Marriage and census — the Marietta household, 1862 and 1870

Three records from Washington County that turn Johann Michael Wildermuth from an immigrant in someone else’s household into a householder of his own.

The marriage application, 3 September 1862

DOCUMENT #58. John M. Wildermuth of Marietta City comes before the Probate Judge and swears the standard three things: his own age, that Catharine Boeshar “has no husband living,” that he “has no wife living,” and that the two “are not nearer of kin than first cousins.” Subscribed and sworn 3 September 1862, signed in his own hand — John M. Wildermuth, the American form of the name he had been using since at least the 1853 petition.

The marriage, 7 September 1862

DOCUMENT #59, Marriage Record Certification, Volume 3, page 505:

“This is to certify that on the 7th day of Sept 1862, I joined in matrimony John Michael Wildermuth & Catharine Boeshar by virtue of a license for that purpose.” — signed by the officiating minister, recorded 1 December 1862, attested by the Probate Judge.

Four days between application and wedding. Note which name he gave the court: the application is signed John M., but the marriage entry records him as John Michael Wildermuth — the German form surfacing for the one occasion that warranted it.

A second photograph of both documents — and a question about the dates

The papers hold one more frame, catching #58 and #59 together on the same sheet under different light. It reached this archive misfiled under the 1853 naturalization petition, which is a different document entirely; it is catalogued here with the marriage records where it belongs.

It is worth more than a duplicate, because the two dates this entry depends on are the two hardest things on the page to read. In this frame the sworn date of the application can be read as 9 September, and the recording of the certificate as 11 December — against the 3 September and 1 December taken from the primary frames above. The looped numeral is the culprit both times.

Recorded, not adopted. The 7 September wedding is clear on both frames and is not in question; what is uncertain is whether the application preceded it by four days or followed it by two — and the second reading would make the sworn application later than the marriage it was sworn for, which is reason enough to prefer 3 September until the originals are consulted. The Washington County Probate Court holds them.

The 1870 census — Third Ward, Marietta

DOCUMENT 5, page 5, Schedule 1 — Inhabitants in Third Ward, Marietta, enumerated 6 July 1870 by Asst. Marshal Joseph Kelly:

Name	Age		Occupation	Birthplace
Wildermuth, John	39	M W	Work in shoe shop	Wurtemburg
Catherine	30	F W	Keeping house	Bavaria
John C.	7	M W	At school	Ohio
William C.	4	M W	At home	Ohio

The two birthplaces are the marriage in one line: Württemberg and Bavaria, two German states three hundred kilometres apart, both landed in a river town in southeastern Ohio. The boy of four is William Clifford — Robert Earl’s grandfather, Chuck’s great-great-grandfather.

(The enumerator’s ages give birth years of about 1831 and 1840, against the documented 1830 and 1840. Census ages were what someone in the house told a marshal at the door.)

Ten years the archive still can’t see

Between the 1853 oath in Philadelphia and the 1860 census in Ohio there is almost nothing. Robert Earl put it plainly: “Little can be found of John during the next ten years.” What the 1860 census does show is that he was still living in the William Roessar household — and that the Roessars’ fifth child, Charles, aged two, had been born in Ohio while the first four were born in Pennsylvania. So the whole group moved west around 1858, and Johann Michael moved with them, still unmarried at twenty-eight, eleven years after they had crossed together.

Source: Robert Earl Wildermuth’s genealogical research papers, filed WILD-8; Washington County, Ohio marriage records vol. 3 p. 505, and the 1870 federal census. Photographed 2026.