In 1845, fifteen German immigrants from Franconia, Bavaria, led by the Rev. August Craemer, founded Frankenmuth. They were advised to settle there by the Rev. Frederick Schmid, Lutheran pastor of Ann Arbor's German colony, which had been founded in the 1820's. Other German agricultural villages were founded in the Saginaw Valley in the 1840's and '50's. There, as in many other areas of Michigan, German settlers contributed greatly to the state's cultural heritage.