My Genealogy Hound

A. P. Nixdorf, M. D., postmaster and druggist at Pleasant Farm, Mo., was born in Breslau, Prussia, January 14, 1832, and is a son of Anton F. and Caroline Finke, who were also natives of Prussia. The father served twenty-seven years in the army, and participated in the wars against Napoleon Bonaparte, and upon his resignation obtained a position as one of the university officials at Breslau. A. P. Nixdorf, our subject, after receiving private instruction at home, in the elementary schools and at Dr. Rantour’s Academy, entered a gymnasium, and upon the completion of his studies there became a student of medicine and surgery at the university. Sometime after, a young American, William Sedgwick, who attended a law course at the same university, and who in later years practiced his profession at St. Louis, Mo., and who was killed during the Civil War (being a major in the Federal army at the battle of Antietam), became intimately acquainted with him, and advised him to visit America. Upon his arrival in this country he located first in Lenox, Mass., where he took a position as professor of the German language in the Sedgwick Female College, and occupied his spare time by reading medicine under Dr. Worthington, a graduate of Pittsfield (Mass.) Medical College. After a stay there of one and a half years he came west to St. Louis, Mo., and with a view of entering the medical college there and possessing himself with the means of accomplishing that object, he took employment in the wholesale dry goods firm of Crow, McCreary & Co., as shipping clerk, at a good salary. He spent his evenings at the Mercantile Library Association, of which he had become a member, and read medicine assiduously until eighteen months thereafter, when he entered the St. Louis Medical College, graduating from that in the class of 1855-56. After practicing in St. Louis for some time he came to Miller County, Mo., where he purchased land, practiced his profession, and where he still remains. He conducted the post-mortem examination in the noted Jack Willson case, where, after the intestines had been removed, the body was filled with salt, sewed up and placed in the coffin, which was then deposited in a small cave high above the entrance to the famous Willson Cave and securely walled up (as elsewhere mentioned). During the war he enlisted as surgeon in the Home Guards, and became afterward surgeon of the Miller and Camden County Rangers, commanded by Capt. John Salsman. He has been postmaster at Tuscumbia and Pleasant Farm for the past twenty-four years, and in his political views is a Republican. In 1856 he married Miss Wilhelmina A. C. Moehle, who was born in Breslau, Prussia, in 1838, and by her became the father of fourteen children, twelve living: Perry T., Camilla A. (Patterson), Franz Siegel, Jane C. (Rhoades), Minna A., Bismark Otto, Cecilia, Anton Paul, Pauline, William Carroll, Nancy A. and Victor Emanuel. Oscar Louis and Robert August are dead.