Eric Schmidt Family History

Eric Emerson Schmidt was born on April 27th, 1955 to Wilson and Eleanor Schmidt in Falls Church, Virginia.  He was the eldest of their three sons.

His parents were both academics, his father an economics professor while his mother had a master’s degree in psychology.  Eric spent part of his childhood in Italy as a result of his father’s work.

Like his grandfather he attended Princeton University.  But he left there with a degree in electical engineering, not economics.  He moved to California in 1976 and over the next four years completed an M.S. and PhD in Computer Engineering at Berkeley.  His early work experiences were at Sun Microsystems and Novell.

Google CEO.  Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin spotted something special in him and recruited him as CEO of Google in 2001.  Eric was to preside over the rapid growth of the company over the next decade.  He stepped down as CEO in 2011 but remained as Executive Chairman until 2017.

During Eric’s watch Google became the premier global internet search engine and incredibly profitable.  He himself had a reported net worth of $7 billion in 2011.

Post-Google.  Big Tech entrepreneurs have either looked left or looked right in their politics.  Eric has generally supported Democratic politicians, mostly notably Barack Obama in his 2008 Presidential bid.  Like Bill Gates he has established a charitable family foundation and has given generously to causes.

He has also had his finger in a number of pies post-Google.  In 2020 he launched his podcast Reimagine with Eric Schmidt.  Since 2022 he  has been the chairman of Sandbox AQ, a Palo Alto-based quantum computing and AI company that was spun off from Alphabet/Google.  He has also invested in a number of aerospace-related AI startups.

The Schmidts in Canada

German Origins.  Eric’s two times great grandparents Henry and Mary Schmidt were married in Waterloo, Ontario in 1858.  They had come to Canada four years earlier.

Henry Schmidt was from German-speaking Alsace in France and the very German-sounding small village of Kutzenhausen with its population of just a thousand.  He was there Heinrich, the son of Mathias and Magdalena Schmitt.  Poverty and a lack of work opportunities were probably the main reasons that drove him to emigrate.  He came to Waterloo county in SW Ontario where other Alsatians had settled.

Meanwhile his wife Mary Diebel had arrived from Hesse in Germany in 1854, following four of her siblings who had also made the journey to Waterloo county and found husbands or wives.  Their family line at Niederaula in Hersfield-Rotenberg, Hesse has been traced back two generations to the 1730’s.

The Canadian Line.  Henry and Mary Schmidt moved to Zorra township in nearby Oxford county soon after their marriage and remained there for the rest of their lives.  Eric’s line at Zorra and Tavistock continued as follows:

• John D. Schmidt (1864-1944)
• to Emerson P. Schmidt (1899-1976).

John was the third of Henry and Mary’s seven children.  He married Barbara Wilhelm from neighboring Perth county in 1893 and they raised four children.  Edward, the eldest, was born and died in Zorra, as was his younger brother William.

But Emerson, the second son, did leave and did not return.  He took the 140 mile journey southwest to Detroit, Michigan.

And the Schmidts in America

These Schmidts, Emerson and his son Wilson, were brainy men who established themselves as economists in the nation’s capital Washington DC.

Emerson P. Schmidt.  Emerson Schmidt made the move from Canada to America in the 1920’s in the pursuit of his educational studies.

He was first in Detroit, Michigan where he met and married his first wife Gertrude.  They then left for Madison, Wisconsin where he completed his PhD in Economics in 1935.  Afterwards he and Gertrude were in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  Emerson was an economist at the University of Minnesota for about five years.

By the 1940’s Emerson had come to Washington DC.  He had remarried and was working in 1944 as an economic consultant (later director) for the US Chamber of Commerce.  He continued with them until his retirement as chief economist in the 1960’s.  He died in Fairfax county, Virginia in 1976 at the age of seventy-six.

Wilson E. Schmidt.  His only son Wilson was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1927 and moved with his parents to Minnesota and then to Virginia as a teenager.  He attended the University of Maryland, received a master’s degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and a doctorate from the University of Virginia.

