William Clifford Wildermuth

William Clifford Wildermuth was born 17 September 1866 in Marietta, Washington County, Ohio — the same river-town his father Johann Michael Wildermuth had reached as an immigrant shoemaker from Grossaspach, Württemberg, in 1847 — and he stayed there for all seventy-seven years of his life, dying in Marietta on 10 September 1943 and being buried two days later. The Marietta-Ohio Wildermuths he represents are the cluster that produced Earl Adam and Robert Earl Wildermuth in the next two generations — Robert Earl’s memoir opens with a Marietta birth at 123 Franklin Street and the Marietta dream house at 413 Harmar Street, the same town William Clifford lived his whole life in.

The marriage to Flora Schlicher

He married Flora Schlicher (b. 24 August 1870 Marietta, d. 18 November 1919 Marietta) — a Marietta-born daughter of the local Schlicher family, the same surname Robert Earl would still be trying to research in his 1989 memoir’s closing pages:

“I hope to return to the home towns of grandma Catherina Boeshar and hopefully that of Johann Peter Schlicher at some later date.”

Flora’s father in Dale Eesley’s tree is Theobald “David” Schlicher, the Schlicher patriarch Robert Earl was almost certainly trying to trace back. The marriage of William Clifford and Flora joined two of the earlier German-immigrant Marietta families into the single household visible in the c. 1896 family group portrait in this archive.

The c. 1915 family studio portrait

A formal studio portrait of William Clifford’s family, c. 1915, survives in the archive — identified by Chuck Eesley’s July 2026 face-tagging. William Clifford is the seated father at center; Flora stands at the left; and two of their sons stand behind — the older is William (b. 1896), about nineteen, and the younger boy is most likely Earl Adam (b. 1899), about sixteen, though the two sons’ identities are still to be confirmed. Taken before Flora’s November 1919 death, it is one of the last images of her.

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Second marriage to Sarah Ruf

When Flora died on 18 November 1919 at age 49, William Clifford was 53. He remarried — his second wife was Sarah Ruf of Williamstown, Wood County, West Virginia (FamilySearch ID G3C8-MK7), the West Virginia town directly across the Ohio River from Marietta. The marriage date is undocumented in Dale’s tree; no children of the second marriage are recorded.

Nine children

William Clifford and Flora married 29 December 1886 in Washington County, Ohio and had nine documented children, all born in Marietta:

• Mae Clara Wildermuth (b. 5 May 1886) — eldest, born the same year as the marriage (the May/December dates suggest she may have been born before the marriage and the marriage legitimized the relationship).
• Charles Daniel Wildermuth (b. 4 February 1889) — the eldest son, who left Ohio for Kansas and died at Hoisington in 1945.
• Margaret Zelma Wildermuth (b. 6 November 1891) — moved to California, died Los Angeles in 1943.
• Emma Wildermuth (b. 3 October 1893) — stayed in Marietta, died there 1958.
• William Wildermuth (b. 3 April 1896) — second son; most likely the taller young man standing behind his father in the c. 1915 family studio portrait, about nineteen.
• Earl Adam Wildermuth (b. 6 October 1899) — Chuck’s great-grandfather, the father of Robert Earl Wildermuth. Married Sadye Irene Fleming in 1920 and produced the Marietta-Ohio Wildermuth line that runs to Robert Earl, Terrie, and Chuck. He is most likely the younger boy in the c. 1915 family studio portrait, about sixteen — though which two sons appear alongside their parents is still to be confirmed.
• Pearl Wildermuth (b. 5 October 1899) — Earl Adam’s near-twin, just one day apart in birth.
• George D Wildermuth (b. 30 October 1902) — youngest son.
• Blanche Wildermuth — date not yet documented; the youngest.

Earl Adam is the line that runs forward to the present through Robert Earl, Terrie, and Chuck — making William Clifford Chuck’s great-great-grandfather, not the great-great-uncle the archive briefly had him as.

