The Stadt Marbach reply, 19 December 1986 — twenty-five villages and an archive reference

The most useful letter anyone ever sent him, and it begins by saying no.

Five weeks after Robert Earl’s German-language request to the Verbandsgemeinde Marbach, the Bürgermeisteramt of the Stadt Marbach am Neckar replied on 19 December 1986, over the signature of an official named Kies. They had searched, found nothing — and then did the thing no other office in the whole fifteen-year campaign did: they told him where to look next.

The no

“Unsere Nachforschungen haben ergeben, daß Ihre Vorfahren nicht direkt aus Marbach am Neckar stammen können, denn weder in den Kirchenbüchern noch in den Akten des Stadtarchivs waren Angaben über John Michael Wildermuth, geboren am 23. August 1830, zu finden.”

(“Our enquiries have established that your ancestors cannot come directly from Marbach am Neckar, since no information about John Michael Wildermuth, born 23 August 1830, was to be found either in the church books or in the records of the city archive.”)

They were right, and for a reason nobody in Florida could have known: Johann Michael was born at Großaspach, which was in the Oberamt Backnang, not Marbach. Marbach’s books could never have held him. The same misdirected question had already drawn a blank from the Rielingshausen parish office earlier that same year.

But the clerk reasoned forward from Robert Earl’s own wording:

“Aus Ihrer korrekten Bezeichnung ‘Marbach-Württemberg’ schließen wir, daß Ihre Vorfahren hier aus der Gegend stammen.”

(“From your correct designation ‘Marbach-Württemberg’ we conclude that your ancestors do come from this area.”)

The twenty-five villages

So they sent him the whole district. The Oberamt Marbach, dissolved in 1938, had contained the town of Marbach plus twenty-five others:

Affalterbach · Allmersbach · Auenstein · Beilstein · Burgstall · Erbstetten · Erdmannhausen · Gronau · Großbottwar · Höpfigheim · Hof und Lembach · Kirchberg an der Murr · Kleinaspach · Kleinbottwar · Mundelsheim · Murr · Nassach · Oberstenfeld · Ottmarsheim · Pleidelsheim · Rielingshausen · Schmidhausen · Steinheim an der Murr · Weiler zum Stein · Winzerhausen

Four names on that list are load-bearing for this family, and the clerk had no way of knowing it:

• Rielingshausen — the ancestral Wildermuth village, four generations of them
• Kirchberg an der Murr — where Rosina Kreher, Andreas’s mother, was born in 1721
• Erdmannhausen — where Margaretha Lämmle’s second husband Michael Eisenbarth came from
• Pleidelsheim — the other origin village named in Dr. Hans Wildermuth’s study of the Württemberg Wildermuths

The lead that is still open

Then the sentence that matters most:

“Eine weitere Quelle für Ihre Nachforschungen stellen die Auswanderungsakten des früheren Oberamts Marbach, die sich nun beim Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg, Schloß, 7140 Ludwigsburg, befinden, dar (Aktenzeichen E 143 Oberamt Marbach Auswanderungen).”

(“A further source for your enquiries is the emigration files of the former Oberamt Marbach, which are now held at the State Archive in Ludwigsburg … reference E 143, Oberamt Marbach, Emigration.”)

Württemberg required official permission to emigrate. A subject leaving had to apply, and the district office kept the file: the application, the decision, often the applicant’s age and destination and the disposal of any property. Those files for the Marbach district survive, catalogued, in a castle in Ludwigsburg — and the town hall handed Robert Earl the shelf reference in 1986.

He acted on it. Two years later, in February 1989, he engaged Friedrich R. Wollmershäuser, an accredited genealogist in Oberdischingen, who wrote back on 27 February promising to “look for the emigration file of Johann Michael Wildermuth” at the Ludwigsburg state archives on his next visit. That correspondence is here. Whether the file was ever found is still unknown.

This bears directly on the one thing he never found: the ship. An emigration file would not name the vessel, but it would give the permission’s date and stated destination — which, set against the 1847 New York arrival manifests, could finally identify the crossing. One caution: if Großaspach lay in Oberamt Backnang, the relevant series may be Backnang’s rather than Marbach’s, so the equivalent Backnang Auswanderungen holding at Ludwigsburg is worth asking about in the same letter.

And a small courtesy

“Damit Sie sich von der Schillerstadt Marbach am Neckar ein Bild machen können, fügen wir einige englischsprachige Prospekte bei.”

(“So that you can form a picture of Marbach am Neckar, Schiller’s town, we enclose some English-language brochures.”)

A municipal office in Baden-Württemberg, answering an unsolicited letter from a stranger in Florida, searched two archives, transcribed twenty-five place names, looked up a state-archive catalogue reference, and put tourist brochures in the envelope. “Wir wünschen Ihnen dazu viel Erfolg” — we wish you every success.

Source: Bürgermeisteramt, Stadt Marbach am Neckar, 19 December 1986, sgd. Kies; in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers. Photographed 2026.