Erling / Ebling Family Group Record 203 — an unconnected line, sent 1991

This family is not known to be related to this one. No Erling, Ebling or Yager appears anywhere in the family tree. The pages are filed here because they were in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research file and because they document how amateur genealogists found each other before the internet — not because a connection was ever established. His own conclusion, five days after receiving them: “Sorry we didn’t tie in.”

How it arrived

Mrs. Ellen B. Allen of Phoenix, Arizona found Robert Earl’s card in the Family Registry at her local Family History Library, saw what she took to be a link to her direct ancestor Johannes Ebling, and mailed him six pages of her research. The full exchange is here.

The likely basis for her guess is visible in his reply: Johann David Wildermuth’s clan — a different Wildermuth line from Robert Earl’s — had settled for a time in Berks County, Pennsylvania, which is exactly where these Erlings were. A Wildermuth/Ebling overlap in Berks County would not touch the Württemberg Wildermuths of Rielingshausen and Großaspach at all.

That Berks County line is now documented in the archive: Johann David Wildermuth and His Descendants, 1752–1964, the 1965 volume Robert Earl was quoting from. Johann David landed at Philadelphia on the ship Halifax in 1752 and warranted a hundred acres in Bern Township, Berks County in 1755 — the same county, the same decades, as these Erlings. Mrs Allen’s instinct was sound; she had simply found the wrong Wildermuths.

What the record contains

Family Group Record 203 — Johannes Erling (b. 20 August 1725, Alsace Township, Berks County, Pennsylvania) and Maria Philippina Yager (b. 23 February 1735, Schuylkill Township, Pennsylvania), submitted by Kenneth G. and Ellen B. Allen, 5723 W. Catalina Drive, Phoenix.

Sixteen children, born in Alsace Township between 1745 and 1780.

Three further pages carry unusually detailed documentation notes — land grants from “the Honorable Thomas Penn and Richard Penn, Esquires, Late Proprietors of Penn,” patent references, Berks County deed volumes, and Schuylkill County land “purchased from the Indians in 1749, therefore she could not have been born under this county designation.”

One entry is worth reading whatever the connection turns out to be — a death notice from the German-language newspaper Der Adler, 14 May 1816:

“Died Monday a week ago … in her 82 year. She left 128 grandchildren and 91 great grandchildren.”

If anyone ever wants to test it

The claim to check is not Erling-to-Wildermuth directly. It is whether the Berks County Wildermuths descending from Johann David Wildermuth (see “Johann David Wildermuth and His Descendents — 1752–1964,” Ohio State Library) connect to the Württemberg Wildermuths of Rielingshausen — and separately, whether any of them married an Ebling. Dr. Hans Wildermuth’s appendix puts both groups’ origin in Pleidelsheim and Rielingshausen, which is suggestive and nothing more.

Until that is done, this record stays where it is: a courtesy from a stranger, filed and unattached.

Source: Kenneth G. and Ellen B. Allen, Phoenix, Arizona, June 1991, in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers; photographed 2026.