/'45.

Regards,

Harry

April 25, 2003

Dear Harry,

I'm treading water in the enclosed piece about George C. Reiff.  I do not yet have independent confirmation that Bishop Hunsicker served partly concurrent terms in the military and the ministry. If this is true it seems to be astonishing. I was just trying to understand George C. when I came on this, but it opens up the way a little for Jacob Reiff. Perhaps you know of additional details about George C.? It is also possible I am somewhere in error. Love to have your opinion. I am also seeking other clarifications.

I.  I'm not sure exactly what the division of Hans George's estate was from the language of the will. Was the estate divided equally, or only the residue? Davis says, "he makes his son Jacob his sole executor and gives him all his land, implements and worldly goods. He then gives "sons…5 equal shares of what is left…" (348). But Heckler says, the "premises went to his oldest son George…but in 1741 we find this property belonging to…Jacob" (24). In your view is it correct to say that Jacob got the whole estate?

II. I am basically striking out with George Hendricks Reiff. I have acquired many of the sources you've mentioned in the past to good purpose. Do you have any such ideas about George H.?

Thanks very much for the Joel Alderfer pamphlet and your thoughts on Jacob Landis. I have written to Glenn Landis to see if there are any further developments.

Sincerely, 

AE Reiff

8 June 2003

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy,

Sorry for the delay in answering your April Letter.

I'm afraid I know very little about George C. Reiff. In fact, all I have on him came from the historian Andrew Berky, who married my cousin Lucille Reiff. Back around 1960, Berky sent me a copy of his research on his wife's line back to Hans George Reiff, which is what stimulated me to start working our Reiff lines. He had only a brief paragraph on George C., and I didn't pursue it to any significant extent. My interest originally was to establish the genealogical lines on back and to include the few details I found which seemed of interest.

My comments would be similar for George Hendricks Reiff - I accepted the brief writeup that Berky had prepared. I did pursue back for several generations the Hendricks line-quite interesting, for it took me back into the Crefeld settlers of Germantown and some of their families.

Andy, you have done much more research on my Reiff line than Andy Berky or any other Reiff descendant that I know of. A appreciate very much the data you've described and written. Although I had identified the maternal lines back several generations for George H., George C., Jacob S(chwenk) and Abraham W(eiss) (my grandfather), the detail you've provided has been invaluable for me.

I should mention that my grandfather Abraham Weiss Reiff married a Lutheran, and therefore left the Mennonite religion and joined a Lutheran church.

I've included a copy of Andy Berky's work, just as a matter of interest.

Best regards,

Harry.

P.S. After looking over my copy of the Berky work, it isn't possible to photocopy the pages-the typewritten pages are too aged (ca. 50 years). I'll have to recopy the pages,  which will take some time. H.

July 2, 2003

Dear Harry,

 Thanks for your recent letter. I am in the midst of summer tennis travels which is a good time for editing but not writing. Just for your amusement I enclose a letter I sent in response to Glenn Landis after your tip some months ago. He has not yet answered back but I hope to learn more of his work.

All the best.

[to Glenn Landis]

March 31, 2003

 Dear Glenn Landis,

Since I am in communication with Harry Reiff about historical and genealogical matters, last year he sent me a copy of your letter concerning Anna Landes Reiff, which I have been thinking about ever since.

I'm wondering whether you have gotten any feedback that has advanced your thinking in this. He also sent a copy of the photocopy of the estate settlement from which I judge that it is water stained and folded. I guess those are your fingers holding it down? I would love to be able to read it. Do you perhaps have a fair transcribed copy? Under what conditions was it found?

I am involved in Jacob Reiff the Elder's public life, having finished a long biography of his brother Conrad. Harry speculates, as you do, about where Jacob Reiff worshipped after the Reformed fiasco, whether or not, and to what extent he might have been Mennonite affiliated. I'd like to know more about this.

It is amazing to me how much good information exists about these mutual ancestors.

Yours truly,

AE Reiff

[to Glenn Landis]

April 12, 2003

Dear Glenn, 

The photographs of the "scribe" and/or witness papers that Jacob Reiff executed sound like a gold mine. What will be the final disposition of your work? How much is complete? Are all of these instruments in English? Is it by handwriting comparisons that you are think Jacob Reiff wrote the first document?  Certainly the date fits his career as deputy registrar, usually ascribed 1743-48, but probably earlier and later than that.

