Robert Earl Wildermuth's 'Little Histories' (1988–1993)

The project

After retiring early at sixty-two from his post-Air-Force civilian job as a Blue Cross auditor — described on memoir page 36 as “interesting, very rewarding and I enjoyed it very much” — Robert Earl Wildermuth turned his time to genealogy. By June 1989 he had reached the place where his decade-and-a-half of research on the Wildermuth and Fleming line origins began to feel finished, and he wrote down what came next:

Finally in 1986, at the age of 62, I took an early retirement and pursued my hobby of finding our family roots almost full time. My goal was to discover the towns of origin of our Fleming and Wildermuth ancestors. I feel that I have reached that goal and hope to visit those areas in Northern Ireland and Germany. At this time, June 1989, I am busily writing little histories of all of my family members so that future generations will know where they came from; who traveled the byways of life on this old planet and brought them here, and some of the history of the times when the Wildermuth and Fleming forbearers lived. To any future genealogists, I say good hunting for the details that I couldn’t find and have a good time, for knowing one’s origin and family background is a valuable and rewarding insight into how and why you are what you are.

The sketches that follow are bound into the closing portion of the 1988–1993 memoir (pp. 46–55). They are short by design — one page each, sometimes a single paragraph — and they cover the paternal Wildermuth-and-Schmidgall-and-Landai line going back across the Atlantic and into 18th-century Württemberg. Robert Earl never reached an analogous sketch series for the Fleming-and-Dunbar-and-Kelley maternal side; the maternal line stays at a lineage chart on memoir page 45 and at the absence-passage on page 47.

The transcriptions below preserve Robert Earl’s original wording. Three obvious typographical errors that traveled in from the OCR or the original typescript have been left in place and noted in brackets — the most important is that he writes Johann Michael Wildermuth’s birth year as 1930, clearly meant as 1830 (correct in the 1990 Heritage and the GEDCOM).

Catherina Boeshar — the German great-grandmother

Catherina Boeshar Wildermuth was the only “grandmother”-figure Robert Earl ever knew. She was actually his great-grandmother — Johann Michael Wildermuth’s wife — but she lived to ninety-three, outlasting both of Robert Earl’s actual grandmothers, and stepped partially into the role.

Catherina Boeshar was born on 15 June 1840 in the town of Breitenbach, Rhineland Pfalz, Germany. She was the daughter of Christian and Margaretha Jung Boeshar.

Catherina Boeshar came to America in 1857 [OCR garbled] but as of this date (December 1988), I have not been able to find her listed anywhere in the 1860 Federal Census.

On the 7th of September 1862, she was joined in marriage to Johann Michael Wildermuth and thus became the grand old lady of the Wildermuth clan. To this marriage was born three sons: John Charles, William Clifford and Edward.

Catherina lived to the ripe old age of 93 — 1840 to 1933. As stated, she was born in the Rhineland Pfalz in Eastern Germany forty or fifty miles west of Kaiserlautern and about 16 miles southeast of St. Wendel. This area was also known as the Saarland and it was through this area that Napoleon’s armies and those of the German Dukes and monarchs marched back and forth in never-ending wars. This was a very severe area to live in for it was ravaged by war, over-run constantly by marauding armies, pillaged, looted and robbed for decades. It is little wonder that a family would want to emigrate from there.

Catherina’s father was a miner by occupation and at this time I do not believe that he migrated to this country with the rest of the family. Catherina had at least one brother, Jacob, who was three years older than she. He was born 29 September 1837 [OCR read as 1957]. Her mother and father were married on the 5th of December 1836 [OCR read as 1956]. Her grandparents were Abraham and Maria Lehmann Boeshar and Johann and Katerina Hofmann Jung.

The search for Catherina and her family has always been a tantalizing and frustrating experience. There are many Boeshars living in and around Marietta, Ohio. Many have the same names as her father and brother but I have never been able to associate any of them with her. I first learned Catherina’s maiden name when I obtained a copy of the marriage application of Johann Michael Wildermuth and even though my father seemed very close to her, he did not know her maiden name.