Before going to Virginia Tech in 1966, he served as chairman of the economics department at George Washington University.  Fifteen years later in 1981, he was an economics professor at Virginia Tech whom President Reagan nominated for the World Bank.

Tragically he was not able to take up that position.  He got caught up in a weekend fire at the Cosmos Club in Washington DC.  Rushed to George Washington University Hospital in a critical condition from smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning, he died there soon afterwards from a cardiac arrest.  He was fifty-four years old.

Maternal Butt Parker

Eric’s mother Eleanor Butt Parker, born in 1928, had American heritage from her Southern ancestors.  Her parents James Fletcher Parker and Hartley Adelia Butt had married in North Carolina in 1924.

James, born in 1896, was a private in the US Army during World War One.  He had Parker ancestors in Bladen county, North Carolina going back to the early 1800’s.  His wife Hartley’s ancestry can be traced back further – to John Butt born in Virginia around 1750.

The Butt Line.  John Butt Sr. migrated south through the Carolinas to Georgia after the Revolutionary War and died in White county in 1828.

Three of John’s grandsons – Thomas, William and James – fought on the Confederate side in the Civil War.  A younger grandson Virgil, born in 1855, was not old enough to enlist.  He attended Princeton University (where he was friends with future President Woodrow Wilson), Emory Medical School, and became a doctor.

Dr. Virgil Butt developed as something of a cult figure in Marion county, Georgia.  Perry Dean Young told the story in Hanged by a Dream of the murder of Peggy Effler.  Dr. Butt was the major factor in determining that she had been beaten to death by her husband Steve Effler. His examination and testimony at the trial resulted in Effler’s conviction and hanging in Marion in 1882.

Virgil and his wife Dollie lived in Marion, Georgia.  Their daughter Hartley Adelia Butt, the youngest of their seven children, was born in 1894.

Virgil and Dollie must have divorced the following year as Virgil remarried in 1896.  Dollie remained in Marion for a while.  She then took their children with her (save for her eldest son Virgil who remained with his father) and returned to her hometown of Pleasant Gardens in North Carolina .  She died there in 1907.

Virgil meanwhile moved to Bakersfield in Marion county and fathered another nine children with his second wife Gertrude.  He lived on there until his death in 1932.  There is a stained glass in Bakersville Methodist Church dedicated to him and Gertrude.

Butt and Parker.  Dollie’s daughter Hartley Adelia Butt married James Fletcher Parker in North Carolina in 1924.

The family later moved north to Hyattsville on the outskirts of Washington DC.  Interestingly both of their children – James and Eleanor – took master’s degrees in psychology from the University of Maryland.  That was where Eleanor met her future husband Wilson Schmidt.  James would later write books about space physiology and medicine.

Eric Schmidt’s Family Tree

• France/Germany

• John D. Schmidt from Oxford, Ontario m. Barbara Wilhelm (1865-1959) in Perth, Ontario in 1893
• – Edward Schmidt (1894-1973) m. Hilda Wilker
• – Ella Schmidt (1897-1973)
• – Emerson Schmidt (1899-1976)
• – William Schmidt (1901-1955) m. Hortense Evans

• Dr. Emerson Peter Schmidt from Tavistock in Oxford, Ontario m. Gertrude Willson from Detroit (1898-1967) in Detroit in 1926 and moved to Wisconsin and Minnesota, later divorced; rem. Ada Eishelman from Virginia (1901-1982) in Virginia in the 1940’s.  Gertrude rem. Fred Boening in Minnesota.
• – Wilson Schmidt (1927-1981), with Gertrude

• Wilson Emerson Schmidt from Madison, Wisconsin grew up in Virginia and m. Eleanor Butt Parker from Wayne, North Carolina ( b. 1928) in Blacksburg, Virginia in 1950
• – Eric Schmidt (b. 1955)
• – Carl Schmidt (b. 1958), Virginia lawyer
• – Edward Schmidt (b. 1960)

• Eric Emerson Schmidt from Fairfax, Virginia m. Wendy Boyle from New Jersey (b. 1955) in Short Hills, New Jersey in 1980 and moved to California
• – Sophie Schmidt (b. 1987), media publisher
• – Alison Schmidt (died in 2017)