Was Bartholomew Riehle a Descendant of the Same Lineage as the Wagshurst Line?

Bartholomew emigrated from Offenburg Baden in the 19th century. We have a verified Y-DNA link between Riehle’s from a small town just to the southeast of Offenburg with the Riehle’s out of Wagshurst. We also have an atDNA match between Bartholomew’s line and the Wagshurst Line, though, as explained below, this is unlikely to be through Riehle ancestry. With no confirmed ancestral connection, we continue to look for a possible link among these three Family Segments, which would probably need to be discovered via Y-DNA testing.

The earliest Bartholomew ancestor we have been able to identify is Jacob Jonnes Riehle (1720–1768) who was Bartholomew’s grandfather. Our best available information indicates that Jacob may have also been born in Offenburg which is about 19 km south of the smaller town of Wagshurst.  Any common ancestors to this Riehle line and the Wagshurst line would likely have been born before 1700 based on various information, including our Y-DNA match through Nordrach, Baden.

We identified this close Y-DNA link between the Wagshurst line and the Nordrach line in 2024. Y-DNA testing from a descendant of Bartholomew could confirm common ancestry among the Offenburg, Nordrach, and Wagshurst Riehle lineages.

As mentioned, an earlier atDNA match suggests a connection between a Riehle male from the Wagshurst line to a male descendent of George Lawrence Riehle, who was the son of Henry Riehle and grandson of Bartholomew Ferdinand Riehle (1794–1876). Bartholomew emigrated to the US in or around 1832, settling first in Ross County, Ohio and later in Stearns County, Minnesota. His son Henry ended up purchasing the farm in Ross County when Bartholomew moved on to Minnesota and Henry’s son George later moved to Indiana where our match is located.

That said, a common ancestor to both Riehle lineages born before 1700 would constitute an extreme timeframe for an atDNA match and for this and related reason we speculate that the DNA connection did not follow the Riehle lineages. Still, with Riehle ancestry along both lineages it seems to be almost (but not quite) too much of a coincidence to be unrelated.

We are hoping to get the cooperation of Riehle family members to confirm these connections through a Y-DNA match.  This would be from someone with an all-male lineage back to Bartholomew. So if you are such a descendant and have done or are willing to do 23andMe or other Y-haplogroup testing you could provide valuable input. Please contact us by leaving a comment below if you can help.

See Also Riehle Y-Haplogroups

See Sons of the Legion for More on Wagshurst Riehle Y-DNA

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