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| Casper Meisner |
Casper Meisner was born on March 6, 1812, in the Kingdom of Bavaria, into a Europe still unsettled by war, shifting borders, and the slow collapse of old certainties. His lifetime would span revolutions, oceans, continents, and civil wars, but it began in a small rural world where tradition shaped every horizon.
The Meisner family lived in a region still shaped by the tremors of the Napoleonic Wars. Bavaria had been drawn into France's orbit early in the century, only to reverse course in 1813 when it cast its lot with Austria and the coalition forces. By the time of Casper's birth, Bavaria was slowly and often uneasily transitioning into a modern constitutional monarchy.
The Bavaria of Casper's youth was overwhelmingly rural. Small villages, baroque churches, and the rhythmic cycle of agricultural life defined the lives of ordinary families. Most people lived close to the land, tied to small farms or trades that offered little upward mobility. Life was stable, but opportunity was inherited rather than earned, and for many families the future promised little beyond the repetition of the past. Social class determined opportunity, and for many families, the future promised only more of the same: hard work, modest means, and limited prospects.
By the early 1840s, emigration had begun to rise, especially among German families seeking stability or freedom from political and economic constraints. In the spring of 1848, as revolution swept Europe, Casper joined the great tide of hopeful emigrants heading to America.
In the spring of 1848, as revolution swept across Europe, Casper made a decision that would separate him from the only world he had ever known. At thirty-six years old, with a wife and three young children, he boarded a ship bound for America, knowing that he might never return, but believing that remaining meant accepting limits he could no longer endure.
Traveling to America was not easy in 1848. Casper, Kunigunda, and their children likely traveled more than 500 miles to Amsterdam to board a ship bound for New York. Another common route carried emigrants from Amsterdam to Liverpool, England, before crossing the Atlantic to New York.
Ahead lay weeks at sea, a new language, a new nation, and the beginning of a life that would reshape his family's future for generations.
After weeks at sea, Casper Meisner stepped onto American soil in 1848, arriving in a nation rushing headlong into expansion, industry, and political change. From New York City, the Meisners likely boarded a Hudson River steamboat to Albany, the standard northbound route for many immigrant families in the 1840s. From Albany, a ferry would have carried them across the Hudson to the growing industrial city of Troy, their first American home.
Once settled in Troy, the Meisners found themselves in a city that was rapidly expanding in the late 1840s. Its ironworks supplied the railroads, its factories produced goods shipped across the nation, and its brick streets echoed with the movement of carts, horses, and factory workers.
While New York City surged toward a population of 500,000, Troy remained a much smaller city of roughly 30,000 -- large enough to offer opportunity but intimate enough for immigrant families like the Meisners to join supportive neighborhood networks.
German immigration to the United States surged during these years. In 1850 alone, Germans were among the largest immigrant groups in the country, and Troy was one of many cities where they settled in close-knit enclaves. These German churches, shops, and social halls created a cultural anchor that helped newcomers like Casper adapt to American life while still maintaining ties to their heritage.
The 1850 U.S. Census records the Meisners living in Troy Ward 2, a dense working-class neighborhood near the industrial waterfront. Casper's occupation is listed as junk store worker, a common trade among immigrants who bought and resold scrap metal, tools, hardware, and factory remnants.
For a time, life stabilized. The family worked, saved, and adapted to the rhythms of Troy's busy streets as they moved toward economic security in their new country. Anna Maria, now known as Mary, was 13; John was 9; and George was 7.
Everything changed on August 25, 1854. Just after midday, a fire broke out in a steam planing mill at the corner of Division and Front Street, squarely within Troy's Ward 2 -- the same district where the Meisner family had lived since at least 1850. The blaze tore across several blocks, destroying lumber yards, machine shops, warehouses, and the Hudson River Railroad depot itself.
Faced with ruined opportunities and an uncertain future, Casper and his wife, Kunigunda, decided to leave New York. Within months of the fire, they joined the growing tide of families pushing into America's interior in search of stability and fresh beginnings. By 1855, the Meisners had resettled in the frontier community of Toledo, Iowa, but the journey to Iowa would not be easy.
