Please merge 3 pre-1500 profiles into one

Question

Jost Rifenburgh-20, Jost Reiffenberger-30 and Jost Reiffenberg-44 all born 1495 in Germany are the same person (in spite of one death date being different). They should all be merged and the surname changed to Reifenberg as the preferred, with the other variations noted. The name of the village, knights and castle is Reifenberg. I have been researching the surname and history of the knights von Reifenberg because it is the original spelling of my surname. There are living Reifenberg descendants in the same area of Germany who have trees going back even farther. I have history books with the name connected to the area. I learned some German and bought 3 books which contain information about the surname, knights and castle connected to Oberreifenberg, in the Taunus Mountains outside Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany. NOTE: I edited my question to numbers -20, -30 and -44. Jost Reiffenberger-28 and Jost Reifenberg-1 are a separate problem.

Comments

https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reiffenberger-22 was born in 1720. You might want to recheck the number

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The fathers of the other two https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Rifenburgh-21 and https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Reiffenberg-45 seem to be the same person. All are unsourced. I'll leave this to the German-roots people.

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The profile set as mother of Reiffenberg-45, https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Von_Reiffenberg-1, is younger than her son. More likely to be his wife than his mother. This needs to be fixed.

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Think we need to be careful with these proposed merges.

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Sorry the numbers are -20, -30 and -44.. The first name is Jost for all and the birth date is 1495 for all. Jost with the numbers Reiffenberg-1 and Reiffenberger-28 are a different problem. They are likely the same person, too. They're shown as brothers. I may come across them in my research on my own tree later.

Answer 1

Some of the profiles might be the same but I would dispute the proposed change in LNAB unless somebody can show me documents that the profiles belong to the Herren von Reiffenberg. It is extremely common for German family names that denote origin to do that by adding -er at the end of the town they were from - and it is extremely common for American genealogists to drop that -er and construct some relationship to nobility that way. For all it's worth the profiles might just be for people whose ancestor originally came from the town of Reifenberg and have nothing to do with the Herren of Reiffenberg.

Comments

There are no documents to begin with and you aren't likely to have any. The "sources" are from German families still living in the area or Americans copying speculative trees. If someone has access to records in Germany going back to the middle ages, please, have at it. There's an important missing link in this lineage that would connect the surname in New York (New Amsterdam) back to Hesse, Germany.  Meanwhile, there are about a dozen spellings used for this surname. The changes in America or Canada are current usage and can't be changed, but the ones in the middle ages can. Herr, simply means sir in German. it isn't a first name and was probably put there because the first name was unknown. Since there are descendants from this Jost, it needs to be fixed. By the way, the earliest know ancestor for this line is Cuno (Kuno) von Reifenberg in the 1200's. I have that tree up to almost the 1600's.

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I don't dispute the existence of the Reiffenberg family which existed in two lines, the first of which died out in the male line with Philipp Ludwig Freiherr von Reiffenberg, Domherr zu Mainz und Trier, in 1686, the other with Anselm Friedrich Anton von Reiffenberg in 1739. What I am questioning is the mixing of the names Reiffenberg with it's implication of connection to a noble family with the name Reifenberger and Reifenberg as they exist today  There are three towns with the name Reifenberg in Germany, one in Hessen, one in Rheinland-Pfalz, and one in Bavaria. For all I know the American Reiffenbergs or Reifenbergers originated in one of these towns. And as you said there are no documents connecting any of these to the Herren von Reiffenberg, else they would not be considered having gone extinct in the 17th and early 18th century.