New Riegel

How New Riegel began

New Riegel, in Big Spring Township in southwestern Seneca County, began as land held by German immigrant Anton Schindler (1790-1851) and was known first as Schindler and then Wolf's Creek before Schindler subdivided it into 43 lots in 1850 and named it for his hometown of Riegel, Germany. The village became a center of German Catholic life in the county: the Precious Blood Missionaries arrived in 1844 and the Precious Blood Sisters in 1845, and the present church, completed in 1878 as St. Boniface's Catholic Church (now a chapel of All Saints Catholic Church), still stands as the tallest structure in the village. New Riegel has run its own public school since 1876 and lost its landmark Mary of the Crib Convent to fire in 2001.

Platted 1850, by Anton Schindler.

Where the name comes from

Named by founder Anton Schindler for his hometown of Riegel, Germany, when he subdivided his land into 43 lots in 1850; before that the settlement was known as Schindler, for Anton Schindler himself, and as Wolf's Creek.

Before the town

No Native American village, mound, trail, or treaty site specific to New Riegel itself is recorded here; the settlement developed from the 1840s onward, well after the Seneca reservation, which lay in the county's eastern townships, had been ceded in 1831.

Timeline

1. 1825 — A few Catholics settle near the future New Riegel and are visited at intervals by Redemptorist fathers; Father Trehenhens begins visiting about 1835 as a missionary traveling on foot through Seneca and adjoining counties.
2. 1833 — From 1833 to 1842 a very large number of German and French families come to Big Spring Township; between 1840 and 1847 the Lafontaines and other French families settle west of New Riegel in the area called French Town.
3. 1844 — The Precious Blood Missionaries begin serving the settlement then known as Schindler or Wolf's Creek.
4. 1845 — The Precious Blood Sisters arrive to educate local children, a role they continue for more than 150 years.
5. 1850 — Anton Schindler subdivides his land into 43 lots and names the new village New Riegel, for his hometown of Riegel, Germany.
6. 1876 — Public education begins in New Riegel.
7. 1877 — Andrew Werley is appointed the first postmaster at New Riegel; C. H. Klein succeeds him in April 1878.
8. 1878 — The present St. Boniface Catholic Church building, now a chapel of All Saints Catholic Church, is completed, becoming the tallest structure in the village.
9. 1881 — Andrew Werley establishes his grain trade at New Riegel and builds an elevator the same year.
10. 1882-12-02 — New Riegel is ordered incorporated on a petition presented December 28, 1881 by B. J. Murphy and thirty-nine residents; the village's own records date incorporation from February 5, 1883, when the first election was authorized.
11. 1883 — A village jail is attached to the building that had housed the German school.
12. 1883-04-02 — The first village election chooses Andrew Werley, B. G. Wullenschneider and Celestine Friedman trustees; Werley is named president and Charles H. Klein clerk.
13. 1884 — The Catholic church property is valued at $25,000 and the congregation numbers over 600, mostly Germans; the church schools have 160 pupils under two sisters and a lay teacher, while the public school has 23.
14. 1904 — The red brick rectory for the parish priests is built.
15. 1911 — New Riegel is a station on the Toledo & Ohio Central railroad in the southwestern part of Seneca County.
16. 1911 — A brick schoolhouse is built west of the present American Legion hall; the district uses it until 2003.
17. 1927 — The parish elementary school is completed and the older schoolhouse north of the church razed.
18. 2001 — On June 24, the Mary of the Crib Convent, which had housed the Precious Blood Sisters, is destroyed by fire.
19. 2003 — A new PK-12 public school is completed, ending the district's rental of the parish school.

Stories

A German hometown's name, carried across an ocean

Anton Schindler, a German immigrant born in 1790, first held the land that became New Riegel under his own name and, separately, as Wolf's Creek. When he subdivided it into 43 lots in 1850 he named the new settlement New Riegel, for Riegel, the German town he had left behind. German Catholic missionaries and sisters had already been serving the community since the mid-1840s, and the church completed in 1878 is still the tallest structure in the village.

Schindler's old neighbors from Germany

Anthony Schindler, an active and enterprising man in the words of the 1911 county history, bought land in section 12 of Big Spring Township, and many of his old neighbors from Germany settled around him. The first settlers of the township had all been American-born, but from 1833 to 1842 a very large number of German and French families came, among them the Schindlers, Bischofs, Brosamers, Kabeles and Eltigs, and the French Lafontaines, Filliatres and Colletts. Schindler laid out a town on his land in 1850 and named it for his native town in Germany. Soon people settled in and around it, put up a log church, which gave way to a brick one and then to one of the largest and most beautiful Catholic churches in northern Ohio.

Photographs

Local history sources: en.wikipedia.org · commons.wikimedia.org · en.wikipedia.org · archive.org · archive.org

No water-system data is linked to New Riegel's ZIP codes yet.

Public schools (2)

Auditor of State record

• No fiscal caution, watch or emergency on the Auditor of State's lists.
• Basic Audit, 2023 to 2024, released 2025-07-03

Source: Ohio EPA eDocument portal (edocpub.epa.ohio.gov), indexed 2026-10-14. Facilities are placed on the map from Ohio EPA's own map layers, EPA's Facility Registry, coordinates written in the filings, or a geocoded street address. A permit filed under a private person's name (most are household septic systems) is counted but never named, placed or linked; licenses for individual workers and open-burning notices are left out entirely.

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