Thanks for coming to this page and so allowing me to complete my correspondence with you. This page is not linked from the main part of the site so is reasonably secure and I will take it down after I hear back from you.
As mentioned, I am not Dennis Riehle, but assuming you are from the Iowa branch of the family I believe Dennis is your third cousin, three times removed (3C3R). I am Dennis’s 6C1R. Our common ancestor was Mathias Riehle, born 1697. With this distant relationship, Dennis and I do not show a match on 23andMe but I had asked him to do the test in order to confirm that we have the same Y-DNA, and he was able to confirm this. That in turn confirms at a high confidence level that our branches of the family do in fact link back to Mathias without adoptions, fiddles, or other discrepancies that can separate the perceived family tree from actual genetic relationships. By the way, if I didn’t miscalculate or make erroneous assumptions, you and I are 7C2R.
Your ancestor?
The estimates of a 3C3R relationship between you and Dennis and 7C2R between you and me rests on my assumption that Conrad Riehle was your 4th g-grandfather. That would be consistent with your age and the level of genetic connection between Dennis and you (14 cM on 1 segment). Of course this could be off by a generation or even two but it’s my best guess based on the information we have.
To get to the crux of the mater, I am trying to verify the connection between Conrad Riehle, who I believe may be your ancestor, and the other lines of the family that descended from Conrad’s father, which includes Dennis’s lineage. To get some sense for this, please see our article on Conrad. This article was written by Dorthy Call (nee Riehle). You will notice that the second paragraph is a note acknowledging some uncertainty about the Conrad described there and the Conrad listed among the birth records in Wagshurst, Baden, Germany. My hope here is that you can clear up this potential discrepancy. If you are in fact a descendant of Conrad then your genetic link to Dennis confirms with very high confidence that Conrad was the son of Felix.
The article linked above provides the names of all of Conrad’s children and many if not all of his children’s children. If you can identify any of them as your ancestors and provide the names of your parent, grandparent, etc. leading to this lineage, that would be great. No names beyond what is shown on this existing web page will be disclosed without your permission.
Dorthy Riehle Call is quite old (90+) but last I heard she is still alive and I would love to send her and email letting her know that the questions about Conrad’s fit into the Riehle family tree has been confirmed through genetic genealogy. Please email me at nick -at- riehle.net or leave a comment below.
Thanks again for the excellent documentation on your 23andMe profile page.
Nick Riehle
Riehle.net