The baptismal register of Großaspach, 24 August 1830 — entry no. 45

Everything else in this archive about the emigrant’s origins is a copy, a transcription, or somebody’s chart. This is the register.

A photocopied opening from the Taufregister of Großaspach, in German Kurrent, with one row struck through in orange highlighter by whoever pulled it: entry no. 45, page 289.

Entry no. 45

Column	Entry
Zeit der Geburt	23. August, in the evening
Ort und Tag der Taufe	Großaspach, 24. August
Taufname des Kindes	Johan Michael
Eltern	Johan Christian Wildermuth, Bürger u. Schuhmacher allhier, evang. Rel. · Maria Margaretha geb. Schmidgall von Röhrach, evang. Relig.

“Johan Christian Wildermuth, citizen and shoemaker of this place … Maria Margaretha née Schmidgall of Röhrach.”

He was baptised the day after he was born. The register also records the hour of the birth — an evening hour on 23 August — though the numeral will not resolve at this scan’s resolution.

What it puts beyond argument

• The birth date. 23 August 1830, in the register of the parish that recorded it, agreeing with the 1903 Marietta obituary written seventy-three years later and four thousand miles away.
• The father’s trade, in the original. Bürger und Schuhmacher — citizen and shoemaker. The Familienregister and the Ahnentafel both say it; this is the entry they were reading.
• The mother. Maria Margaretha geb. Schmidgall von Röhrach — named as his mother in 1830, with her maiden name and her home village. This is the final nail in the “phantom first wife” theory the archive once carried, which arose from misdating their marriage to 1842.
• The confession. Both parents evangelisch — Lutheran, as the whole line is.
• The spelling. The clerk wrote Johan Michael, one n. The double-n Johann is later convention.

The entry above his

Row 44, immediately before, records the baptism of Jacob Friderich, son of Daniel Friderich Wolf, Bürger u. Schreiner allhier — citizen and joiner of the same village.

Wolf is the surname of Johann Michael’s paternal grandmother, Catharina Dorothea Wolf, and of his great-grandfather Johann Georg Wolf the shoemaker. A Wolf household with a woodworking trade appears on the same page of the same register in the same month — almost certainly kin, and an open thread worth following: Daniel Friedrich Wolf, Schreiner, Großaspach, c. 1830.

How it got to Florida

This sheet is the reason the archive has a German side at all. In November 1988 Robert Earl wrote to the Standesamt at Großaspach asking for “Ablichtungen aus den betreffenden Geburts-, Heirats- und Sterberegistern” — photocopies from the relevant birth, marriage and death registers. Karl Lachenmaier of Großaspach took the request on, compiled the Ahnentafel from the church books on 2 December, and sent it with this photocopy.

Robert Earl filed the page as DOCUMENT 6, W-8. It is the only image of an original German parish register in this archive, and it is the record of a boy who would leave the village seventeen years later and never come back.

Source: Taufregister, Evangelische Kirchengemeinde Großaspach, 1830, entry 45, p. 289; photocopy obtained c. December 1988. In Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers, filed DOCUMENT 6 / W-8. Photographed 2026.