The Wildermuth/Fleming Heritage (Robert Earl Wildermuth, 1990)

What this document is

On 1 January 1990, Chuck’s maternal grandfather Robert Earl Wildermuth — then sixty-five, retired in Orlando, eight years past finishing the WWII combat log and the autobiography of his own life — printed and bound The Wildermuth/Fleming Heritage. It was the culmination of eighteen years of genealogical research he had begun in late 1971 at age forty-six.

The document opens with the epigraph he had carried with him throughout the research:

Can one tell where he’s going until he knows where he’s been?

It runs 24 pages in three sections: (1) Wildermuth research narrative through the German origins, the 1847 emigration, and the early Ohio years; (2) Fleming research narrative tracing his mother’s Welsh-Irish line back to John Fleming of Montgomery County, Maryland in the 1750s; (3) Dorothy Marie Davis’s family with her birth certificate and childhood photographs.

It is dedicated to his parents Sadye Irene Fleming and Earl Adam Wildermuth, and to his wife Dorothy Marie Davis, who “spent many long hours waiting for me to finish my poring over old court records and documents in my quest for my ‘roots’.”

The findings — what was new when he printed it, and what this archive draws from it

The Wildermuth origin in Württemberg

As Dr. Hans Wildermuth, son of Johann David Wildermuth, stated: “The Wuerttemburg Wildermuths have their origin in the villages of Pleidelsheim and Riedenshausen [Rielingshausen] near the small town of Marbach in the Northeast of Stuttgart.”

Robert Earl wrote to the burgermeisters of Marbach, Pleidelsheim, and Rielingshausen asking for records of a seventeen-year-old Johann Michael who may have left their city for the United States in 1847. All three responses came back negative. Then he turned to the Latter Day Saints records in Salt Lake City and found Wildermuths in a fourth nearby village, Grossaspach. He wrote to the mayor of Grossaspach in turn; the mayor passed the letter to a city genealogist; the genealogist checked the parish records and confirmed that Johann Michael Wildermuth had in fact been born in Grossaspach.

Going back three more generations from Johann Michael, Robert Earl reached the deepest documented Wildermuth ancestor in this archive: Andreus Wildermuth, born around 1748 in Rielingshausen. Andreus was a Gartner (vineyard gardener). He was the father of Adam Wildermuth (born 1768 Rielingshausen).

The 1847 emigration of Johann Michael Wildermuth

In the 1860 census of the 3rd Ward of Marietta City, Washington County, Ohio, Robert Earl found a John M. Wildermuth, age 29, a shoemaker from Wuerttemburg, Germany, living in the household of William Rossar, also a shoemaker, age 38, from the Duchy of Baden, Germany. Rossar’s wife Frederika was from Wuerttemburg — possibly Johann M.’s sister.

Tracking through the Passenger and Immigration Lists Index (Philby & Meyer), Robert Earl found that Johann Michael Wildermuth and the Rossars had traveled together to America. Initial research suggested Philadelphia in 1847, but after three years of correspondence with the Philadelphia city archivist, an unexpected letter in August 1986 informed him that the naturalization record had actually been filed in New York City — meaning Johann Michael had landed at the Port of New York, not Philadelphia.

The Fleming line back to colonial Maryland

For his mother Sadye Irene Fleming’s side, Robert Earl traced the Flemings from her birth in Waverly, Pleasant County, West Virginia — though no birth certificate was ever filed; “travel throughout rural West Virginia in 1900 was extremely difficult…, the lack of adequate roads, the fording of countless streams…, word of a birth was primarily spread by word of mouth with no one taking official notice” — back through the West Virginia census records to John Fleming of Montgomery County, Maryland in the 1750s.

The earliest Fleming material came from his pen-pal Michael G. Roberts, 682 Springwater Drive, Akron, Ohio 44313, a fellow Fleming genealogist Robert Earl never met in person. “I have closely checked all of his information,” Robert Earl wrote, “and except for the John Fleming who came from Ireland (he was Scotch however — Scotch Irish or a Scot living in Northern Ireland) I have verified all of the information.”

