Bio: Bremer, John & Paulina

Surnames: BREMER MAJEWSKI GRAFFUNDER SKERVIN

----Source: ABBOTSFORD, WIS. CENTENNIAL BOOK - 1973

Bremer, John & Paulina

Robbed of all his personal effects, his money and ticket to Texas while he lay seriously ill of ship fever, eighteen year old John Bremer arrived in America in 1879 with nothing but a strong desire to be in the new land.

The railroads were in the midst of a price war; one could ride from New York to Chicago for one dollar. Incidentally, the Interstate Commerce Commission was to come out of this dispute. And so he came to Chicago, broke, the Texas trip was out of the question. Being a native of Germany, Germantown near Milwaukee seemed a good place to go. After a year there as a farm hand he was able to buy land in Clark County.

At Dorchester, asking for directions to get to his land, he was told to follow the creek southwest for two and a half miles and then a trail going west for another mile or son, and he would find the surveyors’ corner post to his eighty acres of woods.

The clearing of the land was a tedious, backbreaking job. Pine trees less than two feet in diameter were worthless so with a borrowed team of oxen and a block and tackle which was anchored to the bottom of a center tree and all pulled together and tipped toward the center. Then the big piles were burned, roots and all, thus doing away with the stump problem.

Later he had his parents and nine brothers and sisters come to America. Henry, Fred, Chris and Dick; Mrs. Elizabeth Graffunder and Mrs. Anna Skervin settled in this area and the others stayed in New York

During the time of the Cleveland depression of 1894, times were very bad. They were down and out and there was no welfare in those days. John wrote to his sister in New York, asking for a loan to help take care of the family. He walked four miles to Dorchester with several dozen eggs to trade for supplies and asked for enough change for a stamp for the letter. The storekeeper told him he was not able to pay cash for eggs, so he walked home again with the unmailed letter in his pocket.

He married Paulina Majewske. They had two children, Elsie and John Jr., both of whom live in Abbotsford.

John Sr. lived to be 91. His retirement years were spent living in Abbotsford in the Baker House.