Earl Adam Wildermuth to Robert Earl, 17 January 1972 — the Schlicher-side genealogy letter

What this letter is

17 January 1972. Earl Adam Wildermuth — Robert Earl Wildermuth’s father, the grandson of Marietta-emigrant Johann Michael Wildermuth and one of nine children of William Clifford and Flora Schlicher Wildermuth — writes his son Bob with what he can remember of his own parents and the Schlicher side beyond them. The letter answers a set of genealogy questions Bob had clearly mailed him asking. Earl Adam opens by apologizing for what he doesn’t know and writes for three pages anyway.

It is the primary-source letter underneath Robert Earl’s twenty-year genealogy project — the work that produced his 1990 Wildermuth/Fleming Heritage memoir, the photo collections of the German villages, and the Return to Germany travelogue. Almost every Wildermuth dating in this archive that has Earl Adam’s “my figures” texture sits on this letter.

Signed “Dad and Carl” from 622 Hudson Avenue, Newark, Ohio 43055 — the house Earl Adam shared with his son Carl Edward Wildermuth, Robert Earl’s brother.

The first page — Marietta Christmas just past, names and visits

Earl Adam opens by walking through the holiday: who saw whom over Christmas, who came up to Marietta, who is in good health and who isn’t. Names mentioned in passing — Tom and Anita; Anne and Mary; Tom Henry; “the boys at the Wildermuth house”; Russ Mar and Doris and Bob; Tom on his way back to Wichita. The first page is the family-newsletter register of someone older sitting down at a typewriter on a slow January Sunday and writing his son a long letter the way he would have wanted his own father to write him.

He then turns, in the second half of page 1, to Bob’s actual questions.

The second page — what Earl Adam knew about his parents

Bob I will start in apolijising about answering your questions I just dont no the answers, but I will do all I can. well now for my mother and dad. mom died in 1918 and was 52 years old. her name was Flora Schlicher. now according to my figures she was [born] in 1866. sorry I dont know the month or day. Mom and Dad were both burried in Oak Grove cemetary. Now my Dad died in 1942 now if he and mom were about the same he would have been (my figures again) 76 year old when he died. yes all of my brothers and sister were born in Marietta. May, Charlie, William, Margrette, Blanche, Emma, Earl and Pearl and George.

This is the core of the letter. Earl Adam gives, in his own voice and with his own caveats, the essential dates of his parents William Clifford Wildermuth and Flora Schlicher Wildermuth:

Flora Schlicher: died 1918, age 52, therefore born c. 1866. “sorry I dont know the month or day.”
William Clifford: died 1942, Earl Adam’s estimate age 76, therefore born c. 1866. “my figures again.”
Both buried at Oak Grove Cemetery in Marietta.
The nine William-Clifford-and-Flora children, all born in Marietta: May, Charlie, William, Margaret (“Margrette”), Blanche, Emma, Earl (the letter writer himself), Pearl, and George.

This nine-child count is more than the five William-Clifford-and-Flora children stubbed elsewhere in this archive (Mae Clara, William Jr., Pearl, George D., Blanche). The letter confirms four additional siblings: Charlie, Margaret, Emma, and Earl himself. Each is now a candidate for an additional Wildermuth stub.

The page also names “Uncle Charlie” — one of Robert Earl’s father’s brothers — as having met his wife in Wichita, Kansas, where he had gone to live and where he later died. “She was a Marietta girl but went to Wichita with the people Charlie worked for she was their hired girl then they lived in Wichita thats where Charlie died and was burrried.” The same Marietta-to-Wichita pattern appears later in Robert Earl’s own Stanford-to-Pentagon-to-Itazuke career trajectory; one of his uncles had done a long internal-American migration west forty years earlier.

The page closes with: “Yes your Mom was born in Waverly W. Virginia. No Bob I dont know the date my grand parents came to Marietta. I hope my help will be of some help but that is the best I can do.”

