Paul Wesley Kribs was born on March 9, 1852, in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, to William Kribs and Phoebe Cramer. His father was a carpenter who owned $800 of real estate and $300 of personal property by 1870. The family moved to Trempealeau, Wisconsin, in the 1850s, and Kribs grew up and attended school there. By 1870, he was also working as a carpenter and joiner.
He married Abbie Lane on October 4, 1875, and the couple apparently had no children. They lived in New Richmond, Wisconsin, and they helped care for Kribs’s aging father. By the early 1900s, they were living in Quincy, Massachusetts. His wife died in 1929, and by 1930, he was living in the Eventide Home, a senior care facility in Quincy. He died in Quincy on March 7, 1936.