Sarah (Ruf) Wildermuth
also known as Sarah Ruf, maiden
Sarah Ruf was William Clifford Wildermuth’s second wife, after his first wife Flora Schlicher died on 18 November 1919. The GEDCOM (FS ID G3C8-MK7) records her birthplace as Williamstown, Wood County, West Virginia — directly across the Ohio River from Marietta — and gives no birth date, no death date, and no children of the marriage.
The local-community connection
Williamstown, West Virginia sits on the south bank of the Ohio River opposite Marietta, in Wood County. The two towns are connected by a road bridge today (and were connected by ferry in earlier eras). A Williamstown-born woman marrying into a Marietta Wildermuth household after that household’s first wife had died is a local-community-bonds second marriage of the kind common in early-20th-century river-town life. The Ruf surname is German, fitting the broader German-immigrant community of Washington County, Ohio and adjacent Wood County, WV.
The marriage took place at some point after Flora’s November 1919 death; William Clifford was over 50 by then. He died on 10 September 1943; Sarah’s outcome after his death is undocumented in this archive.