The journey from Troy to Toledo stretched more than a thousand miles and required a combination of riverboats, canal travel, steamships, early rail lines, and wagon roads. In the spring of 1855, such a trip often took weeks. From Albany, the Meisners would have traveled the Erie Canal to Buffalo, crossed the Great Lakes by steamship to Chicago, and then pushed westward by rail and wagon across the newly settled prairie. It was a demanding journey marked by crowded boats, unpredictable weather, and rough roads, but Casper and Kunigunda pressed onward into the interior of the country, arriving in Toledo by the end of 1855.
By the time they reached Tama County, the Meisners had crossed the length of New York, followed the Great Lakes, and pushed deep into the prairie. In 1855, Toledo was only a year or two old, a small settlement carved from open land, offering the chance to begin again. For Casper, Kunigunda, and their three children, the thousand-mile journey was both an escape from loss and a step toward stability.
When Casper and Kunigunda Meisner left Troy, New York, in the wake of the devastating 1854 fire, they carried little more than their three children, their faith, and the resilience that had defined their journey since Bavaria. Their destination was Tama County, Iowa, a land promised to be fertile, spacious, and full of opportunity, but also a frontier that would demand everything of them.
In 1855, Iowa was a land in transition, having only become a state in December 1846. Much of eastern Iowa had been opened to white settlement only after the 1833 Black Hawk Purchase. This agreement, part of a series of U.S. treaties that year, transferred Native lands throughout the region and forced several tribes westward. By the time the Meisners arrived in 1855, the prairie was still in its first generation of non-Native settlement.
Early German settlers in the region described the prairie as both beautiful and brutal, a place that rewarded determination but punished inexperience. Winters could trap families indoors for weeks, and summer storms could be harsh. Like thousands of immigrant families of that era, the Meisners had to build their lives from the ground up.
In a biographical sketch of Casper's son George, the hardships the Meisner family endured were described:
"There, the earlier years of the subject of this sketch were spent, and it is no disparagement to the management of his father nor any discredit to Mr. Meisner himself to say that those years witnessed a series of long, hard struggles in the Meisner household. Those struggles did not consist alone in the difficult undertaking of making a start in a comparatively new country unsurrounded by the helps and conveniences found in the East; there were struggles, oftentimes, for bread and butter, with nothing with which to keep "the wolf from the door" save the willing hands and stout hearts of father, mother and children...There was no idling around the Meisner homestead. There was no wasting either of energy or material. Everything was turned to account. Everything was made to pay. Such industry and management must, of necessity, win. The Meisners could not always remain in straightened circumstances. Each year brought an improvement in their worldly affairs, and as the children grew up and added their aid to that of their parents the progress became more rapid."
This discipline laid the foundation for their eventual prosperity.
Kunigunda's role was indispensable to the family's success. The biographical sketch of George later remembered her as:
Kunigunda's role was indispensable to the family's success. The biographical sketch of George later remembered her as:
"a good type of her race and sex, being an industrious, frugal housewife and passionately fond of her children."
Her careful management of the home, provisions, and children kept the family stable through seasons when drought, sickness, or crop failure might have ended their Iowa dream.
On May 25, 1858, Casper and Kunigunda's eldest daughter, Mary Meisner, married Frederick Shafer, a fellow German immigrant who had settled in Iowa around the same time.
This marriage marked a significant milestone for the Meisner family.
Frederick was hardworking and civic-minded. He would later become a Civil War soldier, a respected farmer, and a pillar of the Toledo community. Their marriage expanded the Meisners' support network and firmly rooted the family in Tama County's German settlements.
Mary's marriage symbolized stability, a sign that, despite hardship, the Meisners were not just surviving the Iowa frontier but building lasting connections.
By 1860, the transformation was remarkable.
According to the U.S. Census that year, Casper's farm was valued at $1,211, making it the highest-valued farm in the surrounding area. In addition, he owned $333 in personal estate. He was later listed in the Iowa Transcript newspaper as selling surplus potatoes to the county.
