GABRIEL RITCHIE”S GOLD RUSH STORY.

 Submitted by Susan Fahnstrom

The Story of the Gold Rush is true or at least a trip to Arkansas is true as Gabriel’s daughter Eliza was born there in Arkansas. I don’t know how true it is about the farm, but it is a story that has been handed down in the family. Gabriel Ritchie didn’t get as far as California as the other lady stated, he went sometime after 1851, which is when his brothers Isom, Hiram and Nicholas went and two of  his sisters also, Naomi (Ritchie) Sizemore and Mary Polly (Ritchie) Cornett. I often wonder why these Ritchies left Kentucky and moved to Arkansas, their father Alexander Crocket Ritchie had a sister that married and moved to Lawrence Co, Arkansas, so maybe that was the reason, but just recently, I have discovered that Hugh & Barbara Patrick, the parents of Phobe (Patrick) Ritchie, the wife of Hiram Ritchie, Nancy (Patrick) the wife of Nicholas Ritchie and Martha (Patrick) Ritchie the wife of Isom Ritchie, both moved to Arkansas before 1850 and the father died there some after, so that may have been the reason to go, we do not know the reason and probably never will.

Gabriel Ritchie stayed for awhile in Arkansas, he is on a census with wife and baby Eliza, he returned to Kentucky.

He was a Confederate soldier during the Civil war and he was listed deserted and  as some of his sons who also fought in the Confederate Army.

 Lo and behold he shows up  on the Magoffin County census of 1870, so we know that he didn’t spend much time in Arkansas. Another thing that is also true, these people in Knott Co, Ky, thought he had gotten killed in the Civil war ( that story came thorough the family, but other close family members and one of Gabriel’s descendant was shocked when she found him in Magoffin County, after she started searching for her family history, all kinds of things are found when we start searching.

No one knows just where Gabriel is buried, a lot of people say that he is buried in Magoffin County and some say that he is buried beside his wife Nancy (Campbell) Ritchie, near Manford Ritchie his son and Manford’s wife Nancy (Caudill) Ritchie in the Fisty Cemetery in Fisty, Ky, there is a stone there near her grave, but the name is worn off, so no one really knows where he is buried