The Davis family in Waterford, Ohio

The Davis section is centered on Robert Earl’s wife Dorothy Marie Davis’s birth and childhood. The Ohio Department of Health birth certificate is reproduced in the document:

• Dorothy Marie Davis — born 11:15 AM, 24 February 1925, in Waterford Township, Washington County, Ohio.
• Father: Homer Davis, age 25, white, born in Ohio, truck driver of Waterford.
• Mother: Bessie M. (Hill) Davis, age 19, white, born in Ohio, housewife of Waterford. Maiden name Hill.
• One other child of Bessie was already living at the time (Dorothy’s older sister Mary, age ~2).

The document includes photographs of the Waterford family home (where Dorothy was born; later destroyed in a fire), the three Davis sisters as small children (Mary, Dorothy, and Betty — ages 5, 4, and 3 in one frame; 6, 5, and 4 with puppies and bare feet in another), two formal portraits of Dorothy at ages 18 and 19 (1943 and 1944), and a 1968 family photograph of Jean, Robert Earl Sr., Dorothy Marie, and Robert Earl Jr. (“Bobby”).

The fire that destroyed the family home is described:

In Unionville [Ohio], while the parents were away from home, they suffered a tremendous calamity. The house caught fire and burned to the ground. This was a real tragedy but with the help of friends and neighbors, they recovered, moved into a small shed not damaged in the fire while their parents lived in a poorly insulated one-room garage throughout the cold winter that followed.

Mary, one year older than Dorothy, and Dorothy started their education at Unionville Grade School. They later transferred to Marietta High School; Dorothy graduated in June 1943.

Notable side-discovery: Ottilie Wildermuth the German poetess

Robert Earl noted along the way that there is a Wildermuth Strasse in Tübingen, Germany — not far from the Stuttgart-area Wildermuth villages. The street is named for Ottilie Wildermuth (1817–1877), a well-known 19th-century German poetess, wife of Dr. Johann David Wildermuth, a German high school professor. Whether she is in the same Württemberg Wildermuth line as Robert Earl’s branch is not established; he notes only the namesake street. The archive’s existing person page for an Ottilie Wildermuth (Chuck’s maternal-side ancestor) is a different Ottilie — the convergence of name is its own small note.

The research method itself

The eighteen-year arc of how Robert Earl built this is itself a piece of mid-20th-century American genealogical practice. The institutions and methods he used:

• The Orlando Public Library — he praises its genealogy department: “the reputation of having one of the finest genealogy departments in the south-east and after having used it for many years and having visited many, many others throughout the eastern United States, I must agree that it is the best.”
• The Ohio State Library of Congress in Columbus.
• The Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, First Edition Volume 4 by F. William Philby and Mary K. Meyer.
• The Philadelphia Naturalization Records, Book III.
• The U.S. Census records for Washington County, Ohio (1860 et seq.) and West Virginia counties.
• The Latter Day Saints Library in Salt Lake City, Utah — their International Genealogical Index.
• Letters to German burgermeisters (mayors) of every plausible Wildermuth village.
• Letters to the West Virginia county court houses (Pleasant, Wood, etc.) for Fleming birth and marriage records.
• Pen-pal correspondence with other genealogists, especially Michael G. Roberts of Akron, OH on the Fleming line.

His advice in the closing paragraph, addressed to “any future family genealogists”:

There is still a lot of work to be done; a lot of questions to be answered and a lot of rewarding records to be found by someone who is inquisitive enough and interested enough to dig, dig, dig. HAPPY HUNTING!

The line is one this archive is built to honor — Robert Earl’s 1990 advice has become the operating principle of the project he never saw.

Provenance

The original document was self-printed and bound by Robert Earl in Orlando, Florida on 1 January 1990. He sent copies to his sisters, his children, the LDS Library in Salt Lake City, and the Orlando Public Library. The family copy was scanned in August 2019 on a Canon SC1001 scanner. Forwarded to this archive by Chuck Eesley, June 2026.

