Johann David Wildermuth and His Descendants, 1752–1964 — the other Wildermuth line

This is not Chuck’s line. The Wildermuths in this book descend from Johann David Wildermuth, who landed at Philadelphia on the ship Halifax in 1752 and settled in Berks County, Pennsylvania — ninety-five years and one state away from Johann Michael, who landed at New York in 1847 and went to Ohio. The book is here because Robert Earl used it, quoted from it, and it answers questions the archive has been carrying.

Johann David Wildermuth and His Descendants, 1752–1964 Compiled and Edited by Ruth Kline Lee The State Library, 65 S. Front St., Columbus 15, Ohio · 1965

In his 1991 letter to Mrs Allen Robert Earl described this as “Appendix A, Notes on the Ancestry of Johann David Wildermuth, a part of a book titled ‘Johann David Wildermuth and His Descendents — 1752–1964’ on file in the Ohio State Library, 65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio.” Exactly right, down to the street address — he had the pages in his file. The compiler was Ruth Kline Lee; Dr Hans Wildermuth is quoted inside it.

Appendix A — the source of the Pleidelsheim quotation

The line Robert Earl quoted for thirty years turns out to be a letter from Dr Hans Wildermuth, reproduced here:

“The Wuerttemburg Wildermuths have their origin in the village of Pleidelsheim and Riedenshausen [Rielingshausen] near the small town of Marbach (where the poet Schiller was born) in the North East of Stuttgart.”

And the appendix explains who he was. There is a Wildermuthstrasse in Tübingen named for Ottilie Wildermuth, the poetess — wife of Dr Johann David Wildermuth, a high-school professor who “originated from Pleidelsheim.” Dr Hans Wildermuth, born 1897, was the professor’s grandson, and he told the American researchers he “knew of no one named Johann David who emigrated to America.”

Somebody wrote to Rielingshausen thirty years before Robert Earl did

The appendix prints two replies, and the first is remarkable in this archive’s context:

“(1) Ev. Pfarramt – Rielingshausen, 2 Apr. 1957: ‘Unfortunately I could not find the name of Johann David Wildermuth and his father Daniel in the old records of the Parish Rielingshausen. The Wildermuths have their origin in our village but Johann David Wildermuth and his wife were probably living in another village.’ Signed, Herman Seeger.”

A different family, a different continent’s worth of researchers, writing to the same parish office — and getting the same shape of answer Robert Earl would get in 1987: not this man, but the Wildermuths are ours.

A second reply, from Martin Benzing, reports that neither Johann David nor a Daniel nor a Ludwig can be found in the Rielingshausen marriage registers 1670–1752 or the baptismal registers 1724–52: “The Wildermuths of those years have all other names.”

What the book documents about that line

• Arrived 22 September 1752 aboard the ship Halifax, out of Rotterdam, master Thomas Coatam, and “signed the oath of allegiance the same day.” A facsimile of the signature list is reproduced.
• 13 March 1755 — paid fifteen pounds for a warrant to take up 100 acres in Bern Township, Berks County, adjoining Peter Robinson and Bernard Zweizig. The warrant is transcribed in full, signed Robt. H. Morris, and the clerk spelled him “David Wildermood.”
• Tax records track the clearing of that land: 40 acres in 1767, 55 in 1768, 75 acres by 1779.
• No family appears with him on the passenger list, and the book reasons from a newspaper death notice that his son William was born before 1749 — so he probably did bring a family.

The second generation runs through Henry Wildermuth, dead before 13 October 1784 and buried at the Zion Lutheran Cemetery by the Red Brick Church; the book works him out of Berks County orphans’-court and probate records. From there it descends through seven numbered generations to Wildermuths serving in the Second World War.

Why it matters here

It closes a loop with the Erling material. When Mrs Ellen Allen wrote from Phoenix in 1991 about an Ebling connection, her family was Berks County, Pennsylvania — and this is the Berks County Wildermuth line. Robert Earl told her so in his reply: “the Johann David Wildermuth cited above settled for awhile in Berks County, Pa.” Her guess was reasonable; it just pointed at the wrong Wildermuths.

And it shows what he was up against. Ruth Kline Lee’s researchers had already, by 1957, established that Johann David could not be found in the Rielingshausen registers. Robert Earl read that, understood that his own family could be — because his grandfather’s line ran back to Rielingshausen and Großaspach — and wrote to the parish anyway. He was right.

Still open: whether the Berks County Wildermuths and the Württemberg Wildermuths of Rielingshausen meet anywhere. Dr Hans Wildermuth’s letter puts both groups’ origin in Pleidelsheim and Rielingshausen, which is suggestive and nothing more. Nobody has tested it.

Source: Ruth Kline Lee (comp. and ed.), “Johann David Wildermuth and His Descendants, 1752–1964,” The State Library, Columbus, Ohio, 1965; pages photocopied for Robert Earl Wildermuth and filed by him as DOCUMENT 4, “Background.” Photographed 2026.