Heinrich Ries married one wife, had three sons and was the vice president of the Geological Society of America in 1929.
His first wife, Millie Timmerman Ries, a botanist and scientific illustrator who collaborated with Elizabeth Britton and Anna Murray Vail, died in 1942. He remarried in 1948, but his second wife, Mrs. Adelyn Halsy Gregg Ries, died early in 1950. 
