This was written by Charles Pressler, son of the original Karl Pressler.
Carl Wilhelm Pressler, 1823 to 8, 1907. Karl Pressler Surveyor and cartographer.
Was born on March 26th, 1823 in CKNTHURINGIA Prussia. Upon graduation from the LUTHERGYMNASIUM in EISLEBEN. On April first 1841, he entered a Surveyors school at WEISSENSEE. He passed the surveyor’s examination in 1844 when he entered the Prussian State Service. Dissatisfied. With politics and religious conditions, he left Prussia in 1845 as a member of the Aldelzervine and landed in Galveston, Texas about April first 1846. His name gradually became Anglicized to Charles William. He moved to Austin and was employed by Jacob D Cordova, who made him the head of surveying expeditions in 1846 and 1847. Pressler checked the details of Cordova’s first map of Texas, issued in 1849. He surveyed in Guadalupe County in March 1848 and that summer returned to Germany. On June 18th, 1849, he married Clara Joanna DOERK in EISEPEN. They returned to Texas, where Pressler purchased a farm near New Ulm in Austin County after. Moving to Austin in December 1850, he became a draftsman in the General Land Office. Except for short periods of service, elsewhere, served until his retirement on January 16th, 1899.
In 1851, Pressler and. VOELKER issued a map of Texas that was published in Germany and appeared in Ross’s der NORDAMERIKANISCH. FRISTAAT TX. This was a descriptive book on Texas for the use of immigrants. Pressler was one of the incorporators of the German Free School Association in Austin in 1856.
Pressler worked for an engineering department of the Confederacy before receiving his captaincy on June 30th, 1864 in the Texas Infantry. During the summer of 1867 he was city engineer for Galveston and the same year his 1858 map of Texas, revised in 1862, was again revised and issued as the Travelers Map of the state of Texas. In 1870, he was employed by the United States Commissioner Service, for which he compiled a map showing a new route from Austin to Fort Yuma to Arizona. From June 26 to October 22nd, 1869, he accompanied Captain LC Overman to the United States Engineering Corpse on an expedition to survey and inspect Forts Richardson, Griffin, Concho, Mccavitt, Clark, Duncan and Macintosh. In 1879, Pressler and Langerman issued a map of Texas in three sizes, and in 1889, Pressler prepared a map of Texas that was never published. He died in 1907 in Austin and was buried in Oakwood Cemetery and survived by his wife and four children.
