Glenn and Ginger Rinkenberger Family Tree
INTRODUCTION: This work started many years ago when I purchased an early version of the Family Tree Maker program. I entered the small bit of the family information that I knew from memory and then asked Mom and Dad for help filling in the rest of the details. That sparked their interest and they were soon deep into family research that involved many trips to libraries and court houses in Iowa and Illinois, microfilm requests from the LDS family history library and Dad finally took a trip to France to actually visit the area that our family originated from. Mom and Dad tried very hard to verify all of the information included in this family history with official documents. It was their hope to present a very complete and accurate work. Errors and typos are bound to happen but hopefully there aren't many. I've enjoyed my small part in helping with this work and hope readers will find it as interesting as I have.
-Natalie Poellet
PREFACE: Welcome to your journey through the Rinkenberger Family. As the reader of this genealogy begins his/her journey into their history, we (Ginger & Glenn Rinkenberger and our daughter Natalie Poellet) hope the reader will be pleased to find their history in this Ringenberg/Rinkenberger family as exciting and intriguing as we have in our research.
This genealogy will begin in north eastern France where our ancestors lived their lives as farmers, grain millers and tailors of clothing. We received help early on from a very able genealogist, Ardys Serpette of Bloomington, IL, who pointed us in the right direction in the search for our family origins. The family originated, for the most part, in the Moselle and Meurthe areas of France. I will speculate just a little and say that if someone would research this family back further in history, it will most likely lead one to Switzerland. The area in and around Ringgenberg, Switzerland would be very likely from bits and pieces that I have found written in the genealogy information enclosed in the work, The Amish Mennonites of Tazewell County Illinois by Joseph Peter Staker.
We know our Rinkenberger family from the work of E.E. Zimmerman who wrote the first history of this family in 1949 and the updated work by him and published by the Rinkenberger Family Reunion Association in 1975. I would like to thank all the people involved in this earlier work.
There is so much more material available now for research and the ability to verify information. It is the hope of the writers that this work you are now reading will give insight into our Ringenberg/Rinkenberger family history. Ginger and I and our daughter Natalie have attempted to present this work in as complete and historic a manner as we can.
This genealogy includes the marriage from Haut Clocher, Meurthe, France. Pierre Ringenberg married Anne Schraque on January 13, 1810. She was the daughter of deceased Caspart Schraque and deceased Marie Blaser. Catherine Remphe was present at the marriage. She signed with an X.
We, Ginger Lee (Neill/Burke) Rinkenberger, Glenn A. Rinkenberger and our daughter Natalie Poellet, welcome you to your journey into the Ringenberg/Rinkenberger family history, past and present.
-Glenn A. Rinkenberger