He was born in the rural hamlet Kaldewei, part of the village of Benninghausen, Prussia, today suburbanized into Lippstadt, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany.

After his school education he started to work as a teacher in Lippstadt and publicized radical writings in pre-revolutionary Prussia until 1847.

In 1847 he decided to emigrate to the United States and boarded the ship Itzstein & Welcker sailing from Bremen on October 24, 1847, and arrived in New Orleans on January 6, 1848.

His first employment was as deckhand on a Mississippi steamboat, later he became a teacher in a Jesuit school in St. Louis and studied law.

During the civil war he served as Commissary General of Subsistence for the State of New York troops, appointed in 1863.