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1864 - 2014 | St. John's Lutheran Church | 3 The First One Hundred Years: The Paul L. Steamboat A braham may well be considered the first frontiersman of the ancient world. At the Lord's command he set out on a far journey in search of a land full of milk and honey, there to become a great nation, there to receive a great name ("father of all believers?—Romans 4:11), and in whom "shall all the families of the earth be blessed" (Genesis 12:3 and Galatians 3:16). Terah, his father, had received that same call, yea even started out to seek this land, but decided to remain in Haran. Abraham and his wife Sarah and nephew Lot continued on their journey until they had set foot upon the land promised to the Patriachs and their seed forever. "There he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord." (Genesis 12:8). The Lord not merely showed him the promised land, but by faith also the promised Savior, the God of all grace and mercy. EAST CENTRAL WISCONSIN likewise became the mecca of the frontiersmen and the emigrants who left the land of their birth and other parts of these United States in order to answer an urgent call described by certain pioneer women settling in this area a century or more ago: "We would never have left the old home and come here, if it had not been to get land for the boys.: For the sake of their children they willingly endured the hardships and privations of the pioneer life. But what did these frontiersmen find when they explored East Central Wisconsin? The land was heavily timbered with hard and soft maple, oak, birch, cherry, butternut, hickory, ash, elm, basswood, ironwood, pine, tamarac, spruce, poplar, and in some places beech and hemlock. In the forest there roamed the bear, elk, deer, wolf, and other valued game, the ponds, rivers, and smaller streams were stocked with pike, pickerel, black, white and silver bass, perch, catfish, and sturgeon. The sportsmen found flocks of rice hens, wild ducks on the waters and partridge, squirrel, and timid rabbit in the forest. The tamarac swamps provided fine grapes, strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, huckleberries and cranberries while the land produced corn, buckwheat, beans, and potatoes in light soils and oats, wheat, corn, peas, and grasses on clay or heavy loam. Logs were floated down the Wolf River by steam tugs to Oshkosh, and even the mail was carried by boat to Fremont and thence on foot to Stevens Point. The winters were cold, the climate healthy, and immigrants from Germany, Denmark, Norway, and other parts of Europe found here good soil, pure water, plenty of wood, cheap land, a ready market, and no grasshoppers. The frontiersman found East Central Wisconsin occupied by the Menominee Indians who cultivated a little corn to supplement the precarious dependance upon the bow and spear. In October, 1848, a treaty of session was signed with the Menominees extending to the final surrender of possession by these Indians on the first day of June, 1852. About that time white settlers began to arrive via railroad as far north as Fond du Lac, thence by boat on Lake Winnebago toward Oshkosh and Lake Poygan, and up the Wolf River. The first furrow was turned in Lind in 1849, and settlers built for themselves log cabins upon their claims. Bloomfield is in the northeastern township of Waushara County, bounded north by Waupaca County, east by Winnebago County, south by the Town of Poy Sippi, and east by the town of Saxville. It is swampy in most parts, in large tracts, but the intervening land is productive. Some small streams which flow eastward and southward have their sources in this town. Lake Poygan cuts through into the southeast corner. The first settlers arrived in 1850, and Tustin had 250 inhabitants by 1890. f "Unto a land that I will show thee" Genesis 12:1-8 A mong these early settlers were also German Lutherans who stopped off in Milwaukee and were instructed by the founding fathers of our Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod where to find lands open for searchers of new homes and also the bread of life broken by pioneer missionaries. Among them was Pastor Gottlieb Fachtmann who on October 18, 1859 was installed as pastor of St. Peter's Lutheran Church, Fond du Lac. He traveled up the Wolf and Rat Rivers, stopping at Menasha, Neenah, Medina, New London, and then south to Berlin. His successor was Pastor Carl Waldt, who arrived in Milwaukee April 9, 1859 and was directed to the Neenah-Menasha area, also serving groups of Lutherans at Woodville, Appleton, Clayton, Greenville, Winchester, Van Dyne, and Medina. January 5, 1862 he moved to Oshkosh and, upon his retiring from the active ministry on November 1, 1887, moved to Los Angeles, California where he died on December 11, 1908. f