John Riehle was born in Prussia in or about 1831 and Immigrated to New York sometime before the birth of his oldest daughter in 1859 or early 1860. We don’t know where in Prussia he was born but we have known for some time that the Riehle surname is present in and around Berlin and we had been advised by one of our longstanding German Riehle friends that the area had been a major source of Riehle emigration during the 19th century. Despite that we had never encountered a US Immigrant Ancestor from the area until finding John early in 2026. So, John might have emigrated from Berlin but we have not been able to confirm that.
Presumably he was born Johann or a variant there to, but we have only found him in U.S. records and always as John.
We have a significant amount of information about John’s family but unfortunately all we know about John himself is as discussed above plus, from census data, that he operated a “Bakery Store” in 1870 and was a “flour dealer” in 1880. We have not been able to find a date for his death but obviously it was after the 1880 census. All information we have suggests he lived in New York City from his arrival until his death.
About his family, we know he was married to Magdalene (Lena) Schaeffer, who we believe was also born in Prussia, about 1834. They had a son and three daughters: Lena (b. abt. 1860), Annie (b. abt. 1861, married Wm. Specht), John Martin (1863–1936), and Dorothea (Dora) Henrietta (c.1868–1925, married Adolph Kreuder). We have not yet found death dates for Lena and Annie, but all survived beyond the 1880 census.
We found the family through an article online about John’s great-grandson, Theodore Martin Riehle Jr., who had successful military, business, and political careers. That said, the article we found was mostly about his island residence on Lake Champlain in northern Vermont. You can learn more about “Ted” in the article or in his WikiTree posting.