Places
The Württemberg villages and the Pfalz one — most photographed twice, a generation apart, and one held open intentionally for whoever gets there next.
Status: photographed = at least one visit with images; described only = visited but no surviving photographs; unreached = no one in the family has been yet.
- Evangelische Kirche, Rielingshausen Rielingshausen · Baden-Württemberg · Germany · Photographed
The Lutheran parish church of Rielingshausen, built 1758 — the church the Wildermuths attended for generations before Johann Michael's emigration in 1847. Robert Earl's note on his 1992 print identifies the family patriarch who probably worshipped here as 'Andreus Wildermuth.'
Visits: 2018 - Friedhof, Rielingshausen Rielingshausen · Baden-Württemberg · Germany · Photographed
The hillside cemetery and churchyard of Rielingshausen, with the family's hand-carved gravestones and the WWI/WWII memorial wall listing the village's war dead — including many Wildermuths across both wars.
Visits: 2018 - Grossaspach Grossaspach · Baden-Württemberg · Germany · Photographed
The Württemberg village Johann Michael Wildermuth left in 1847 for America, settling eventually in Marietta, Ohio as a shoemaker.
Visits: 1993, 2018 - John Eesley's Old Stratford address — now the Shakespeare Hospice Bookshop Stratford-upon-Avon · Warwickshire · England · Photographed
The Old Stratford building where the Eesleys lived after John Eesley moved his family across the county line from Hanwell — and the address John F. Eesley left from when he boarded the ship for America. Today the building houses the Shakespeare Hospice Bookshop.
Visits: 2018 - Marbach am Neckar — Wildermuth in the town Marbach am Neckar · Baden-Württemberg · Germany · Photographed
An old walled city about 25 miles north of Stuttgart, birthplace of Friedrich Schiller, with the family surname carried into German civic memory in two places: Wildermuthstraße (named after Ottilie Wildermuth, the 19th-century children's writer) and her preserved childhood home with its memorial plaque.
Visits: 2018 - Rielingshausen — Town Square (Wildermuth origin) Rielingshausen · Baden-Württemberg · Germany · Photographed
The town square of Rielingshausen — Robert Earl's note on the 1992 print is direct about what it is: 'town where Wildermuth name originated.' The square holds the Old Church (1758), the Bürgermeister's Haus, the Town Hall, and the central fountain. On the lintel of one civic building, three Wildermuth names are carved in 1811 as the village's Schultheiß, Bürger, and Heiligenpfleger.
Visits: 2018 - Stanford University Stanford · California · United States · Photographed
The campus that links Chuck and his grandfather Robert Earl across more than seventy years. Robert Earl took his Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences here on October 1, 1948, on the GI Bill, after coming home from flying B-24s over the Pacific. Chuck joined the Stanford faculty in the next generation. The two photographs of family return visits here — Memorial Church in the 1960s and the White Memorial Fountain in the 1980s — bracket the years between.
Visits: 1948, 1960s, 1980s - J. F. Eesley Milling Co. Flour Mill–Elevator, Plainwell Plainwell · Michigan · United States · Described only
The flour mill John F. Eesley built in Plainwell, Michigan in 1887 — converted from a downtown roller rink, then moved and merged with a grain elevator in 1903–04 — that grew into the second-largest producer of buckwheat flour in the United States under the 'Sunshine Brand Flour' label. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010; now The Old Mill Brewpub.
- Breitenbach Breitenbach · Rhineland-Palatinate · Germany · Unreached
Catherina Boeshar's birthplace (1840) — the maternal side of the German line. The one stop on the family pilgrimage no Wildermuth has yet reached.