Robert Earl’s own mother (Earl Adam’s wife, Dorothy or Sadye depending on the structured record — see Sadye Fleming Wildermuth) was therefore born in Waverly, West Virginia, a detail this archive had not previously locked in.

The closing line signature: “Well write when you can and you all take care / Dad and Carl / 622 Hudson Ave / Newark Ohio 43055.”

The third page — the Schlicher great-grandparents

The next morning — “Well here it is Sunday morning and it is 10 below zero” — Earl Adam picks back up with the Schlicher side. He had run out of room on page 2.

Now the Schlichers.

Grandpas name was Theodore Schlicher and Grandma name was Eva Schlicher. Grandpa and Grandma Schlicher were born in Germany along the Rhine river. They came to Philadelphia then on to Marietta. Grandpa was a cooper by trade. He made barrels and had a shop out in the east end of Marietta. They had six children, four boys and two girls.

The six Theodore-and-Eva Schlicher children:

Dave Schlicher — “the oldest songcrew owned a 160 acre farm up back of Stockport Ohio. He married Mary Gheen they never had any children.”
Lou Schlicher — “never married and he had a Pop Works up at Upper Sandusky” (a soda-bottling business).
Edward Schlicher — “went to Oklahoma woked in oil fields never came back to Marietta.”
Flora Schlicher — “was my mother.” The line for which the whole letter exists.
Emma Schlicher — “married Henry Rachen, they had four children two girls and twoboys. Clarence Rachen Married a girl from Chancey Ohio and lived there and worked in a coal mine. Raymond Rachen married a Marietta girl Burl Day and left Marietta. Leona Rachen married Oran Master they had a boy and a girl, Bob Masters and Joan Masters married a Whocamp boy I dont no where they live.”
Leona Schlicher — “Edward Schlicher’s twin” (per the page, ambiguous; possibly the seventh child, possibly Earl Adam misremembering).

The Schlicher emigration line as Earl Adam carried it in his head: Germany on the Rhine → Philadelphia → Marietta, Ohio → Theodore the cooper’s barrel shop in east Marietta. That is the family-memory backbone behind everything Robert Earl would later research about the Schlicher emigration, including the 1853 Johann Michael Wildermuth Philadelphia naturalization pattern he would later identify on the Wildermuth side.

The page ends with Earl Adam apologizing for typewriter ribbon condition and asking Bob to “take it easy and write when you can”.

What this archive owes the letter

The letter is the direct source behind several biographical lines this archive has been carrying without an attribution:

William Clifford Wildermuth’s death year (1942) — from Earl Adam’s “Now my Dad died in 1942.”
Flora Schlicher Wildermuth’s death year (1918) and age (52) — from Earl Adam’s first paragraph.
The Oak Grove Cemetery burial for both William Clifford and Flora.
The nine William-Clifford-and-Flora children in their birth-order memory — previously the archive only carried five.
The Schlicher-side German-Rhine → Philadelphia → Marietta emigration pattern, in Earl Adam’s own voice rather than as inferred research.
Theodore Schlicher’s trade as a cooper with a barrel shop in east Marietta — new biographical detail.
The Theodore-and-Eva six-children roster with their adult-life endpoints (Dave on the Stockport farm, Lou’s pop works in Upper Sandusky, Edward in Oklahoma oil fields, Emma’s Rachen marriage with four children, etc.).
Sadye Fleming Wildermuth’s Waverly W. Virginia birthplace — per Earl Adam: “Yes your Mom was born in Waverly W. Virginia.”

The PDF as a whole

The 55-page Wildermuth-letters.pdf source from which this letter was transcribed appears to hold several documents in sequence: this 17 January 1972 letter (Document 1, pages 1–3), Robert Earl’s own typed research notes documenting the Wuerttemburg-Wildermuth connection and the Johann David Wildermuth lead (pages 5 onward), and possibly other research correspondence. The remaining pages are queued for a deeper mining pass in the next session.