Gustavus Sessinghaus

Gustavus Sessinghaus (November 8, 1838 – November 16, 1887) was a German-born American miller, local official, and Republican politician who briefly served as a U.S. Representative from the State of Missouri. His public career reflected both the prominence of the German American community in nineteenth-century St. Louis and the contested nature of post–Civil War politics in Missouri.

Sessinghaus was born on November 8, 1838, in Köln (Cologne), in the present-day state of North Rhine-Westphalia, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia. He pursued preparatory studies in Germany, receiving the basic education that enabled him to enter commercial life. Like many of his countrymen in the mid-nineteenth century, he chose to emigrate, leaving a politically and economically changing Prussia for the United States. He settled in St. Louis, Missouri, a rapidly growing river city whose population included a large and influential German-speaking community that shaped its cultural, economic, and political life.

Upon his arrival in St. Louis, Sessinghaus entered the milling business, a significant industry in the city given its strategic location on the Mississippi River and its role as a commercial hub for the surrounding agricultural region. He established himself as a miller and businessman, a vocation he would maintain throughout his life. His integration into the German American community and his business activities provided the foundation for his later involvement in public affairs and Republican Party politics.

During the American Civil War, Sessinghaus served in the Union cause as a private in Company A, Fifth Regiment, United States Reserve Corps, Missouri Volunteer Infantry. The Reserve Corps units in Missouri were composed largely of local Unionist citizens, including many German Americans in St. Louis who strongly opposed secession. His service in this regiment placed him among those who defended federal authority in a border state marked by internal conflict and guerrilla warfare, and it aligned him with the Unionist and later Republican political currents that dominated Missouri’s urban centers after the war.

In the postwar years, Sessinghaus became active in civic and educational affairs as a member of the Republican Party. He was elected to the St. Louis School Board, on which he served from 1878 to 1880. In that capacity he participated in the administration and oversight of the city’s public schools at a time when St. Louis was expanding its educational system to meet the needs of a growing and increasingly diverse urban population. His school board service helped establish his reputation as a public-spirited citizen and provided him with experience in local governance.

Sessinghaus sought national office in the 1880 congressional election as the Republican candidate from Missouri’s third district, a district that included parts of St. Louis and reflected the city’s mix of native-born and immigrant voters. In that election he was initially defeated by the Democratic candidate, Richard Graham Frost. Contending that the result was improper, Sessinghaus filed a formal contest of the election. The dispute proceeded through the established congressional process for contested elections, and the matter remained unresolved for most of the term of the Forty-seventh Congress.

On March 2, 1883, the penultimate day of the legislative period, the House of Representatives decided the contest in Sessinghaus’s favor, unseating Frost and awarding the seat to him. As a result, he was sworn in and served as a Representative from Missouri for only two days, from March 2 to March 3, 1883, at the close of the Forty-seventh Congress. His tenure is among the briefest in congressional history and afforded him little opportunity to influence legislation or committee work. He was an unsuccessful candidate for reelection to the Forty-eighth Congress, and his short service in the House remained a notable example of the sometimes protracted and uncertain resolution of nineteenth-century election contests.

After leaving the U.S. House of Representatives, Sessinghaus returned to his milling business in St. Louis and resumed private life. He continued to be identified with the city’s German American community and with the Republican Party, though he did not again hold major public office. He died in St. Louis, Missouri, on November 16, 1887. Gustavus Sessinghaus was interred at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, a burial ground that contains the graves of many of the city’s prominent political, business, and civic leaders of the nineteenth century.