Nineteenth century German economists complained that German farmsteads were seated often most inconveniently with reference to the management of the farm lands pertaining to them. They had been established, in the days of long ago, by lakeside, brook, or river under conditions in which access to water was the most important single consideration. They had never been moved, although gradually the arable stretched far back from the dwelling, and the pasture perhaps was located in a wholly detached area.[1] This description applies to portions of northern Germany where farms were large and farming had the status of a regular and dignified business.
Many individuals and families came to Wisconsin from districts like Mecklenburg, Prussia, Pomerania, though in the emigrations of the 1840's and fifties the great majority were from southern and central German states. It will be one of the interesting inquiries in connection with our study of local influences in Wisconsin towns (Domesday Book Studies), how far the special regional inheritances of foreign born settlers manifested themselves in Wisconsin communities. The presumption, about the north German, would be that his farming operations would tend to be on a large scale, under a business system which—in this new land—would slough off such anachronisms as the dislocated farmstead, and present the features of an ideal establishment. But it may be that the forest was such a powerful leveler as to obliterate most of the regional distinctions among immigrants. Our chief concern, at all events, is with that great body of German farmers, and intending farmers, who came from the southwestern states of the recent Empire, especially Alsace, Baden, Württemberg, Rhine Palatinate, Rhenish Prussia, Hesse, Nassau, Westphalia—to some extent Bavaria and Saxony.
- ↑ J. H. von Thünen, Der Isolierte Staat (Berlin, 1875), 103 ff., "Ueber die Lage der Höfe in Mecklenburg."
