Joshua A. Riale (1829-1907) was born in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and died in Omaha, Nebraska. He moved with his family to Columbus, Ohio, at age seven and later attended both Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware, Ohio, and Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He studied theology at Mercersburg Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania and became an ordained minister in the German Reformed church in 1856. Also in 1856 he married Lydia J. Riale (b. Boyd), a schoolteacher, and together they became missionaries. Over the course of their long career, they served many congregations in various locations throughout Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Nebraska, and founded eight Reformed churches. They also founded Blairstown Academy in Iowa in 1872 and operated it together for three years. Riale joined the Presbyterian church in 1875 and ultimately retired in Omaha in 1898. In 1887 he wrote to Mary Baker Eddy to order a copy of the pamphlet Christian Healing. He was the father of Frank N. Riale, also a Presbyterian minister, who corresponded with Eddy in the early 1900s and had at least 25 articles very favorable of Christian Science published in The Christian Science Journal and the Christian Science Sentinel between 1906 and 1931.

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