Synopsis
This is a heavily researched study of the ancestry of the Ritchey (or Ritschy, Ritchie, Richey, Richie) family, which settled in the neighboring Loudoun County, Virginia, and Frederick County, Maryland, region in about 1760. Many later migrated to Rockingham County, Virginia, and Bedford County, Pennsylvania, as well as to Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Florida, and many other states. One branch found its way to California by 1946. The study also includes a detailed analysis of the lives of 1735 Swiss immigrant Cunrath Rutschi/Richey, his wife, and three sons of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and of immigrant Henrich (Henry) Rutschi/Richey of the 1749 passenger ship, Priscilla, who settled in Nockamixon, northern Bucks County, PA. This study also includes a discussion of related families who were then in this northern VA and central Maryland region: Diehl, Schumacher (Shoemaker), Berg/Barrick, Wenner and Smouse (Schmaus). The reader will find this an unusual book for this subject matter. Absent will be the customary and seemingly endless pages of lists of family members in succesive generations, however useful that method may be in a different context. In their place will be narrative discussions of the lives of family members with a discussion of historical events then taking place. The reader will see historical documents of the 1700s, likely never before seen by historians, genealogists, researchers, and Ritchey family members as follows: German birth certificates, last wills, Provincial Quarter Session Court proceedings, land maps and land warrants, copies of original German-language Reformed Church records, original probate court proceedings, original immigrant ship passenger lists, and more. The reader will also see the results of original genealogical research conducted in Switzerland and Ireland. Historians, history buffs, genealogists, Ritchey family members, and others will find it interesting to see how an immigrant family of diverse makeup suffered tragedy but nurtured itself and spread its thousands of descendants to all fifty states in a span of eight generations, and how the evidence was discovered and pieced together to follow the family back through history. It is the facinating true story of the successful quest to learn the identity of the European immigrants who married and settled down in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and who thus began this widespread family in America. The story is punctuated by a surprise ending in the final chapter, chapter 8.
About the Author
Glenn A. Ritchey, Jr. was born in Bedford County, Pennsylvania, and has lived primarily in central California since 1946. He graduated from Keyes Elementary School, Turlock High School, Modesto Junior College, and from the University of California at Berkeley in 1960, with degrees in chemical engineering and chemistry. He graduated from Salmon P. Chase College of Law, Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1972. He was employed with Monsanto Company before entering the legal profession. He served as Stanislaus County Chief Deputy District Attorney before being appointed by the governor of California to the bench in 1982, and retired as a Superior Court judge in 2002. He is a former elected school board member, and has had long-term affiliations with Lions Clubs International, Boy Scouts of America, and United Methodist Church, and has held membership in many other charitable, civic, and professional organizations. This is his first non-legal publication, and it is his first book.
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