Florentine Riedesel was born December 23, 1843 in Wunderthausen. She was one of eleven known children of Georg Ludwig and Maria Catherine (Homrghausen) Riedesel who lived in what was known as Seime. or Weißkopfs house.
Florentine appears to have arrived in New York on the ship S. S. Donau out of Bremen on November 25, 1871, though years later she told a Census enumerator that she came in 1872. Several other passengers were from Wunderthausen. Her younger sister, Anna Catherine also settled in Warren County, New Jersey; their brother Henry went west to Kansas. She apparently married a Heinrich Baumgartner first but had married Jacob Strable by 1880. In 1880, they were sharing a domicile in Oxford with her sister and brother-in-law. Three children from the Baumgartner family were living.
She bore a total of eight children by 1900, but only two–Henry and Anna Strable–were alive. A 1922 directory for Camden, NJ, lists her as a widow yet there is a death record for the 1920 date.