Nicholas (Nicholaus) Graesser was born on 18 June 1828 in Mandel, Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland-Pfalz, Germany (then Prussia).^[1] His parents were Johann Phillip Grässer, a linen weaver, and Anna Catharina Hoch. He had two brothers, Jacob (b. 1824) (my GG grandfather) and Johannes (b. 1826), and a sister, Catharina (b. 1821). In 1840, when Nicholas was 12, most of the family emigrated to the United States, arriving at New Orleans on 10 July. The passenger list for the ship Marengo, from Le Havre, lists “Phil. Grayser” and three children, Catharina, Jacob and Nicholas. The absence of mother Anna and brother Johannes suggests that they had died prior to the journey.

Introduction

This is a summary of factual information, plus some questions and conjectures, about the Graessers who lived in southeastern Iowa in the second half of the 19^th century. My father, Alfred Graesser, obtained Civil War records for Jacob and Elizabeth Graesser in the 1980’s. He also acquired historical summaries from his mother Minnie. Around this time, Helga Beck Pennington wrote Pioneers: Hartsocks and Graessers, which offered a more comprehensive, but highly imaginative, account of the family history. It was Louise Graesser Travers who really put this historical research on a sound, documented basis in the 1990’s. Off and on over the past twenty years I have worked with Louise and others in the family to fill in the gaps and bring the history forward. Family history is always a work in progress, but in anticipation of a visit to the cradle of the story, I have tried to bring together the main contours as I now understand them: the people, events, dates, places and context.