Marietta, 1900 — the Schlichers on Green Street, and a three-week-old child

Two sheets in blue ink: the 1900 federal census for Marietta, household by household, and a page of Washington County probate death records. Between them they add an immigration year the archive never had, confirm a family size exactly, and record a death nobody here knew about.

739 Green Street

SCHLICHER, THEOBALD — Feb 1835, 65, married 40 yrs · Ger/Ger/Ger · citizen, in U.S. 1852, 48 [years] · Fireman Eva — Dec 1838, 61 · 6/6 · Ger/Ger/Ger · 1848, 52 George — Nov 1861, 38 · Day Laborer Mary, daughter-in-law — Feb 1861, 39, m. 12 yrs Edward — Mar 1869, 31 · Day Laborer Daniel — Jan 1863, 37 · Saloonist WILDERMUTH, MAGGIE, granddaughter — Nov 1891

Theobald came over in 1852. His page has said only that he must have arrived “before 1861,” because that is when he married. The census asks the question directly and he answered it: 1852, forty-eight years in the country, and naturalised. He was seventeen.

Eva came in 1848 — four years ahead of her future husband, as a girl of nine or ten with her Bavarian family. The archive dated the Schmidt emigration to “the late 1840s”; this fixes it.

“6/6” settles the family. Six children born, six living. The archive lists exactly six — George, Daniel, David F, Edward, Flora, Emma — from the GEDCOM. Their mother confirmed the count to an enumerator in 1900.

And Theobald was a fireman, not a labourer. His sons at home were day labourers, except Daniel, a saloonist.

The granddaughter in the house

Maggie Wildermuth, born November 1891, was living with her Schlicher grandparents in 1900. She is Flora and William Clifford’s daughter Margaret, aged eight — the “Margaret 28” of 1919.

The address matters too. 739 Green Street is the Schlicher house in 1900 — and by the 1914–15 city directory it is William Clifford Wildermuth’s address. The Wildermuths moved into Flora’s parents’ house.

The child who lived three weeks

The second sheet copies a notice from the Marietta Daily Register, Tuesday 2 July 1901:

“WILDERMUTH CHILD. The three week old child of Mr. and Mrs. William Wildermuth, on East Greene, died this morning of cholera infantum. The parents have the sympathy of all in their sad affliction.”

A child of William Clifford and Flora, born about 11 June 1901, dead on 2 July. The archive has never held this baby — not in the nine children, not anywhere. Cholera infantum was the summer diarrhoeal disease that killed infants in American towns by the thousand before refrigeration and clean milk; July was its season.

It also means Flora’s nine children are at least ten births, and that the ninth child arrived and died in the same month her sister-in-law’s household was three doors along.

Deaths in the probate record

Record of Deaths, Probate Court, Marietta, Washington County, Ohio — Volume II, page 144:

No.	Entry
5467	Wildermuth, John — 7 Feb 1903 — Marietta — Shoemaker — Asthma
5917	Schmidt, Margaret — 26 Sep 1903 (struck through)
5935	Schlicher, Peter — 16 Oct 1903 — 76-11-16 — Germany — Merchant — Dropsy of Chest
5936	Schlicher, Jacob — 21 Dec 1903 — 45-13 — Germany — Ca. Bowels
6795	Schlicher, Fred — 31 Jul 1905 — 46-4-9 — Wood Worker — Throat & Lungs

Entry 5467 is Johann Michael Wildermuth — the record whose famously wrong age of forty he caught and challenged in 1977. What the abstract adds is the cause: asthma, with his trade given as shoemaker to the end.

The three Schlicher deaths are men this archive has no place for — a Peter Schlicher, merchant, born in Germany about November 1826, and a Jacob and a Fred. The 1900 census sheet also carries two more Schlicher households:

• 108 Second Street — Peter Schlicher Jr., born 29 March 1861 in Ohio to German parents, a manufacturer of cigars; wife Julia (Dec 1863, 3 children/3 living); sons Karl (1886), Walter (1892) and Roy (1893); a niece Edna Kunz (Dec 1894); and Jacobine, aged 69, born August 1830, entered as father-in-law — a female name against a male relationship, so one or the other is a slip of the enumerator’s pen.
• 500 Seventh Street — Walter Schlicher, day labourer, with Kate (4 children born, 2 living) and daughters Nora and Nellie, both dressmakers at seventeen and fourteen.

Marietta held several Schlicher households and the archive is connected to only one of them. Peter Jr., born in Ohio in 1861, is of Flora’s generation exactly — a cousin, most likely, and the cigar trade would be worth following.

And the Röesers

ROESER, WILLIAM — Aug 1821, 78, married 51 yrs · Ger/Ger/Ger · 1847, 53 Frederica — May 1823, 77 · 9/4 · 1847

This is the William Röeser whose 1847 naturalization papers settled the question of Johann Michael Wildermuth’s own naturalization, and in whose household the 1860 census found the young shoemaker living.

He and Frederica arrived in 1847 — the same year as Johann Michael. Whether they crossed together is not shown by anything here, but the coincidence is worth having: the boy of sixteen who came in 1847 was boarding thirteen years later with a couple who had made the same crossing in the same year.

Nine children born, four living. Five of the Röesers’ children were dead by 1900.

Source: handwritten abstracts of the 12th Census of Population, 1900, Ohio Vol. 153, Washington County; the Marietta Daily Register*, 2 July 1901; and the Record of Deaths, Probate Court, Washington County, Ohio, Vol. II p. 144 — from Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers, in Chuck’s keeping. Photographed 2026.*