Relationship to Robert Earl Wildermuth’s line

William Clifford is Robert Earl Wildermuth’s paternal grandfather — confirmed June 2026 against Dale’s tree (Earl Adam, William Clifford’s sixth child, is Robert Earl’s father). The “grandfather John” reference in Robert Earl’s 1990 Heritage refers to John Charles Wildermuth — William Clifford’s older brother — who was Robert Earl’s great-uncle, not his grandfather. The discrepancy in Robert Earl’s research is queued; the most likely reading is that he had partly confused his grandfather (William Clifford) with his great-uncle (John Charles) in oral-history recall.

He is therefore Chuck’s great-great-grandfather on the maternal side.

Dates settled

A turner, and then a salesman

He went to work as a boy. The 1880 census finds him at fourteen, living on Sixth Street and “works in chair factory” — alongside his brother Charles, sixteen, at the same factory. Only the youngest brother, Edward, was in school.

He stayed in that trade. The Marietta city directories list him in 1897–98 and 1899–1900 as a Turner at a chair factory, living at 627 Seventh Street. Robert Earl glossed the word for whoever came after him: “William Wildermuth, my grandfather, occupation was as a person who operated a wood lathe.”

What a turner did

A turner runs a lathe. The work spins and he holds a cutting tool against it, shaping anything that has to be round and symmetrical about its axis.

In a chair factory that is most of the chair: legs, rungs, stretchers, spindles, back posts. A Windsor-style chair is essentially a shaped seat plus a dozen turned parts, which put the turner at the centre of the operation — the man who made the same leg several hundred times a day to a template, judging thickness by eye and by the sound of the cut. The trade is old enough that the surname Turner comes from it.

It was skilled work with an apprenticeship behind it, not casual labour, and that is what makes the rest of his working life legible. Wood lathe to metal lathe is a short step — the same motions, the same feel for feed and speed, a harder material — so becoming a machinist was a lateral move into better pay rather than a change of trade. And a hardware counter is the natural third act for a man who had spent thirty years making and using tools.

Marietta sat in Ohio-valley hardwood country at the meeting of two rivers, timber upstream and transport at the door; chair factories were exactly the industry to expect there. Three of the brothers passed through them — William and Charles at the lathes by 1880, and Edward in a chair factory by 1899.

By 1914–15 the directory calls him a machinist, at 739 Greene Street, with Flora, his eldest son Charles D. (a tool dresser) and his daughter Emma (a clerk at L. Gruber and Sons Co.). His widowed mother Catherine was eleven houses away at 717 East Greene.

By 1919–20 he had moved off the shop floor and into sales — salesman at the Seyler Hardware Store — at the same house, now written 739 East Greene Street, with Earl Adam and George D. at home.

Fifty years of work, from a chair factory at fourteen to a hardware counter in his fifties: turner, machinist, salesman.

The grave

The Oak Grove Cemetery register places him in Section C, Lot 30, buried 12 September 1943 at seventy-seven. Flora lies beside him in the same lot, buried twenty-four years earlier. The superintendent’s 1985 note is spare: “Just (2) on the lot, it is (2) grave lot, lot is full. No stones on lot.”

Robert Earl’s own grandparents, unmarked.

His 1943 death date (just six days short of his 77th birthday) places him in Marietta in the same year as his daughter Margaret Zelma’s death in Los Angeles. Whether their deaths in the same year were related, or coincidence, is the kind of detail the Marietta Times obituary archives could probably settle.

He appears as the far-left figure in the c. 1896 family group portrait — older man with substantial mustache, dark suit, hands at his sides — visibly the patriarch of the household at age thirty.

Source: Dale Eesley / FamilySearch — William Clifford Wildermuth (LWBF-S4P); the typed caption card accompanying the family group portrait transmitted by Chuck Eesley 2026; Robert Earl Wildermuth’s 1989 memoir for the Schlicher-research context.