Theobald 'David' Schlicher
also known as David Schlicher; the Schlicher patriarch
b. 1835-02-21, Germany — presumably Adenbach, his father's village, but no record states it
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. The GEDCOM says only “Germany”; his father Johann Peter was of Adenbach, in the Kusel district of the Rhineland-Palatinate, so Adenbach is the natural presumption — but no record in this archive actually states Theobald’s birthplace, and it is left as a presumption rather than written in as fact. He 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 Bavarian immigrant Johann Jacob Schmidt (1817–1899) of Marietta. He lived out his life in Marietta and died there 16 February 1912, age 76 (buried two days later).
He arrived in 1852, at seventeen. The archive could previously say only “before 1861,” reasoning back from the marriage. The 1900 census asks the question outright and he answered it: immigrated 1852, forty-eight years in the United States, and naturalised. His trade there is given as fireman — not the labouring his sons were doing.
The census also puts the household at 739 Green Street, and records Eva as arriving in 1848, four years ahead of him. The couple who married in 1861 had crossed separately, as children, before either knew the other existed.
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 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.”
This archive long recorded the relationship between that Johann Peter Schlicher and Theobald as unresolved — same man, father, or earlier ancestor, nobody knew.
The charts answer it: father. Robert Earl’s own printed ancestor charts give Theobald as the son of Johann Peter Schlicher (b. 1797 Adenbach, d. 1861 Marietta) and Maria Magdalina Weyrich (b. 1807), with Johann Friedrich Schlicher, Maria Elizabeth Burgarth, Theobald Weyrich and Magdalina Burgey behind them. Theobald’s own unusual forename would then come down from his mother’s father.
This rests on one unverified source. The charts are Robert Earl’s database output, not a document — no parish register, no civil record, nothing this archive can check. The archive’s own working rule is that where a chart meets a document the document wins; here there is no document at all. So this is the best current reading, not a settled fact, and the Adenbach parish registers are what would settle it. It is recorded because it is the only answer anyone has, and because it came from the man who spent fifteen years on the question.
One thing worth noting either way. Catharina Boeshar was born at Breitenbach, in the Landkreis Kusel; Adenbach sits at the northern end of that same district. If the charts are right, the two home towns Robert Earl named in one memoir sentence are in one district — two unrelated Palatine families out of one corner of Germany, married into each other in an Ohio river town two generations later.
Sources: 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); the fourteen printed ancestor charts in Robert Earl Wildermuth’s research papers, which supply the Adenbach birthplace and the Schlicher/Weyrich parentage; Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir for the Schlicher research context (see also Flora Schlicher Wildermuth and Emma Schlicher).
