Oct 28, 9:30 am: VMI and Edward Steinmueller

I presented the Edward Steinmueller project to VMI through museum director Keith Gibson on April 28, 2025, six months ago.

This is to follow up on the status.

This warrants becoming a significant VMI project worthy of:
- Research of newspaper and internal VMI records about his 14 years at VMI and the local community as a German language professor, VMI band leader and local music teacher of violin, guitar, banjo, and “all kinds of brass instruments”
- Research of his military records
- Repair of the current gravestone
- Acquisition of a new Veterans Administration headstone for this veteran who served with the 7th US Cavalry 1867 - 1872
- Publication of all the above within VMI and beyond in at least local media
- Some form of VMI ceremony, lecture and perhaps concert by the VMI band

Information about Edward Steinmueller from Find A Grave
Private Edward Steinmueller
Birth: 1849 Death: 31 March 1903 - age 54
Burial Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery Hopkins section, plot 587/589
Edward was a German language professor and a member of the Virginia Military Institute Band when he died. He was first buried in a small cemetery on the VMI campus where the Marshall Museum now stands. The VMI Cemetery was closed in 1912. He and 8 others were moved to Sections 587 and 589 of the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Cemetery in the city of Lexington.

Edward was born in Hanover, Germany, the second son of Phillip and Whillimena Steinmller. He had a brother, Stephen, who was a professor and two sisters, Mary and Charlotte. Edward immigrated at the age of 19 to the US through Baltimore, Maryland with his brother, who stayed in Baltimore to teach. Edward on the other hand almost immediately enlisted in the United States Army in Baltimore on 8 Jan 1867. His Army enlistment record shows that he was sworn in by Captain Howland. His occupation is listed as a farmer. The official description of Edward shows that he had 8 inches blue eyes, brown hair, a light complexion and was 5 feet tall.

His enlistment assignment was to the newly formed 7th US Cavalry for a term of 5 years. Under his Commanding officer, Captain A. Baudet, he served in the unsettled western US out of Fort Riley, Kansas. During his enlistment, his tour of duty out west overlapped with that of George Armstrong Custer, who had just been made Lieutenant Colonel of the newly formed unit. During part of Edward's 5 year enlistment, Buffalo Bill Cody operated in some of the same areas as a civilian scout for the 3rd US Cavalry, also out of Fort Riley. Family lore maintains that Edward knew both of these men, but given Edward's status as a Private, it is probably unlikely that he associated directly with either of them. Edward Steinmuller completed his term of enlistment on 8 Jan 1872 in the grade of Private and was mustered out in Elizabethtown, Kentucky on an Army post that is now known as Fort Knox. A 1902 pension record shows that he had been assigned to Company F (Band) and was an invalid drawing a pension. This could mean that he was injured or wounded during his Army service.

For the next 17 years, he was a teacher of German and music at Cecilian College in the small town of Cecelia, Kentucky, an early, now defunct Roman Catholic learning institution in Hardin County. While a teacher there, he married Lusann Garvin of Elizabethtown, Kentucky.
In 1889, Edward was excepted and transferred to the Virginia Military Institute, where he became a member of the Virginia Militia, taught German to Cadets and played in the VMI band for the next 14 years until his death at the age of 54.