This was an astonishing accomplishment for a family that had arrived in America only twelve years earlier and in Iowa just five years before.
In just five years, the Meisners had transformed raw land into a thriving farmstead. They built a house, overcame frontier hardships, and achieved relative prosperity. The years of scarcity were finally giving way to stability.
But as the Meisners reached a new level of security, the United States was on the brink of Civil War.
The prairie was far removed from the political tensions of Washington and Charleston, yet those tensions would soon reach even the quiet farms of Tama County.
For Casper, now nearly fifty, the next chapter of his life would not be defined by farming alone. It would be defined by war instead, impacting his entire family.
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| Photo of Casper Meisner Undated tintype from circa 1860s found with other photos of the Meisner family. |
The election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency in November 1860 set off a chain of events that fundamentally altered American life. Secession conventions spread throughout the Southern states, and by early 1861, several had already declared themselves part of a new government. On April 12, 1861, Confederate batteries opened fire on Fort Sumter, marking the beginning of the war.
President Lincoln's subsequent call for volunteers resonated strongly in the Northern states, including Iowa, a young state with deep anti-slavery sentiment. Local communities quickly assembled companies of volunteers, and the German-speaking families of Tama County, many of whom had fled political turmoil in Europe, responded with particular resolve. Among the first to act were the men who organized locally as the Tama County Rifles, later mustered into federal service as Company C of the 10th Iowa Infantry.
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| From an Iowa Newspaper - July 1861 |
Casper, his son John, and his son-in-law Frederick Shafer all volunteered for Union service. John joined Company E of the 24th Iowa Infantry Regiment, and Frederick volunteered for Company E of the 28th Iowa Infantry Regiment. Only 20-year-old George, the youngest son, remained at home because an eye condition made him ineligible. His inability to serve proved an unexpected blessing for the family, as it left him to manage the farm. During the war years, George expanded and strengthened the family farm, eventually becoming one of the most prosperous farmers and landowners in the region.
Casper faced an uncommon barrier among volunteers: his age. At 49, he dramatically exceeded the typical enlistment profile. Determined to serve, he listed his age as 43 on official documents, reducing his actual age by six years. This was not unusual among older volunteers, yet it underscores Casper's sense of civic duty and personal resolve. On July 30, 1861, Casper volunteered for service, and on September 6, 1861, he formally mustered with Company C, 10th Iowa Infantry.
Company C was organized largely from the rural communities surrounding Toledo, including German, Irish, and American-born farmers, tradesmen, and laborers. The company reflected the character of Tama County itself: hardworking, self-made, and cohesive. Contemporary accounts describe the Rifles as a disciplined and reliable company whose members shared strong bonds formed through small-town familiarity and shared immigrant experiences.
The life of a soldier was not easy. Men of Casper's age were often looked to for practical judgment, moral grounding, and work ethic qualities valued in the long months of marching, drilling, and encampment.
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| The Tenth Iowa Regiment on the march, April 28, 1862 |
Over the next two years, Casper and Company C participated in a series of difficult engagements across the Mississippi Valley:
* Battle of Iuka (September 1862)
* Battle of Corinth (October 1862)
* Campaign into Mississippi (spring 1863)
* Battle of Port Gibson (May 1, 1863)
* Battle of Raymond (May 12, 1863)
* Battle of Champion Hill (May 16, 1863)
* Battle of Big Black River Bridge (May 17, 1863)
* Siege of Vicksburg (May-July 1863)
* Chattanooga Campaign (late 1863)
The Battle of Champion Hill, the decisive engagement in Grant's Vicksburg Campaign, was among the most intense battles Casper experienced. It is important to note that Casper's son, John, also fought bravely during this battle campaign. Knowingly fighting on the same battlefield as your son must have carried an emotional weight on Casper. During the battle, Casper suffered a slight wound to the forehead. His medical record listed his age as 45, though he was actually 51 at the time of the injury. The wound was not life-threatening, and Casper recovered and returned to the ranks, demonstrating the same resilience that had carried him from Bavaria to the American frontier.