It almost seems like the Reiffs were a family of scribes. Heckler says Jacob's wife, Anna,  "probably was a woman of some distinction because she wrote a neat hand in English, which German women could not do" (27). This "neat hand" comment is practically identical to what Samuel Pennypacker said about Hans George Reiff's signing of the Mennonite Trust Agreement of 1725: "Hans George Reiff; a member of the German Reformed Church, who wrote a neat signature…" ("Beber's Township and the Dutch Patroons").

The language of these instruments often reveals a haphazard command of English, filled with odd misspellings and syntax.  Heckler thus disparages Christian Allebach's will "for the sake of showing our readers the scholarship of men who wrote wills in those days (Lower Salford, 59). This will was probated in 1746 before Jacob Reiff, but presumably not written by him.

But the verbal texture of the Mennonite Trust Agreement reveals a facility with English much superior to the poor English the alleged drafter of that document shows in his letters. Pennypacker says this was Heinrich Pannebecker. He thinks Pannebecker set up the Mennonite Trust Agreement, March 30, 1725, using the forms and seal of Pastorius (6), and that the Mennonites must have been "acting under the guidance of some one more or less familiar with the forms of conveyancing" (6). If all this is granted, that Pannebecker wrote a conveyancer's hand, drew deeds and spoke three languages, his written English was a pidgin Dutch-English dialect, evident in a letter of 1742:

 "M. Frend Ed Ward Shippen. My keind Respek too Juer too let Ju under Stan tha I haffe spoken with the totters of Abraham op den Graff an by ther words are willing too singe Jur dees as ther broders haffe don…"(31). But I don't know whether the original Agreement was in German or not.

The other choice, a German-English dialect such as that in the will of Christopher Dock is more common. Heckler says Dock's "education was in German" that he "did not know what constituted good English" (Lower Salford, 52): "my order is dit, to chose Man, two upright Man can do it, let them bring it in two like part and worth as good she can, and so likewise if any fruit, every a thing shall come in two like part to Receive each of my Children one part" (The Perkiomen Region II, 25).

So there was something of a scarcity of literate English writers in the area. Thus the fact that Hans George signed the Mennonite Trust Agreement with a neat hand may imply something more, that is, maybe he Englished the whole thing,  but Jacob of course could also have done it.

These speculations lead me to consider the education of the Reiff family scribes and how they got their English. Heckler places Jacob among the "reasonably well educated" men of Salford, the "Rev. George Weiss and Rev. Balthasar Hoffman in the Schwenkfelder denomination; Dielman Kolb and Henry Funk in the Mennonite denomination and Jacob Reiff, the elder, in the Reformed church" (108). Presumably a really well educated man would be Pastorius, who wrote in Latin. But how did Jacob get "reasonably well educated?" Beyond his native intelligence, a background is suggested, even a family avocation in trustee work, so maybe he was educated because his father was. But maybe it was his mother too. Harry Reiff remembers an unpublished ms. of Dotterer's in the PA Historical Society in Philadelphia where Dotterer "recounted his visit to the Netherlands and the Dutch Reformed Church archives, where he found data that Hans George married an educated daughter of a church minion." Harry also says of Anna Maria that "if indeed she wrote Hans George's will she was surely educated."

Still that is a pretty discriminating list. Rev. George Weiss, not to be confused with the Reformed minister, George Michael Weiss, was a skilled dialectician who defended the Schwenkfelders in Silesia against the counter-reformation efforts, fleeing for his life after besting his Roman Catholic adversaries and was the group's first minister in America (Heckler, 107-8). Rev. Balthasar Hoffman was more learned, knew the ancient languages and was with Weiss in his embassy to the Emperor which lasted five years: "Hoffman delivered no less than seventeen memorials to the royal ruler" (Heckler, 95).  Heckler calls him "a man of eminent wisdom and piety, and left behind him a catalogue of his writings, embracing fifty-eight tracts all on theology and practical religion, besides eighty-three letters on various kindred topics" (96). The Mennonites Dielman Kolb and Bishop Henry Funk were the proofreaders for the edition of the Martyrs' Mirror of 1748-51 printed by the Ephrata Cloister (Noah H. Mack, 10).

As to whether Jacob turned Mennonite, I cannot yet participate wholeheartedly in his rebaptism. If a thing fits it will fit without violence and if it doesn't fit that's because it doesn't. He was friends with lots of people and respected by everybody not in the battle against him. For sure he was Reformed.  But a body  in motion tends to stay in motion, so for me, if he was Reformed he continued so, unless there is a specific information.

