In the Great Migration of the 19th century nearly six million Germans emigrated to the United States. Perhaps as many as a half a million settling in frontier Wisconsin. Towns were carved out of the forests in the northern regions of the state - towns like Rhinelander, Germantown, New Berlin, New Holstein, Germania, Hanover, Kiel, Freistadt and New Franken. And Tigerton. By 1900 fully one-third of the city of Milwaukee was made up of German immigrants.
Some of those towns, like Tigerton, were so homogeneous that the customs and language brought with them from the Fatherland lingered for decades, and through generations.
This is a photo of the Certificate of Confirmation - Erinnerung an den Tag Confirmation - of my grandfather, Heinrich Emil Fuhrmann, into the Evangelical Lutheran Church there, dated 8 April, 1906. Printed and signed by the pastor - Ernst G. Junghans. All in traditional German script.
The area was settled primarily by immigrants from Pomerania (Pommern) and Brandenburg, it is said, because the heavily forested/rolling hills of northern Wisconsin reminded them of home.
Though the original structure is gone, the church congregation is still there. As are many of the descendants of those original German settlers.
All told it is estimated that there are over 43,000,000 descendants of German immigrants living in the USA today.
Lass uns feiern!