My next bit of information concerning Catherina came through my searching of the International Genealogical Index on file in the library of the local Church of the Latter Day Saints in Orlando, Florida. Through that source, I found Catherina’s birth place and with this, I enlisted the aid of a friend of mine, Mrs. Marlis Smith who is a native of Germany. I asked Mrs. Smith to help me write a form letter that I could use to make queries in Germany and we sent one to the Burgermeister (mayor) of Breitenbach. I asked for a birth certificate if there was one on file in that city. After several weeks, not only a birth certificate arrived but the burgermeister’s letter giving the names and birthdates of Catherina’s parents as well as the names of her paternal and maternal grandparents.

There is a little story I would like to relate concerning Catherina’s birth certificate. It was written in a beautiful old German script. Unfortunately, it was a German script that had gone out of usage many years ago and none of the German people that I knew here in Orlando could translate it. Again, I called on the help of Marlis Smith and as it happened her husband Jacque had relatives living in France just across the border from the Rhineland Pfalz. Jacque sent this certificate to his relative who in turn gave it to a German student who sent the certificate to his grandparents for translation. The grandparents took it to an old German professor who translated it into modern German and it was subsequently returned to the Smiths where Marlis translated it into English. Although this may seem like a roundabout way to get genealogical information, it only tends to demonstrate all one must go through to get a complete picture of what took place. The translation of the birth certificate is as follows:

In the year 1840, the 15th of the month of June at 9 o’clock in the morning, there came before the Mayor Karl Bohnlein of the town of Fronhofen, Civil servant and official of the community, Breitenbach, Mr. Kantons Waldmohr of the district Zweibrucken in the Pfalz of the Kingdom of Baiern (Bavaria), Mr. Christian Boeshar, 29 years of age, miner by trade, living in Breitenbach to say that today on the 15th of June at precisely 4 o’clock in the morning in Breitenbach, his wife Margarethe Jung, who had no profession, gave birth to a female child, which he gave the first name of Catherina.

This announcement was also witnessed by Mr. Theobald Pfaff, 52 years of age, profession agriculture, living in Fronhofen and Mr. Michael Baum, 50 years of age, living in Bubach.

All of the above witnessed and signed this document.

So happened in Fronhofen on the day and year stated above.

For many years after the death of her husband in 1903, Catherina lived with her youngest son Edward and his family, wife Jane Hayes and two children, William and Virginia. William was a few years older than my older sister Ruth and Virginia was a year younger than I. In the late 1920’s, my family would visit “Uncle” Ed’s house and I remember “grandma” Wildermuth very well. In my later life, I remembered her as looking much like the famous painting of Whistler’s Mother. I never really knew who this old lady was but she was very gentle, loved children and dressed in her usual long skirts and duster cap, she used to sit in her rocking chair and peel apples for us children as we played about her. I recall she absolutely loved the vegetable, beets, and I did too as a young boy of three or four and that gave her and me something in common and it was our little secret and it made us very close.

I recall throughout my young adulthood that my father used to lament the fact that neither my mother’s mother nor his mother lived until my sister and I were old enough to remember them. He was saddened by the fact that we never had any grandmothers to get to know and love yet here was this lovely old lady who was our great-grandmother, an original from Germany, and my dad never really emphasized that she belonged to us. She was or could have been our grandmother and great-grandmother all in one.

On the 17th of October 1933, Catherina passed away at her family home, 115 Third Street. The cause of her death was old age and senility. She is buried in the Valley Cemetery, Marietta, Washington County, Ohio — a long, long way from Breitenbach.

The Whistler’s-Mother image, the rocking-chair-with-apples, the Uncle Ed visits, the shared beets-secret — these are the most affectionate sentences in the entire memoir, written by an eighty-five-year-old man remembering a great-grandmother he had met when he was three.

