According to the Dictionary of American Family Names, “Misfeldt is a North German topographic name for someone who lived by a swampy area of open country, from a Middle Low German word for ‘swamp’ + velt ‘open country’.” We’ve interpreted it slightly different, believing ‘feldt’ to mean field, and thus “fertile fields” since farming has been a big part of our family’s heritage.
This website was started for that branch of the Misfeldt family that originally settled in the Jim Falls area of Wisconsin when Margaret and her husband, Ernest Friedrich Misfeldt, emigrated to the United States from Surendorf in the Schleswig-Holstein region of Germany in 1878 with their three oldest children, Christian, Henry, and Christina. They sailed from the port of Rendsburg that September, according to passenger lists. Ernst was born on February 26, 1849.
His father, according to public records, was Christian Detlef Missfeldt (born February 23, 1818, in Surendorf, Germany). Margaret’s maiden name was Lensch or Lentsch and her first name also shows up in various forms, including Margaretha. During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, considerable work has been done updating the family tree on Ancestry.