The Old Homestead

One side of my family came to the US from Austria in 1870, escaping the lingering effects of the 30 Year War. They rode steerage (the lowest class of ticket) and eventually settled in Wisconsin. Over the generations, their progeny have expanded across part of the state to the point where our family name (an unusual one) can be found in phone books in moderately large numbers. On our vacation, one of the oldest living memebrs of our family, a woman who had traced our geneology, showed us many of the farms. Here's a typical one.


Our family now runs many of these along with a wide variety of other businesses. As we drove through the countryside it struck me how very much like Switzerland and, by inference, how much like Austria this was. It's no wonder that they headed to Wisconsin to settle.