Bottkolville

After repeated denials of permission to emigrate from their home in Euren, Germany, Michael Bottkol's family fled to France in the spring of 1856 and arrived in Kewaunee that summer. After spending their remaining money on essential supplies, they hired a guide and traveled on foot through the forested wilderness to their new home, 160 acres they had purchased for $1 per acre 15 miles to the northwest. The area where they settled became known as Bottkolville, later renamed Euren. There the three Bottkol brothers, who had little formal education, began a business enterprise in 1871 that eventually included a stream powered sawmill, planing mill, gristmill, grain elevator, store, and cheese factory, employing as many as 40 men, and they later expanded their businesses to Brussles and Menominee, Michigan. A devastating fire on Friday the 13th of July 1894 destroyed the mills and several other buildings they owned in Euren. Another prominent resident, Dr. Edward Kerscher, who married Helen Bottkol, returned to the community where he was born and raised to practice medicine after early experience assisting a country doctor, and he eventually delivered over 5,000 babies, the last when he was 88 years old.

Lincoln, Wisconsin · United States