Johann (John) Michael Wildermuth — the 1847 emigrant

Johann Michael Wildermuth (1830–1903) is the founding-immigrant ancestor on this side — Robert Earl’s great-grandfather — and the man whose 1847 New York port-of-entry Robert Earl spent eighteen years documenting in the 1990 Heritage. The sketch in the memoir is shorter and more compressed.

JOHANN (JOHN) MICHAEL WILDERMUTH was born the 23rd of August 1830 [OCR read as 1930] in the town of Grossaspach, Duchy of Wuerttemberg, Germany. He was the son of Johann Christian and Maria Margaretha (Schmidgall) Wildermuth.

In 1847, traveling in the company of William and Frederika Roessar, he left Germany to come to America. William Roessar was from the Duchy of Baden and his wife Frederika was from Wuerttemberg, the same as Johann. Frederika may have been Johann’s sister but at this time, this has not been established. She could have also been an aunt or cousin. Both of Johann’s parents had died and Johann was only seventeen.

The Roessars and Johann arrived at the Port of New York and then proceeded on to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where they resided for five years. On the first day of November 1850, Johann presented himself to the Clerk of the Court of Quarter Sessions of the Peace in Philadelphia County and renounced his allegiance to the Grand Duke of Wuerttemberg. He then stated his intention to become a citizen of the United States. After waiting two years, on the first day of November 1852, having reached his majority and having fulfilled the citizenship requirements (residence in one state for one year and the United States for five years), Johann appeared in court and petitioned to become a citizen of the United States. He took the Oath of Allegiance that same day and thus became John Michael Wildermuth, AMERICAN !!

No records can be found of John for the next ten years however, the Federal Census taken on the 16th of June 1860 for Washington County Ohio, lists John as a member of the William Roessar household. William and his wife now had six children. The first four were born in Pennsylvania (probably Philadelphia) but the last two children were born in Ohio approximately two years before the census date. Thus the Roessars and John had probably arrived in Marietta in 1858. This census lists John as a shoemaker by trade.

By 1862, John had found himself a sweetheart and on September 6 of that year he made application to marry Miss Catherina Boeshar an immigree from Germany also. On the 7th day of September, the Reverend A. H. Seipel joined these two in Holy Matrimony.

The Federal Census for Washington County, Ohio for the year 1870 indicates that John and Catherina had been blessed with two young sons, John Charles and William Clifford my grandfather. William was born in 1866. To this couple, one more son was to be born, Edward, who was born in 1873. For the next thirty years John worked as a shoemaker and at one time had his own shop located at 134 Front Street in Marietta.

On Monday 9 February [1903], an obituary for John Wildermuth appeared in the Marietta Times newspaper. John had died very suddenly at his home on Saturday the 7th of February 1903. The cause of death was given as heart trouble and asthma. Johann (John) Michael Wildermuth is buried in the Oak Grove Cemetery, Marietta, Washington County, Ohio. At the time of his death, John was 75 [GEDCOM: 72] years old.

That 1847 New-York-not-Philadelphia question — the open thread Robert Earl never resolved — is the same one the August 1986 Philadelphia archivist’s letter had told him about three years before this sketch was written.

Johann Christian Wildermuth (1794–1842) — the Grossaspach shoemaker

Johann Christian Wildermuth was the father of our great-grandfather Johann Michael. He was born the 10th of October 1794 in Grossaspach. On the 25th of April 1842, he married Maria Margaretha Schmidgall, daughter of Georg Wilhelm Schmidgall and Anna Catherina Landai. They were married in the town of Ristenau.

Johann Christian was a shoemaker in Grossaspach. He died on the 7th of October in 1842. Age forty-eight.

Maria, the daughter of Georg Wilhelm Schmidgall and Anna Catherina Landai, was born in Rohrach on 25 October 1789. She died on 30 December [1847, OCR read as 1947]. Age fifty-eight.

