The Miesslers

The direct descent

Four documented generations from the emigrant to the airman, then two living ones. Every entry below is read off a memorial, a stone, or a congregational record.

The whole tree

Every documented descendant of Carl Gottlob Miessler, with the direct line picked out in brass. Scroll it sideways — the family got wide before it got long.

Branches not yet joined to the trunk

There are 154 Miessler memorials on record in the United States and the four clusters below are real families whose link to Carl Gottlob is not proven. Given how rare the surname is they are almost certainly relatives; “almost certainly” is not a documented connection.unproven

Carl Gottlob Miesslerdocumented

The emigrant

The founder of the American line. His gravestone stands in a German Lutheran cemetery in west-central Missouri, and his name appears as father on his son Friedrich Theodore's memorial — which is what ties this whole family together.

His wife was Caroline Augusta Berger, and she died in 1856 in Germany. She never made the crossing. Whatever brought this family to Missouri, she was not part of the arrival.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

His asserted birthplace, Alt Seidenberg in Upper Lusatia, rests on a single user-contributed genealogy entry and no document. It is not stated here as fact.

One record spells him Carl Meissler, with a single s — ordinary for a family whose name moved between Miessler, Meissler, Miesler and Mießler depending on which clerk was holding the pen.

Rev Friedrich Theodore Miesslerdocumented

Pastor, St. Paul's Lutheran, Des Peres — 1875 to 1921

Forty-six years in one pulpit. He took the call at St. Paul's in Des Peres in 1875 and retired from it in 1921, and his stone reads PASTOR OF ST. PAUL CHURCH / I KNOW THAT MY REDEEMER LIVES.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

He buried three wives. Henriette Rohlfing, married 1866, died 1867. Albertine Bertram, married 1869, died 1882. Maria Fischer, married 1884, died 1886. He married Anna Maria Mathilde Buenger in 1888, and she outlived him by a year.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

He had a twin. Rev Bruno Ernst Miessler, born the same day, spent thirty-two years as pastor at Carlinville, Illinois. Two brothers born together, both ordained, both dying in the same decade after long single-parish careers.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

He is the hinge of this record. His memorial names his father, his mother and his brother, and every generation above and below hangs off it.

Rev William Richard Miesslerdocumented

Pastor, St Peter Lutheran, Deshler, Nebraska — to the end of 1942

Born in the parsonage town where his father preached for nearly half a century, and ordained into the same synod.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

The Deshler congregation's own history names him in its pastoral succession: Wm. R. Miessler, until the end of 1942. He is independently confirmed by his son Wilfred's 1942 draft card, which lists the contact person as Reverend William R. Miessler, Deshler, Nebraska — two unrelated record classes agreeing.

He was widowed in 1933, when Clara Maria Buss died at thirty-seven, leaving him with two boys. He married Martha Kohrs the following year.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

On the present evidence he is the last ordained man in the direct line.<span class="tag med">probable</span>

Richard Norbert Miesslerdocumented

Sergeant, US Army Air Forces — ground crew, 303rd Bomb Group

A pastor's son who went to war instead of seminary. His stone reads SGT USAAF / WORLD WAR II.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

He was a cook. The family account is specific on this point, and it matters, because it is easy to read bomb group and assume aircrew. A heavy bomb group ran to a couple of thousand men and only a few hundred of them ever flew. The rest — cooks, mechanics, armourers, clerks — are the reason the ones who flew could.<span class="tag med">family account</span>

His memorial places him with the 303rd Bomb Group at Molesworth, England. Roughly 8,900 men passed through that group during the war and close to 900 were killed. He was not one of the men in the aircraft.<span class="tag med">probable</span>

He came home, married Althea Marie Finke, and lived to eighty-nine in California's Central Valley. She died in 2012 and is buried in the same plot.<span class="tag high">documented</span>

He carries no clerical title on any record found so far. If the family tradition of an unbroken pastoral line is to hold, it holds up to his father and not to him.

Generations 5 and 6

Bill Miessler, son of Richard Norbert, is the first man in four generations to stand outside the Missouri Synod tradition entirely. His son Daniel was born in 1973 in San Leandro, California. Living people are named here and nothing more — no dates, no places, no detail.

The collateral pastors

The pastoral tradition is real; it just isn't a single line. Alongside the direct descent there is a dense cluster of ordained Miesslers in the same synod and often the same decades.