Right as the Civil War was coming to an end, a boy was being born in Altenburg by the name of Traugott Ernst Heinrich Schuessler. He was born on this day, May 28th in 1864. He was baptized at Trinity Lutheran Church on June 8th. He may have been baptized by Rev. J.F. Koestering who accepted a call to Trinity in the spring of 1864.
When he was 24 years old, he married Rev. Koestering’s daughter, Magdalena, in 1887. She was two years younger than Ernst, so the two must have attended many years together at Ttinity’s school. Ernst went on to become a Lutheran pastor too. Whether he was influenced in his decision to become a pastor by his father-in-law is up for debate.
Rev. Schuessler was a pastor at Christ Lutheran Church in St. Louis which was located on Caroline Street. It was while Pastor Schuessler and Magdalena were living in the parsonage there that a very interesting story took place which involved the death of Rev.Koestering, but that is a blog post for another day.
Both Ernst and Magdalena are buried in the New Bethlehem Cemetery.
Another story we posted about one of Rev. Koestering’s daughters was Your Pastor for a Father-in-Law.
We might also suggest that you use the search function on this page to see if we have done a story on anybody in your family. A search today on the name Schuessler would lead you to several posts from the past.
Warren, I recently located a couple of documents that may shed a little more light on the Rev. Koestering and Rev. Ernst Schuessler relationship prior to Ernst’s wedding to his daughter. Ernst’s father, Carl “Gottlob” Schuessler died in October of 1879. I don’t know the reason but Rev. Koestering became the Curator of the estate of Ernst on 15 Aug 1882. The curatorship was ended on 10 Jan 1886 when Ernst received his $29 from his fathers estate. The latter document was notarized in Sangamon County, Illinois. I assume that Ernst was enrolled at the practical seminary in Springfield at this time. This information comes from the Perry County Probate Records – Case # 997.
Thank you for this post. It has helped me to correct a misconception in my database.