The reproduced photographs — now individual artifacts

The Davis section’s nine reproduced photographs are now placed as standalone artifact entries in this archive:

• Dorothy’s Ohio Department of Health birth certificate — Document #1 of the Davis section.
• The Davis home in Waterford, Ohio where she was born.
• The three Davis sisters at 5, 4, and 3 — c. 1929, earliest known image of Dorothy.
• The three Davis sisters — “why so glum?” — c. 1930.
• The three Davis sisters with puppies — c. 1931, the “cute little puppies and cute little bare feet” caption.
• Dorothy’s 1943 formal portrait — the Marietta High School graduation year.
• Dorothy’s 1944 formal portrait — bookkeeper at Citizen’s Bank.
• Robert Earl and Dorothy at Itazuke, 1968 — the formal Japan-tour couple’s portrait.
• The Wildermuth family of six at Itazuke, 1968 — all four children with their parents.
• Dorothy at her quilting, c. 1988 — the second-to-last image of her in the Heritage.

Follow-up research, June 2026

The four queued items from the original 1990 closing list have been pulled forward into this June 2026 desk pass — first against the live GEDCOM (public/docs/eesley-wildermuth-tree.ged, Dale Eesley / FamilySearch, sync 1 June 2026), then against web sources for what the GEDCOM did not carry.

1. Andreus Wildermuth’s earlier generations — resolved by the GEDCOM

The GEDCOM has carried Robert Earl’s open question two full generations further than 1990. The Wildermuth father-line up from Earl Adam now reads:

Gen	Name	Born	Place
1	Earl Adam Wildermuth	6 Oct 1899	Marietta, Ohio
2	William Clifford Wildermuth	17 Sep 1866	Marietta, Ohio
3	John Michael Wildermuth	23 Aug 1830	Großaspach, Württemberg (the 1847 emigrant)
4	Johann Christian Wildermuth	10 Oct 1794	Großaspach
5	Adam Wildermuth	26 Oct 1768	Rielingshausen (d. 1800 Großaspach — the move to Großaspach happens in this generation)
6	Andreas Adam Wildermuth (Robert Earl’s “Andreus”)	30 Nov 1745	Rielingshausen (d. 1771, age 25)
7	Johann Adam Wildermuth	1720	Rielingshausen (d. 1768; m. Rosina Kreher 11 Jun 1743)
8	Johannes Wildermuth	28 Dec 1682	Rielingshausen (m. Margaretha Grayers 27 Sep 1708)
9	Johannes Wildermuth	~1650	Rielingshausen (the Peace-of-Westphalia generation)

Two important corrections to the 1990 record: (a) Robert Earl estimated Andreus’s birth as ~1748; the parish register has him as 30 November 1745. (b) Robert Earl’s spelling “Andreus” is the family-record Anglicization; the Rielingshausen Kirchenbuch has him as Andreas Adam Wildermuth.

For pre-1650 generations: the Rielingshausen Wildermuth clan is documented in parish ledgers from 1521, and the standing academic study Die Wildermuth in Erdmannhausen (Karlsruhe BLB OPUS) traces the relevant Marbach-district lines forward from the 16th century. The path beyond Johannes ~1650 is the Landeskirchliches Archiv Stuttgart Kirchenbücher for Rielingshausen 1521–1700, queryable via FamilySearch Württemberg, Germany, Lutheran Baptisms, Marriages, and Burials, 1500-1985.

2. The 1847 New York passenger manifest — route forward identified

Robert Earl’s last open Heritage question. The desk pass confirms the route, even if the manifest itself remains to be pulled: the New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1891 at FamilySearch covers exactly the relevant period (Castle Garden did not open until 1855, so 1847 New York arrivals went through Battery / Quarantine on Staten Island and are catalogued via the same FamilySearch collection). The Germans to America, 1840–1849 printed series and the Württemberg Emigration Index (7 vols., Ancestry, 1986–98) are the two specialty finding aids for a 17-year-old Württemberg shoemaker named Johann Michael Wildermuth landing at the Port of New York in 1847. The Württemberg Emigration Index is the most likely place to surface the official Württemberg-side Auswanderungs-Akte — the German emigration permit that names the destination port and the year of departure.

