According to Daniel Cassel, William was the son of George Rittershausen born about 1620 and his wife Maria Hagerhoff. They lived in Broich at Mulheim on the Ruhr. Cassel also gave a full pedigree for William tracing back to a noble Rittershausen family and earlier from the royal house of Hapsburg. But that whole pedigree was debunked by Calvin Kephart in 1938. He agrees with the birth year Cassel gave and the name of William’s mother but adds there is little evidence that his father was named George. And Kephart makes the strong case that William had none of the noble and royal pedigree that Cassel attributed to him.

He had moved to Amsterdam by 1678, when his brother requested of the court of Broich to have certified for his brother William, residing in Amsterdam, his year of birth and 1644 was so certified. Shortly thereafter he moved to Arnhem, Holland to enter the paper-making business with his brother.

IMMIGRANT. By 1688, he had emigrated to America and became a resident of Germantown.

So what can be believed about the life of William Rittenhouse? Actually, the general facts relating to his life once in America are not in dispute. The earliest Rittenhouses were very important people in Colonial Pennsylvania. The family was involved in “the art of papermaking” back in Germany and later in Holland.

William Rittenhouse, our immigrant ancestor of this name, is widely acknowledged as having been America’s first papermaker and his name is generally prominently mentioned in connection with the history of papermaking in America. An article in Pennsylvania Magazine in the 1800’s said: “Another arrival of importance was that of William Rittenhouse, a Mennonite minister who, with his two sons Gerhard and Klaas (Nicolaus) and a daughter who later married Heivert Papen, came from Broich (in Rhineland) to Arnheim in Holland. His forefathers had long carried on the business of manufacturing paper at Arnheim, and in 1690 he built the first paper mill in America, on a branch of the Wissahickon creek. There he made the paper used by William Bradford, the earliest printer in the Middle Colonies.”

There is some discussion in the Cassel book about whether Rittenhouse paper was used in the German Bible printed by Christopher Saur in 1743. And so Daniel Cassel relates that he wrote to Abram H Cassel, the Antiquary at Harleysville, Pennsylvania, a near descendant of Saur, for information on that subject. Abram wrote back that he did not think the paper was Rittenhouse paper.

What fascinates me about this story is that I was already familiar with the names Christopher Saur and Abraham H Cassel (he was actually Abraham Harley Cassel) when I first encountered them in connection with my Rittenhouse research. My niece Katie MacLennan is married to Jim Harley and I had done some work for Jim on his ancestry. The town of Harleysville was named for his family and while neither Christopher Saur nor Abram H Cassel were direct ancestors of Jim’s, they were both part of the extended family of the Harley’s of Harleysville.

William is also often said to have been the first Mennonite minister in America. Then, in 1701, he was ordained as the first Bishop of the Mennonite Church in Germantown, which was the first Mennonite Church in America.

All three of William’s children, sons Nicholas and Gerhard and daughter Elizabeth (our ancestor) were born prior to the emigration of the family to America.