On July 25, 1864, he was formally transferred to the Invalid Corps (later the Veteran Reserve Corps), a branch composed of soldiers assisting in vital support roles. On September 5, 1864, at the age of 52, he sustained an injury at Bird's Point in Missouri while constructing barracks when a log fell on his leg. It was a rough last year of the war for Casper.
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| Casper Meisner's discharge papers describe him as 5 feet 6 and a half inches tall, with a dark complexion and blue eyes. These details recorded at the end of his service offer a rare personal glimpse of the man who marched across the Mississippi Valley and survived some of the war's fiercest campaigns. |
When Casper returned to Tama County late in 1864, he found the farm thriving under George's capable management. In his father's absence, George had expanded the property to more than 400 acres, positioning himself as a rising figure in the community.
But Casper's long-awaited homecoming was overshadowed by tragedy.
On November 22, 1864, only weeks after his return, Casper's wife, Kunigunda, died. She had been his partner since Bavaria, the mother of his children, and the anchor of the family's early years in America. Her passing ended a marriage of more than thirty years and marked a turning point in Casper's life.
Kunigunda's death represented the conclusion of a significant phase in Casper’s life. She had accompanied him from Bavaria to America, raised their children through adversity, survived the 1854 Troy fire which resulted in substantial loss, and contributed to the establishment of their Iowa farm during years of frontier hardship. Her passing left Casper, at the age of 52, with a functioning farm and grown children, yet without the partner who had been instrumental in many aspects of his life.
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| Hayes Cemetery |
In January 1865, barely a month after burying his wife, Casper made a bold investment, purchasing a saloon in Toledo that included a small general store and boarding rooms across from the courthouse. It was a significant step for a man who had spent most of his life farming. By June, he had opened the general store to the public, managing a bustling corner of town life.
Managing a new business while adapting to life after Kunigunda's passing placed Casper in a season of significant personal and domestic transition. His household, once anchored by her presence, was now reshaped by the demands of commerce, community interaction, and the realities of postwar life.
It was within this unsettled period, marked by change, responsibility, and the recovery of a soldier, that Casper remarried a fellow German immigrant, 28-year-old Sophia Anna Steuder, on July 30, 1865.
It is unknown how Casper and Sophia's courtship unfolded or what the dynamics of their marriage were, but the union proved brief. What may have begun as a practical partnership or perhaps a moment of mutual love soon showed signs of strain, heightened by the pressures surrounding Casper's expanding business ventures.
The saloon and billiard hall that Casper had purchased in January was a gathering spot for travelers and a place of fellowship, music, and tradition for the German community. But for the increasingly temperance-minded press and civic leaders, saloons represented disorder, drunkenness, and moral decay.
A recent widower, newly remarried and shaped by the aftereffects of war, Casper faced the daily strain of operating a general store, a boarding house, and a saloon. The cumulative weight of these responsibilities likely strained the marriage in its earliest months.
By winter, the tensions could no longer be overlooked. On December 13, 1865, a notice appeared in the Iowa Transcript announcing Casper and Sophia's public separation, a bold and striking declaration in a small frontier town, revealing how sharply the division had widened in only a few months.
Casper's first months as a saloonkeeper unfolded during a period of shifting moral and civic standards in Iowa. Casper entered this business at a moment when some public attitudes were hardening, and his new venture quickly drew scrutiny.
On Christmas Eve, December 24, 1865, an altercation inside Casper's saloon brought him into the public eye in an unwelcome way. According to the Iowa Transcript, a group of drunken Irish patrons stormed in on several Black men playing billiards. A violent encounter followed; knives were drawn, and one man was stabbed multiple times before the sheriff intervened.
The incident reflected broader racial and immigrant tensions of the era, but the saloon's involvement placed Casper at the center of a controversy he had not sought.
In the weeks that followed, the papers reported the arrests and sentencing of the Irishmen. Though Casper was not charged with wrongdoing, the episode reinforced the growing local view that saloons were problematic institutions.
