The first settlers of Ogema, Spirit, and Hill, along with those who carried their communities forward through one hundred years, were remembered for their devotion to their heritage and for building lives out of hardship, hope, love, and toil. Many of the early pioneers were ancestors of the townspeople of Ogema, Hill, and Spirit, and they came from Europe to the United States seeking a better life. In the Northwoods of Wisconsin, they found wilderness and swamp lands instead of the promised land they had expected, yet they remained determined, with the help of God, to make it a land of promise. In the first years they faced deep snows, long bitter winters, and hardships and sufferings that tested their very existence, enduring through faith in the Almighty and bonds of friendship and compassion for one another. As a small group of scattered settlers, they planned for the future and for generations to come, dreaming of towns with churches and schools where their children could be educated and where the community could worship and live in peace. Through many long hours of backbreaking labor they built homes, cleared land for farming, and established churches and schools, while deer trails through the woods gradually became roads linking farmhouses and eventually towns. Many pioneers, known now from gravestones in the cemetery, did not live to see their dreams fulfilled, but the stories of their struggles, sacrifices, heartaches, trials, and privations were handed down from generation to generation as part of the priceless heritage they left behind.