Audrey Frady Rivenbark and the research I inherited
My Rivenbark research is personal. Margaret Rivenbark Quinn was my paternal grandmother, and the Rivenbark family was part of the family I knew. My effort to understand that line eventually led me back to the work of Audrey Frady Rivenbark and Bobby G. Williams.
I give Audrey Frady Rivenbark of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Bobby G. Williams credit for their lifelong work in the historical records. Bobby was the son of Nellie Gray Rivenbark, my grandmother Margaret's sister. Their work gave me a foundation from which I could pursue the Rivenbark surname, its North Carolina history and later DNA questions.
My own conclusions about Riefenberg, Rivenbark, migration and DNA are my research, not something I want silently placed in Audrey's mouth. Her work remains her work; what I later tested or concluded from it remains identified as mine.
Audrey Frady Rivenbark's research
Rivenbarks of Eastern North Carolina
Audrey's multi-volume Rivenbark research is a separate authored body of eastern North Carolina genealogical research. It is not merged with Kendall's Quinn research. Bobby G. Williams helped preserve and extend the family research.
The Riefenberg question
Audrey's typed work recorded the possibility of a Reifenberg connection decades before my later DNA investigation. That research question remains attributed to her; my later genetic work remains separate.
My continuation of the research
I later pursued the old-world/new-world surname question through DNA. That work grew from the family research I inherited, but it is a later layer of the investigation rather than a rewrite of Audrey's conclusions.