Casper was not alone in facing increased scrutiny. In February 1866, Judge Nathaniel M. Hubbard imposed heavy fines on multiple saloonkeepers, including Casper, for maintaining what the law termed "a nuisance" to the community. The penalties were steep, $500 and the threat of jail time, an unmistakable signal that civic authorities intended to curb saloon activity broadly, not selectively. This action was on the heels of the violent Christmas Eve stabbing at Casper's saloon.
The temperature of public opinion against drinking continued to rise deep into the next century. Newspaper editorials framed saloons as impediments to moral order, and local leaders demanded stricter enforcement. Casper's business became one of many caught in this temperance-driven campaign.
By September 1866, Casper attempted to divest himself of his Toledo property, which included his dwelling house, saloon with a billiard table, grocery room, butcher shop, and barn, advertising them, "For Sale Cheap." Despite the offer, no buyer emerged.
The public criticism continued. In March 1867, the Toledo Chronicle described his establishment as a disorderly house, language typical of temperance-era editorials aimed broadly at the profession. Other articles that year condemned multiple Toledo saloons in identical terms, underscoring that Casper was caught in the larger campaign rather than singled out.
During this same period, Casper also maintained business ties beyond Iowa. He appeared in the 1867 and 1868 editions of The Troy Directory in Troy, New York, listed as the proprietor of the Lager Beer Saloon at 92 Broadway Street. These listings suggest that he continued to manage or hold interests in an establishment in the city where he had lived before the war. By the end of 1869, he sold his Troy business to Conrad Derolf of Newtonville, New York, ending his remaining commercial presence in New York.
By the spring of 1869, Casper had ended his legal relationship with Sophia, and she remarried William Hirsch in 1870.
On July 5, 1869, he joined a parade of German immigrants marching through town, accompanied by music and the waving of a Star-Spangled Banner, in anticipation of an evening dance to be held at his own saloon. Casper himself carried the American flag, mounted on horseback, and swept up in what the newspaper described as patriotic ardor.
As the procession turned a corner near the Foster House, the horse became unruly, throwing Casper to the ground and dislocating his elbow. The Toledo Chronicle reported the incident with dry humor, concluding simply: Nothing serious, however.
The episode was part civic celebration, part comic mishap, and it offers a revealing counterpoint to the scrutiny surrounding Casper's saloon business. His saloon was not merely a target of temperance enforcement; it also served as a social and cultural gathering place for Toledo's German community, where old-world traditions and American identity converged.
Casper’s saloon business in Iowa brought him into the center of an unusual political dispute in 1870. The Toledo town council voted to grant him a free six-month saloon license. One council member, C. W. Hyatt, resigned in protest and published a long denunciation in the local paper.
Casper responded with characteristic sharpness and wit, signing his response:
“Shoo fly, don’t bodder me! — CASPER MEISNER”
As for his saloon in New York, by 1870, Casper must have sold his business interests in Troy because the Lager Beer Saloon was now listed in directories as owned by farmer Conrad Derolf of Newtonville, New York.
On March 11, 1871, Casper wed Anna "Annie" Tichy in Toledo, Iowa. She was recorded as living with him in the 1870 U.S. Census, a woman whose own life had already witnessed hardship and endurance. Their marriage offered Casper renewed companionship at a time when he was rebuilding his life. Annie brought two children of her own into the union, Joseph and Anna, expanding the Meisner household and giving Casper new responsibilities as both husband and stepfather in his later years.
Just weeks after their wedding, in April 1871, Casper and Annie headed west to Buffalo County, Nebraska, where Casper had purchased land the previous fall. This move marked the final migration of his life, a closing act in the long journey from Bavaria to New York, from New York to Iowa, and from Iowa to the open plains of Nebraska. Together, Casper and Annie built a hopeful new home on land north of the developing town of Shelton. Behind, Casper left behind his daughter, Mary, and son-in-law, Frederick, and his eldest son, John, and daughter-in-law, Esther, and multiple grandchildren.
In Nebraska, Casper first farmed alongside his son George before turning to the mercantile business in Shelton. Even in his sixties, he worked with the vigor that others often associated with him, building a reputation for industry, honesty, and good judgment. Casper was preparing to expand his business by opening a new store when his health began to fail.
