John Rohland Ristenbatt and Mary Katherine Lutz are David's paternal grandparents, pictured here in a photo taken circa 1927. The children seen in this photo include David's father, Sherwood E. Ristenbatt (little boy who is seated), George Milton RISTENBATT (oldest son who is standing), and Mildred M. RISTENBATT, the baby girl seated on her father's lap. John Rohland RISTENBATT was the son of Milton G. RISTENBATT and Elizabeth (Lizzie) ROHLAND . Elizabeth ROHLAND is a close relation to the founder of ROHLAND's FUNERAL HOME in Lebanon, PA. Her grand uncle, Henry ROHLAND was the founder of the home and a brother to her grandfather, Michael ROHLAND. Mary Katherine LUTZ was the daughter of George Lutz and Emma Speicher. In actuality, the LUTZ blood line was really GROLL. (See article on George's father, John Lutz/Groll in order to understand this.) The step father of John/Johannes Lutz/Groll was Johannes LUTZ,and John seems to have adopted that surname once he resided in Pennsylvania. John's birth father was Gottlieb GROLL from Möglingen, Württemberg, Germany.
John Rohland Ristenbatt and
Mary Katherine Lutz were married
27 November 1919
in the Salem Lutheran Church in Lebanon, PA. They had five children: George Milton
Ristenbatt, John Rohland Ristenbatt Jr., who died as an infant, Sherwood Edwin
Ristenbatt, Mildred M. Ristenbatt and a daughter who is still living. When John and Mary were first married, they lived with his parents, Milton Ristenbatt and Lizzie Rohland in Lebanon city. On the 1920 census, John is listed as a merchant steel worker. On John's World War I Draft Registration card (ancestry.com), he is listed as a
machinist apprentice for the Bethlehem Steel Company- the date is
September 12, 1918.
Also on his draft card, he is described as having brown eyes and hair, and being of medium height. By the 1930 census,when John and Mary were on their own, the family was living on the Speedville-Harrisburg Road, Elizabeth Township, Lancaster County, PA and John was a farm laborer. Eventually John went to work at the Fuller Company in Manheim, PA, and the family lived on Union Square, Rapho Township, Lancaster County, PA. People would recall that George would sit on the front porch waving to them. As a young boy, George had had surgery, and an overdose of anesthesia, which left him childlike the rest of his life.
Mary Katherine did not have an easy life, it appears. Born in 1903, she was left motherless in
June of 1917 which would have been toward the end of World War I. For a short
time, Mary Katherine Lutz raised her younger
sister, Rose, but when Mary Katherine married only two years later at the age of 16,
Rose then went to live with her aunt and uncle, Daniel and Annie Speicher
Brunner. According to family "word of mouth," Mary Katherine was a flapper. A number of years later, the family came to know Jesus Christ as Savior at the historical
Miners Village Mennonite Mission Church.
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