3. Ottilie Wildermuth — resolved

Ottilie Wildermuth (1817–1877) connects to this branch by marriage, not descent — and her husband’s home village turns out to be one of the same three the 1990 Heritage names as the Wildermuth heartland. She married Wilhelm David Wildermuth (1807–1885), born in Pleidelsheim, son of farmer Johann Georg Wildermuth. Pleidelsheim is one of the three Marbach-district villages Robert Earl wrote to in his 1970s burgermeister-correspondence campaign, and is part of the same tight Rielingshausen-clan radius that the 1521 records anchor. So the “Dr. Hans Wildermuth, son of Johann David Wildermuth” whom Robert Earl quoted in the epigraph of the Wildermuth section — “The Wuerttemburg Wildermuths have their origin in the villages of Pleidelsheim and Riedenshausen [Rielingshausen]” — was someone in Ottilie’s branch, a son or grandson of Wilhelm David. The two branches are extended cousins through the same surname-cluster. The Tübingen Wildermuth-Gymnasium and the Marbach Wildermuthstraße are named for this line; the Marietta line of Robert Earl’s research is the other American twig of the same root. Ottilie’s page now carries the resolved branch-relationship.

Eberhard Wildermuth (1890–1952), her grandson, served as West German Federal Minister for Housing and Construction under Adenauer (1949–52) — the public-life continuation of the same Tübingen branch.

4. The Fleming line back to colonial America — largely resolved by the GEDCOM

Michael G. Roberts’s research files themselves are not findable via the 2026 web pass — his address as of 1990 (682 Springwater Drive, Akron, Ohio 44313) sits in the West Akron neighborhood served by the Akron-Summit County Public Library Special Collections, the most plausible deposit point if a family donation was ever made; an obituary-index inquiry via the Akron Beacon Journal Obituary Indexes would be the next step to find descendants.

But the more important finding is that the GEDCOM has carried the Fleming line three generations further back than the 1990 Heritage, with the Scottish origin Robert Earl had suspected now anchored to a named individual. The Fleming father-line up from Sadye now reads:

Gen	Name	Born	Place
1	Sadye Irene Fleming	15 Jul 1901	Williamstown, Wood Co., West Virginia
2	James Wesley Fleming	20 Dec 1855	Arnolds Creek, Doddridge Co., Virginia
3	Thomas Bailey Fleming	Feb 1830	Harrison Co., Virginia
4	Lewis B Fleming	1807	Harrison Co., Virginia
5	John F. Fleming	11 Oct 1781	Montgomery County, Maryland
6	John Fleming	1744	Prince George’s, Maryland (Montgomery was carved out of Prince George’s in 1776)
7	John Fleming	1714	Cecil County, Maryland (the first American-born ancestor)
8	John Fleming	1683	(origin in tree: Maryland; arrival route via the Scotch-Irish stream from Ulster)

The Scottish anchor: Gen-8 John Fleming’s wife is Ann Marie Fleming, born 10 August 1695 in Scotland. The earliest Maryland-born Fleming is Gen-7 (1714 Cecil County). Robert Earl’s 1990 reading — “a Scot living in Northern Ireland… came to colonial Maryland in the 1750s” — resolves into the more specific picture: the Flemings reached Cecil County, Maryland on Chesapeake Bay during the late-17th-century Scotch-Irish immigration wave, then moved south to Prince George’s County (which gave way to Montgomery County in 1776) over the 18th century, then west across the Appalachian crest into Harrison County, Virginia (now West Virginia) in the early 19th. The Montgomery County period Robert Earl identified is the middle of this chain.

That largely closes Michael G. Roberts’s contribution — his role was to push the line back to colonial Maryland, and the GEDCOM has now extended that another full generation into the Scotland origin. A Roberts-archive inquiry remains queued for any intermediate-Maryland records he may have collected that didn’t make it into Robert Earl’s 1990 summary.

The original 24-page PDF is held in the archive at public/docs/Wildermuth-Family-History.pdf and is linked from the downloadable Heritage PDF.