The Bronnenberg Family

Frederick Brandenburg, born in 1775 in Germany, apprenticed as a tanner, immigrated to America as a young man, changed his name to Bronnenberg, and established a tanning business in Pennsylvania, where he married Barbara Easter in 1806. After living in Virginia and Ohio, the Bronnenbergs reached Indiana in 1819 with eight children, postponing a planned journey to Illinois after a daughter's illness and death and making a nearby abandoned fur trapper's cabin their temporary home. Frederick Jr. remained on his father's farm until the mid-1800s, when he built a brick home using tulip poplar timbers from nearby woodlands, limestone quarried near the White River for the foundation, bricks fired on the site from local clay, and cedar for roof shingles. The family stayed at the Mounds, expanding their farm, tannery, and mill, and a log cabin was constructed on the bend of the White River as the family grew by four more children. The Bronnenbergs also accepted responsibility for preserving the mounds and protected them from artifact hunters, helping leave them among the best examples in the state.

Indiana · United States