By 1900 when the Rettammel’s had been in Wisconsin for nearly 3 years, Wisconsin’s population at reached just over 2 million people, 34 percent of the citizens were of German background. Between 1865 and 1873 (the time when my Rettammel heritage came to America in 1865) just over a million people emigrated from what later would be unified Germany. German emigration was in waves and by region or provinces, the Rettammel’s came earlier than many of the third wave of emigration period of northeastern Germany which included the state of Pomerania.

So it took the clan of Rettammel approximately 30-35 years to move north from Chicago, Illinois to Wisconsin in 1897. So why move to Wisconsin?