The 1842 marriage-and-death sequence is striking: married 25 April 1842, dead 7 October 1842 — less than six months between the wedding and his death. Johann Michael was born 23 August 1830, so he was already twelve when his father remarried (this 1842 marriage may have been a second marriage of Johann Christian; the GEDCOM places it as @F121@). The trade ran from Johann Christian through Johann Michael — both shoemakers, the second carrying the trade across the Atlantic.

Georg Wilhelm Schmidgall and Anna Catherina Landai — the Rohrach generation

These are Robert Earl’s third great-grandparents on the Schmidgall side — the Württemberg farming village layer.

Georg Wilhelm Schmidgall, father of Maria Margaretha and one of our third great-grandfathers, was born 12 May 1758. He married Anna Maria Landai [misspelling of Anna Catherina Landai] in Rietenau on the 24th of April 1785.

Georg was a farmer in Rohrach. His death date is unknown.

Anna Catherina Landai was the daughter of Joseph Landai and Maria Dorothea Wild. She was born in Rohrach on the 11th of October 1748 and died 26 February 1798. Age fifty.

Jacob Schmidgall — Robert Earl’s furthest Schmidgall

A single paragraph; the line ends here.

Jacob Schmidgall, the father of Georg Wilhelm and one of our fourth great-grandfathers, was a farmer in Grosshochberg. His wife’s name is unknown as is his birth and death dates.

Joseph Landai and Maria Dorothea Wild — the 1715 generation

Joseph Landai was the father of Anna Catherina Landai and a fourth great-grandfather. He was born on the 13th of August 1715. On the 2nd of April 1744, in Ristenau, he married Maria Dorothea Wild. Joseph was a day laborer in Rohrach and he died 13 October 1787. Age 72.

Maria Dorothea Wild was born in Eschach [OCR: Eschuch] on 21 January 1714. She died in Rohrach on 27 June 1787. Age sixty-three.

Joseph and Maria Dorothea died within four months of each other in 1787 — the kind of couple-of-the-1780s detail that runs through Württemberg parish records.

Johann Georg Werner and Barbara Phillipp — the deepest sketch

The last and deepest of the little histories. Robert Earl wrote nothing more after these two paragraphs.

Johann Georg Werner, another of our fifth great-grandfathers and the father of Anna Maria Werner, married Barbara Phillipp on the 11th of February 1738. His birth and death dates are unknown.

Barbara Phillipp, wife of Johann Georg Werner, was born on 9 October 1712 and died on 26 March 1742. Her age at death was only thirty-one.

Barbara died at thirty-one, only four years after her marriage to Johann Georg — the kind of early-18th-century maternal-mortality fact that runs silently behind every long pedigree line. Anna Maria Werner, their daughter, is the connector to the Landai side; her line runs forward via Anna Catherina Landai → Maria Margaretha Schmidgall → Johann Michael Wildermuth → William Clifford → Earl Adam → Robert Earl → Terrie → Chuck.

What the project missed

Robert Earl wrote no companion sketch for the maternal Fleming-and-Dunbar-and-Kelley line. The closest he came is the lineage chart on memoir page 45 and the absence-passage on page 47, where his father Earl Adam laments that his children never knew their grandmothers. The Fleming-side stories — Wesley Fleming, Verona Belle Dunbar, Verona’s Maine-born father Seth Grosvenor Dunbar, the Kelley line back to County Wicklow — never got their one-page sketches. The GEDCOM has carried these lines back several generations beyond what Robert Earl had in 1989, but the voice — the Whistler’s Mother and peeling apples in her rocking chair layer of memoir — he never reached for those ancestors.

Source: Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1988–1993 memoir, pp. 36 and 46–55. Transcribed from OCR June 2026; OCR artifacts cleaned, period typos preserved (with corrections in brackets where confirmed against the 1990 Heritage or the GEDCOM).