“We were not long strangers here. The prevalence of our German element and our language, the hearty reception from upright countrymen, allowed us to feel no longer strange, but calmer and more content. We had finally found a place for our fireside.”

“On August 10, 1855, I came to Manitowoc County with my parents, John Zander and his wife, my brothers, Helmuth and Fred, and my sisters Marie and Caroline, to the town of Gibson, where another brother, Edward, and William Buelkow had already erected a little log cabin on land taken up for us, the only one north of the Green Bay Railroad. Then life in the wilderness began for us.”