Eva Barbara (Bourtine) Schmidt

Eva Barbara Bourtine was born in June 1815 in Bavaria. She married John Jacob Schmidt there (the marriage date is not recorded) and bore eight children — four boys and four girls. The elder children were born in Bavaria; the family emigrated to Washington County, Ohio in the late 1840s, where the youngest three were born and where John farmed near Lowell.

Through her daughter Eva Schmidt — who married Theobald David Schlicher — she is a direct ancestor of Flora Schlicher Wildermuth and, through her, of Chuck.

She died about 1898, one year before her husband (who died 25 January 1899). Her own dates and maiden-family details are otherwise open; even her surname, “Bourtine,” is recorded only in the family-history sheet and may be a phonetic spelling awaiting confirmation.

A ten-year discrepancy on her death

Robert Earl Wildermuth’s printed ancestor charts give her death as 1888 at Marietta — ten years earlier than the date this archive holds.

The archive keeps 1898. Its reasoning is documentary rather than inferred: John Jacob’s 1899 obituary states that his wife had preceded him in death by one year, and that he had moved in with the Schlichers afterward. A death in 1888 would have left him widowed for eleven years, which the obituary contradicts. The chart’s 1888 is recorded here as a variant, not adopted — a transposed digit is the likeliest reading.

The charts do confirm her birth in June 1815 in Bavaria, matching the family-history sheet exactly.

Sources: family-history sheet “John Jacob Schmidt” and the transcribed 26 January 1899 Daily Register obituary, in Chuck’s keeping; Eesley/Wildermuth GEDCOM tree; the fourteen printed ancestor charts for the variant 1888 death year.