Theobald 'David' Schlicher
also known as David Schlicher; the Schlicher patriarch
b. 1835-02-21, Germany
d. 1912-02-16, Marietta, Washington County, Ohio
Theobald “David” Schlicher was the Schlicher patriarch of Marietta, Washington County, Ohio — a German-immigrant father whose family settled in the same mid-19th-century wave that brought the Johann Michael Wildermuth line to Washington County. The two families merged when his daughter Flora married into the Wildermuths.
He was born 21 February 1835 in Germany and had crossed to Ohio by the start of 1861 — on 20 January 1861, in Washington County, he married Eva “Effie” Barbara Schmidt, a daughter of the Baden immigrant Johan Jacob Schmidt (1815–1899) of Marietta. He lived out his life in Marietta and died there 16 February 1912, age 76 (buried two days later). The marriage date fixes his arrival in America to sometime before 1861, in his early-to-mid twenties — consistent with the wider German emigration to the Marietta district in the 1850s.
Per Dale Eesley’s GEDCOM (family record @F56@) he had six children: George (b. 8 November 1861), Daniel (b. 8 January 1864), David F (b. 21 February 1866), Edward (b. March 1869), Flora (b. 24 August 1870 — Robert Earl Wildermuth’s paternal grandmother), and Emma (b. June 1874, the youngest). Only the two daughters, Flora and Emma, have pages in this archive so far; the four sons are named but not yet profiled.
The hometown his grandson was still seeking
In his 1989 memoir, Theobald’s grandson Robert Earl Wildermuth closed his German-trip travelogue with the research he still hoped to finish:
“I hope to return to the home towns of grandma Catherina Boeshar and hopefully that of Johann Peter Schlicher at some later date.”
The Schlicher of that sentence is this family line. The relationship between the “Johann Peter Schlicher” Robert Earl names and Theobald “David” Schlicher — same man, father, or earlier ancestor — is open research.
His own German birthplace remains the open question — the “Johann Peter Schlicher” hometown his grandson never reached — but his American life is now dated end to end: born 1835, married 1861, died 1912.
Source: family FamilySearch / GEDCOM tree (Dale Eesley) — the @F56@ family record and Theobald’s vital dates (b. 21 February 1835; m. Eva Barbara Schmidt 20 January 1861, Washington County; d. 16 February 1912, Marietta); Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir for the Schlicher research context (see also Flora Schlicher Wildermuth and Emma Schlicher).