Writing to the Rielingshausen parish — two replies, five years apart

An exchange of letters between Casselberry, Florida and a village parish office in Baden-Württemberg — Robert Earl Wildermuth writing to the one institution that could read the eighteenth-century Wildermuth record, and the pastor writing back with something nobody in the family knew.

1. The letter out

Sehr verehrter Herr Pfarrer!

According to the genealogical sources I have collected my ancestors supposedly come from Rielingshausen, Wuerttemburg, Germany, so I most courteousley request some information from the local church books.

I am enclosing an ancestor chart so that you can see exactly whom this concerns. I most courteousely request a complete transcript or photocopies from the pertinent birth, marriage, and death records for my ancestors from your town.

I am enclosing two coupons that can be exchanged at your post office for postage stamps.

Thank you in advance for your efforts and cooperation, I remain

Most respectfully, ROBERT E. WILDERMUTH

The same text is repeated below in German, and closes with a line that is the most human thing on the page:

P.S. Ich verstehe nur ein wenig Deutsch. (“P.S. I understand only a little German.”)

He addressed it to D-7157 Rielingshausen — a postal code that had already lapsed when Rielingshausen was absorbed into Marbach am Neckar in 1972. It arrived anyway.

2. The chart he enclosed

Robert Earl’s own pedigree chart, filled out in his block capitals, carrying the line from Johann Michael Wildermuth (b. 1830 Großaspach, “NACH AMERIKA 1847”) back through Johann Christian, Adam, and the Wolf, Schmidgall and Landai families of Großaspach and Röhrach.

It came back covered in the pastor’s blue handwriting, with two boxes ringed in red and BITTE — please — written across the top. The pastor filled in what Robert Earl had left blank and corrected what he had wrong:

	On the returned chart
Andreas Wildermuth	b. 30 Nov 1745, Rielingshausen · m. 19 Juli 1768 · d. 1. Juni 1771, Rielingshausen
Margaretha Lämmle	b. 7 März 1746, Rielingshausen · d. 8. Mai 1778, Rielingshausen
Andreas’s parents	Hans Adam Wildermuth and Rosina
Margaretha’s parents	Johann Michael Lämmle and Catharina

Every one of those matches what the archive independently holds from the FamilySearch tree — which matters, because this is a clergyman reading the actual Kirchenbücher in the village, not a database. The deep German dates on Andreas’s and Margaretha’s pages now rest on two independent sources.

The chart is dated 18 April 1989 in Robert Earl’s hand, at the Casselberry address — filled out at the start of the research push that produced the 1990 Heritage and the family group records.

3. The first reply — nothing found

Before the useful letter came a dead end. On 26 February 1987 the parish secretary wrote back:

“Nachdem wir nun unsere Familien-Register, Taufregister und Konfirmanden-Register gründlich durchgesehen haben, müssen wir Ihnen leider mitteilen, daß wir unter dem von Ihnen genannten Datum keine Eintragung finden können. … Vielleicht könnten Sie jemanden beauftragen, der für Sie weitere Nachforschungen vornehmen würde.”

(“Having now thoroughly gone through our family register, baptismal register and confirmation register, we regret to tell you that we can find no entry under the date you gave. … Perhaps you could commission someone to carry out further research for you.”) — i.A. U. Kelm, Pfarramtssekretärin. At the foot: 1 Anlage zurück! — one enclosure returned.

They looked in all three registers and found nothing, because in 1987 he was still asking the wrong parish. Every question he had put to a German office up to that point was about Johann Michael, born 23 August 1830 — and Johann Michael was born at Großaspach, in the Backnang district, not at Rielingshausen in the Marbach district. Rielingshausen’s books could not contain him.

What changed was the question. Once he sent the ancestor chart and asked about the eighteenth-century Wildermuths — Andreas, Margaretha — Rielingshausen was suddenly the right parish, and the answer came back full.

4. The reply that worked

Sehr geehrter Herr Wildermuth,

wie Sie sehen, haben wir einige Daten erheben können.

Margaretha geb. Lämmle hat nach dem Tod ihres Mannes Andreas Wildermuth im Jahr 1772 Michael Eisenbarth aus unserem Nachbarort Erdmannhausen geheiratet. Sie starb 1778 am 8. Mai bei der Geburt eines Kindes.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen! — (Pfarrer)

In English:

Dear Mr Wildermuth,

As you can see, we were able to gather some data.

Margaretha née Lämmle, after the death of her husband Andreas Wildermuth, married Michael Eisenbarth from our neighbouring village of Erdmannhausen in 1772. She died on 8 May 1778 giving birth to a child.

One sentence, and it changes a life the archive had recorded only as two dates.

The envelope it came in — MIT LUFTPOST, PAR AVION, hand-addressed to Casselberry.

What the parish supplied that nobody had

Margaretha Lämmle was widowed at twenty-five, when Andreas died on 1 June 1771 leaving her with a three-year-old son. Within a year she married again — Michael Eisenbarth, from Erdmannhausen, the next village over. Six years after that she died in childbirth, at thirty-two.

The archive had her death date. It did not have the second husband, the second village, or the reason. The child whose birth killed her was an Eisenbarth, not a Wildermuth — which is very likely why the family record lost both.

It is also worth noticing what the exchange cost: a form letter, two international reply coupons, and a stranger’s willingness to go and read a parish register. That is the whole apparatus by which this part of the archive exists.

Still open: what became of the Eisenbarth child, and whether Margaretha had further children between 1772 and 1778. The pastor began a further sentence — “Wir haben zu dritt…” — and struck it out before signing.

Source: Robert Earl Wildermuth’s genealogical research papers; photographed 2026. Parish: Evangelisches Pfarramt, Rathausplatz, 7142 Marbach am Neckar–Rielingshausen. See also the Rielingshausen church.