Certainly he and his father had close ties to Mennonites. Father and son were kindred spirits, Jacob, youngest son, being sole executor of his father's will. When the Reformed Hans George signed the Mennonite Trust Agreement as a witness, I think it was because the Mennonites respected him. That his wife was buried in the Mennonite cemetery after her funeral was held in the Mennonite Meeting House is a sign of friendship and service, but not affiliation. Sure Jacob probated, among others, the will of Claus Jansen, the first Mennonite minister at Skippack. (Heckler, Lower Salford, 15[insert in Adams Apple]). Yes, Hans George's neighbors (cousins?), Hans Reiff and Abraham Reiff, were long standing members of the Salford Mennonites and probably related, same name and neighbors, as Davis  says, (Emigrants, Refugees and  Prisoners, 347). And of course "many of his grandchildren married Mennonites" (Davis, 348).

Harry Reiff sounds like he's decided that "she died after her son Jacob (with whom she lived for the last years of her life) had changed from the German Reformed Church to the Skippack Mennonite meetinghouse, possibly because Jacob may have married the daughter of Skippack Mennonite Jacob Landis." And Harry says "the Mennonite line seems to me to be quite clear from George III down…" which he bases on the Reiff-Hendricks marriage  You too say that "the younger son George married Elizabeth Hendricks and his family followed with the Mennonite Church."  But it is subjunctive to argue that if George III were Mennonite by marriage, Jacob the Elder could have been!

Shouldn't we think the Mennonites of that time were so eclectic? Didn't they ask Hans George to be a witness and didn't they lend their sanctuary for a Lutheran pastor to perform the funeral of a Reformed widow?  Jacob could have indicated support of the Wentz church, which even his prodigal brother Conrad did, contributing the largest sum (The Perkiomen Region, I, 39-44), but he didn't. He could have worshipped at Muhlenberg's church, Muhlenberg respected him, said he "could discern good as well as evil in others" (Journals I, 353), but he didn't, although his sister did.

Jacob and his children don't live Mennonite lives.  Jr. was a private in the Philadelphia County Militia in the Revolution, the first representative of Montgomery County in the Pennsylvania Assembly (1786-1789). George, in spite of marrying Mennonite Elizabeth Hendricks in 1764, served in the same Company as Jacob Jr. in 1780.  His grandson, that is George C., enlisted in the War of 1812 at the age of 19 or 20. That's not a nonresistant heritage.

But the failure to specifically track Jacob's faith after his religious trials could in no way disallow his marriage to the Mennonite Anna Landis. That's apples and oranges. As you say, it is obvious that there was an Anna Reiff, the daughter of Jacob Landis. I think it is significant that Jacob's Anna Reiff is denoted as such on her tombstone. Not that more is needed, but she is also Anna Reiff, 1743, on the board found in the attic of the old mill (Heckler, Lower Salford, 29). . Jacob had an Anna. Anna had a Reiff. If a=c and c=b then a=b. I think what you are doing can constitute new ground and could unearth unforeseen conclusions.

Sincerely,

P.S. Harry had sent me your original To Whom It May Concern letter and the first page of the Jacob Landis' documents

July 11, 2005

Dear Harry,

It looks like the last letter of mine to you of 8 July 2003 did not get there.

Here is a view of my latest work.

Culminating this past Christmas in the settling of my Aunt Elizabeth Reiff Young’s estate, I had been working on family documents that she would reveal from time to time, but there was a huge remainder, especially old German books discovered in her attic, signed and partly annotated by her maternal great grandfather, John B. Bechtel and his father Abraham, esp. Johann Arndt’s, Wahren Christenthem (1832) and Die Wandelnde Seele (1833). There were about a dozen German works in all, the earliest 1745, songbooks, catechisms, etc., interesting in themselves, but more so in reconstructing the thoughts of these 19^th century Pennsylvania Dutchmen.

 I could not help but be curious then, when in piecing the parts of this puzzle together, the trail also led to discovery of a diary kept by Peter S. Mack, her grandfather Henry’s brother, Lutheran pastor at Hummelstown c. 1875, and then to the extant German letters (c.1870-1900) of Mennonite Bishop Andrew S. Mack, another brother of Henry’s (which in the past fortnight I have procured translations of), which, added to Henry Mack’s Ledger (in English), kept over the same period, made the terrain wider and more definite than I had anticipated, leading as it did into all kinds of rural social, personal and religious lifestyles of an era long gone.

