If This House Could Talk -- Blog post #20
Charles Koester who built me emigrated to America in 1852. Like many immigrants, he and his family, having lost their home and livelihood, sought new opportunities.
Charles was born in 1841 at Messinghof in Hesse-Cassel. He was one of eight children of Carl Daniel Koester and Ludowine Muth Koester. Only he, his older brother Philip, and his sister Jane lived to adulthood.
Messinghof was a brass and copper factory founded in 1679 by Landgrave Karl, a noble in the Holy Roman Empire. Charles’ father managed the inn and restaurant at the Messinghof factory village. (Messinghof is in a suburb of today’s Kassel, Germany.) It was state-owned and operated under the ruler Elector Friedrich Wilhelm when Charles lived there.
The late 1840s were a period of political upheaval and economic stagnation in Hesse-Cassel shaped by the aftermath of the 1848 revolutions and Elector Friedrich Wilhelm’s resistance to liberal reforms.
Five decades later Charles gave me a glimpse into those times. He wrote, “My birthplace in a suburb to Hesse Cassel, a fine and charming estate, Messinghoff that was lost during the revolutionary period of 1848 and debt." On the occasion of his son Charley’s 13th birthday, he remembered that he and his parents had little left from the wreck of their beautiful home near Hesse-Cassel. “The war of 1848 and the subsequent turbulent times ate up the substance of the people, a poor country no trade of any paying business; those who could got away, poorly informed as to where we could do better.”
Without family ties—older brother Philip was in Australia, and they were not close to their Koester relatives— and with things going south at Messinghof and Hesse-Cassel in disarray economically and politically, there was little reason to stay.
Like many who emigrate, the Koester's had relatives already in America. In Charles’ case, they were his mother’s parents and two of her brothers. Charles’ Grandparents Muth and his uncle Charles Muth lived in the Cincinnati, Ohio area.
On November 17, 1851, Charles, age 10, his sister Jane, age 14, and their parents Carl Daniel and Ludowine left for America from Bremerhaven on the ship Hudson. They arrived in New York City in mid-January 1852. They took the train to Cincinnati to meet up with their Muth relatives. One of Charles’ great granddaughters recently traveled to Kassel, Germany, and visited what remains of the Messinghof brass factory (pictured above). It was restored in 2016 to be a meeting and events space.
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