Theodore Gestefeld (1844-?) was born in Germany and died in an unknown location. He arrived in Boston, Massachusetts, from Hamburg, Germany, in the spring of 1867, traveling in steerage aboard the ship Eugenie. He married Ursula N. Gestefeld (b. Moore), a student of Mary Baker Eddy's, in Boston in 1868. By late 1873, he had left his family and moved to Buffalo, New York, to take up the editorship of the Buffalo Telegraph. He returned to his family in Boston a year later, and they all moved to Chicago, Illinois, in early 1877. Gestefeld became a naturalized citizen there in October 1877, and he took up journalism work, stringing for the Chicago Tribune and serving on the editorial board of the Staats Zeitung, a German-language paper serving the large German immigrant population in Chicago. He also became involved in Republican party politics. In April 1886, he left his family again and moved to Mexico to take up the editorship of The Two Republics. He had a public affair there with the writer Yda Addis. Ursula filed for divorce from Gestefeld in February 1887. He returned to Chicago in June, having become a Christian Science teacher and associating himself with Emma Curtis Hopkins and her teachings. The divorce was finalized in June 1888, and eighteen days later he married Adella J. Gestefeld (b. Austin) in Illinois. For most of 1889, Gestefeld worked as a Christian Science lecturer in St. Louis, Missouri, and Kansas. By the end of the year, he returned to journalism (editing Der Beobachter, a daily newspaper), and Republican and Nationalist party organizing. Gestefeld was featured regularly in press coverage of Chicago politics in the early 1890s, and at some point around 1891 he left Christian Science and became a Universalist. He left his wife for Mexico in 1896 to conduct business in the mining and petroleum trade there. His last known location was Mexico City, Mexico, in 1910.

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