The short version
A German Lutheran family left Silesia in the middle of the nineteenth century and put down in west-central Missouri. For three generations the men went into the same pulpit tradition. Then two brothers from a Nebraska parsonage went to England with the Eighth Air Force — one to fly, one to cook — and only one of them came home.
This record was assembled from primary sources rather than from family memory, and in two places the two disagree. Where they do, both are on the page.
The line, at a glance
Carl Gottlob Miesslerdocumented
The emigrant
Rev Friedrich Theodore Miesslerdocumented
Pastor, St. Paul's Lutheran, Des Peres — 1875 to 1921
Rev William Richard Miesslerdocumented
Pastor, St Peter Lutheran, Deshler, Nebraska — to the end of 1942
Richard Norbert Miesslerdocumented
Sergeant, US Army Air Forces — ground crew, 303rd Bomb Group
Bill Miessler
The first in four generations to leave the tradition entirely.
Daniel Miessler
Writer and security practitioner. California.
The correction that matters
The family has long told a story about coming to America as missionaries to the Chippewa in 1851. That mission was real and a Miessler ran it — but he was not a direct ancestor. Ernst Gustav Hermann Miessler is named on his brother's gravestone as exactly that: a brother. He is a great-great-great-granduncle of the present generation, not the trunk of the tree. The direct line runs through the other son, who stayed in Missouri and preached in one church for forty-six years.documented
What's here
The line sets out all six generations with dates and sources. Origins covers the European end — which is less settled than it looks. The name deals with the etymology, honestly labelled, because the good sources are behind a wall. The mission covers the missionary granduncle and the Ojibwe people whose dispossession made his work possible. The airmen is about the two brothers. Open questions is the part most family sites leave out.