On March 16, 1879, in the sixty-seventh year of his life, Casper Meisner passed away in his sleep. He was laid to rest at Shelton Cemetery, in the community he had helped settle, surrounded by land he had crossed an ocean and a continent to find.
His son John and daughter Mary later traveled to Nebraska to pay their respects to their father, an act that quietly marked the enduring bonds between the generations he left behind.
It can be said that Casper lived a memorable life, and his legacy endured through his children.
Casper's oldest son, John, returned from the war and married Esther McCurdy in November 1865. They had four children: Lettie Mary, Robert Casper, Laura Jane, and Gertrude Mae. John built a respected life for himself, running a successful farm and later serving as the Bank of Toledo president, and eventually serving on the board of directors, an achievement that reflected both his character and the opportunities that Casper's journey had made possible.
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Casper's youngest son, George, became one of the wealthiest and most respected landowners in Nebraska, a farmer, rancher, stockman, banker, and civic leader whose name once appeared on businesses throughout the region, including Meisner's Bank and Meisner's Opera House. Each year, George personally led a drive of livestock from the Mexican border to his vast holdings in the Platte Valley, a journey that spoke to both grit and ambition.
George married Rachel Fieldgrove, and together they had four daughters: Dora, Nora, Cora Agnes, and Lulu. Rachel passed away in 1889, just three years after Lulu's birth, and George later remarried Nellie Forsyth in 1895.
At the height of his success, George owned more than 9,000 acres of Nebraska farmland and served as the elected president of the City National Bank in Kearney, Nebraska. His sixteen-room mansion, once a symbol of his success, still stands today in Shelton, restored and added to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP).
In the before mentioned 1890 biographical
sketch of George Meisner, Casper is described:
"[Casper] was a man of indomitable energy, and a hard worker all his life. Having met with some financial reverses he knew the value of a dollar, and thus learned to manage his affairs with care and discretion. He was devotedly attached to his family, and it may be said that the latter part of his life he lived chiefly for them. He gave his children the best of counsel, and he enforced all his teachings with a good personal example in himself."
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| Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Shelton, Nebraska. Photo Credit: C. Frazier. |
List of surviving members of the Iowa 10th Infantry (Company C) recorded in 1866: Albert Stoddard, Thomas Martin, George H. Conant, T. Walter Jackson, William. H. Stoddard, Knight Dexter, Levi B. Nelson, Darson Chase, Jacob W. Jones, Frank W. Crosby, John B. Hancox, William J. Carson, Alfred Davis, John R. Leex, Vincent P. Gray, Joseph Kellogg, Angello Myers, Noah P. Stephenson, Ephraim A. Jeffreys, Carl L. Palmer, Charles. W. Woodward, William Watts, Jacob W. Applegate, William Applegate, Charles Bailey, Oscar Baldy, Thomas Bronnen, Charles Bunce, Eugene B. Bailey, Joseph Budka, Thomas Clem, John W.B. Cole, James Conner, Robert D. Crosby, Benjamin Dunbar, James Fairbanks, Abington J. Folsom, Thomas S. Free, George W. Guilford, Andrew Goodwin, Timothy Griffin, Alpheus B. Harmon, Solomon Hayworth, James P. Henry, Carlos J. Herrick, Peter Higgins, John Hillmon, Benjamin F. Howard, William T. Hiatt, Amos H. Kellogg, James H. Lorimer, Thomas Laughlin, Henry Levin, Cyrus Maholm, George McCall, George McChesney, Caspar Meisner, Marcus L. Myers, George Newport, Stephen D. Newton, Felix Omwake, Charles W. Peek, William W. Reed, Jacob Reinig, Melvin Rhodes, James H. Richardson, Austin M. Roberts, John C. Roase, John Sawyer, Joseph H. Smith, James Smith, Ephraim A. Southard, Edwin M. Stevens, Raswell N. Stevens, Frederick Tice, Aaron Tice, James Turner, Uriah Van Horn, George Van Riper, Samuel Walker, James Walton, William W. Yarham, James Young, Charles L. Bailey, Dwight B. Mason, Manuel B. Myers, Wesley Camp.
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