294 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters. 
travel through the Great Lakes must have been another favorable con¬ 
sideration. Land was plenty and cheap in Wisconsin, and land offices, 
had been established within a few years in Milwaukee, Mineral Point, 
and Green Bay. 
To defray the expenses of the journey, a common treasury was formed 
to which the wealthier members contributed part of their means to as¬ 
sist the poor to accompany them. Directors were appointed for each 
company, to take charge of the money and distribute it according to the 
needs of the poorer people. 
Passage was engaged for one thousand people in five American sail 
vessels. Rev. E. P. L. Krause, a pastor from Silesia with his society ac¬ 
companied them. They emigrated in the latter part of July and reached 
Buffalo, October 5th. Capt. von Rohr had met them in New York and 
told them of the places he had chosen and their advantages. Accord¬ 
ingly about one half settled in and near Buffalo while the remainder 
came to Wisconsin with Capt. von Rohr. 
These were chiefly Pomeranians. It is doubtless this body of immi¬ 
grants that is mentioned in Mr. Buck’s Pioneer History of Milwaukee. 
“ The year 1839,” he says, “ brought the first installment of immigrants 
from Germany and Norway. The effect of their arrival with their gold 
and silver wherewith to purchase land was electric. 
Whereas Milwaukee had been under financial depression before, now all 
doubts about the future were dissipated.” Again he says: “The first 
German colony arrived in 1839. It consisted of about eight hundred 
men, women and children [the number is probably exaggerated]. They 
brought with them the necessary housekeeping utensils and encamped 
on the lake shore south of Huron street. The men went about in a. 
business way, examining the government plats in the land office, and 
having ascertained by all means in their power where lands well tim¬ 
bered and watered could be purchased, they entered lands bounding on 
the Milwaukee river, between Milwaukee and Washington (later Ozaukee) 
counties. A small number remained in the village [probably Milwaukee 
is meant], but the most of them employed themselves without delay in 
clearing and cultivating lands. The men immediately declared their in¬ 
tention to become American citizens, every man signing his name to his 
petition, to the number of seventy in one day.” * 
The majority of the immigrants, over three hundred people, and prob¬ 
ably those still possessing some means, went to Mequon and there formed 
the Freistadt colony, a name chosen, no doubt, to commemorate their 
new freedom; some settled in Cedarburg also, while a few remained in 
Milwaukee.! 
These settlers were from Pomerania, chiefly from the district of 
Stettin and from Kamin an Greifenberg and the neighboring country. 
* Buck’s Pioneer History of Milwaukee, p. 181; ancl an address by Judge Miller, p. 265. 
tKoss “Milwaukee,” p. 103. “In der Neuen Heimatk.” Eickhoff, 372. 