Another discovery in this train was my Aunt’s collection of family embroideries belonging to her paternal grandmother, Catherine G. Rosenberger, whose family, since she was an orphan, had been unidentified (Gehman). These not only seemed to identify her when correlated with census data given me by another such generous person as yourself, but also led to one of the major Pennsylvania Dutch truths, the meaning of the symbolism of the tulip and the heart, for that was the image (in white) of one of the best embroideries of Margaret Gehman. It feels like these things are falling out of the sky like ripe apples into my hand, but it is always a surprise, so again, when the tulip that blooms from the heart circled back toward Wahren Christenthem and the German Pietists it caused me to enter my present state where I now at times attempt an understanding of that way of thinking that disappeared about 1850.

My aunt prided herself on being a 9^th generation Pennsylvania Dutchman and wrote somewhat herself on that subject. Most of the people implicated in her attic though were Mennonites going all the way back to Jacob the Elder on her paternal side (about whose Mennonism they do argue) and likewise in the maternal.

So I have been contemplating Skippack and Hereford especially in these particulars, but  have not met any living souls who wade in this receding pond, but maybe it is a spring and a pool.

The PA Dutchmen are very…something. I suppose that you yourself are one, back to nth degree. So few of their publications, let alone manuscripts are translated. The chap who translated the Andrew Mack letters, Isaac R. Horst, had done the entire Jacob Mensch letter collection, but would not release it to the Mennonites for lack of a pecuniary recognition. He is a native PA Dutch in Ontario, truly, and has written contemporary books in the Dutch. If you can believe it! But never was there a better choice for this work. In all there are 1500 letters in the (handwritten, obviously) collection, all of which he has translated. To me he is a kind of a hero and I had no trouble in showing him the respect he deserves. The laborer is worthy of his hire, says the Book. I’m no Dutchman like of old, but I wish I had better insight into them. I always knew I had escaped, courtesy of my mother, who gave me the great Gaelic gift of blarney. But now I look back at them with a great many questions.

Thanks for so generously sending me your book. You might be ambivalent that in my own mind I am arguing that all the modern research stems from your efforts. As support for this, before you quarrel with it, isn’t Richard Warren Davis the first to state in print that Hans George Reiff is the referent for Michael Ziegler’s property in 1718, and doesn’t he himself say that Harry Reiff told him this in 1994? That’s the single most important fact in the whole story.

I’d love to hear from you anything you’d care to say about any or all of these Pennsylvania issues.

As to Jacob Reiff the Elder, so many versions of his thoughts, and sometimes exact quotes, occur in the letters of Rev. John Philip Boehm, that these letters practically constitute a primary source, so that with Reiff’s Defense and etc. a much fuller and fairer picture of the Elder is possible.

I am constantly writing of all these things.

Anyway I wish to you the words of Psalm 92.14 that you be green and supple in old age.

Dear Harry,

At one point in your letters you say that maybe library work at this point is needed as much as new research. That’s all this is, trying to put the clues you have given together with other things laying about.

June 30, 2005

 Phoenix, AZ 85008

Dear Harry Reiff,

Here’s a check for a copy of your book, Reiff Families.

 Would you also include a short bio of yourself with your other genealogical writings?

 I’m trying to review the Reiff books bibliographically and yours seems to be the start of all the modern ones.

Yours,

 AE Reiff

Harry Reiff

 8 July 2005

Dear Andy;

After I received your letter, I checked my correspondence file, and found the correspondence you and and I exchanged several years ago concerning Reiff ancestry pertaining to the immigrant Hans George Reiff. The last letter from you was dated April 25, 2003, and my response was dated June 8, 2003. I'd not heard from you since that exchange.

The research and work you've done on the early Reiffs is excellent. However, I'm no longer actively engaged in further Reiff research-I'm too old (81)-and the two tomes by Fred Riffe covers the major Reiff lines remarkably thoroughly except for a few missing minor branches.

At any rate, I could not charge a thorough researcher like you for a copy of my book, and so I'm enclosing a copy gratis, along with the check you sent.

One other book my be of interest to you-Emigrant Refugees and Prisoners, Vol. II, by Richard Warren Davis (1997). This book covers Mennonite families in Germany who came to the United States. There are a few pages (18) on Reiffs.

You asked for a brief bio. Born-Allentown, Pa., 1924. Served three years in the army-1943-1946 in the 102nd Inf. Div., 9th Army, ETO. Education-Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA, B. S. Ch.E 1949, M.S. Chem, 1950. Joined Merck and Co. 1950-1952. Attended Univ. of Minnesota (Minneapolis) 1952-1955, Ph.D. Org Chem. Worked for Smith Kline & French Laboratories, Philadelphia PA, 1955-1984 (now known as Glaxo Smith Kline). Married Helen White 1947, 3 children (males), 3 grandchildren. Had brief summaries in "American Men of Science" and "Who's Who in the East).

I'll look forward to hearing from you and of the progress you've made on your Reiff research.

Best regards,

Harry Reiff

 2005, no date

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy;

Thanks very much for the interesting letter you just sent to me. I think it is excellent that you continue to pursue the origins of the Hans George Reiff family.

As for me, I am in the grip of old age (81), and perhaps in the beginning of Alzheimer's, if my memory lapses are any sign. Time will tell.

Incidentally, I an 75& Pennsylvania Dutch, since my mother has half Dutch (Hartzell) and half New England (Dyer). Although my father was fluent in PA Dutch, my mother wasnot, and so my sister and I learned only a few phrases. Fortunately, neither my sister's career as a reporter for the Washington Post for 40 years, normy career as a research organic chemist were affected.

Anyhow, please continue to let me know of progress in your Reiff research. Although I rearly hear from other Reiff researchers, I shall let you know if anything interesting shows up.

With best regards,

Harry

November 30, 2005

Dear Harry,

I want to stay in touch with you. The correspondence I’ve had with you in the past years was such an immense encouragement not to mention the wealth of judgment and detail you have provided.

So I’m enclosing the first chapter of The Way Into The Flowering Heart.

This is a memoir of the quest for beauty in Mennonite folk and Pennsylvania Dutch art.  It extends to 1830 and before in the specific memory of my Aunt, a woman who denied  she was ever an intellectual or a watercolorist, but was both. Artist and antiquarian, she added her own to that collection of furniture and embroideries, books and quilts, letters, ledgers and manuscripts she inherited. Her conversations and her mother Anna’s histories, stories and anecdotes profoundly concern the folk and religious life of Mennonites of Berks County  Pennsylvania. These archaic daylilies are set against the background of those ideas held dear by the Pennsylvania Dutch, the pietism of  Johann Arndt, the mysteries of Jacob Boehm and the transcendentalism of their quiet, unquiet ways of peace.

In trying to understand my aunt and her prejudices and feelings I at last discovered what I hope is now the proper framework for the context of her life and others of the Pennsylvania Dutch. Since that is you too, I would love to hear how you react to these ideas.

Sincerely,

10 Dec 2005

Harry Reiff

Dear Andy,

My computer is not working, and so you get a handwritten letter.

I was impressed by the first chapter of the book your are preparing, "The Way Into the Flowering Heart", which you state is a memoir of the quest for beauty in Mennonite folk and Pennsylvania Dutrch art. But, I must tell you that my thoughts and background have centered on science and the search for an understanding of what occurs in the physical/chemical world. Thus, my Ph.D. was based on the reactions of anew class of chemical compounds known as carbenes. While I have a mild appreciationof art and relgiious matters, I am far from being a good judge of those ideas you state are held dear by the Pennsylvania Dutch.

In fact, I learned at an early age of the hardship and struggles of both maternal and paternal lines (my paternal line had a mild Mennonite connection), but I was stimulated to learn more of the physical (and chemical) world. Thus, genealogical research (scientific) fordata on my Pennsylvania precursors was more to learn of their activities/impacts on where they lived.

INcidentally, the one Mennonite line in my background resulted from the marriage of George Reiff III, a drandson of the immigrant Hans George Reiff, to Elizabeth Hendricks, a Mennonite. That Mennonite line continues util my grandfather Abraham W. Reiff, a Mennonite, married Cevilla Neidig, a Lutheran. Descendants of that marriage, including me, were Lutheran, not Mennonite.

Anyhow, I shall be interested in how you develop the "proper framework" for not only your aunt, but also for "others of the Pennsylvania Dutch", who lived more mundane lives in the modern world of the 20th (and 21st) century

With Best Regards,

Harry Reiff

P.S. Enclosed is a "Reiff Family History" involving Berks Co. origins. I was unsuccessful in relating it to early times. Please keep it since I really no longer add such material to my files.

Harry

PPS Sorry about the penmanship.

H.R.

Phoenix, AZ 85008

July 15, 2007

Dear Harry,

I found this Vorschrift of Jacob Reiff’s childhood in Mary Jane Hershey’s This Teaching I Present and made a copy for you in case you’ve not seen it, of course the plate in the book is in color. Enclosed are also her bio of him and a copy of the translation.

You have not heard from me in long while, but I have recently started back over all the Reiff materials to write a simple and coherent version of the issues in the lives of all the progenitors and their families starting from Hans George. Your letters to me about all this are still the greatest help.

Yours truly,

Andy Reiff