Friedrich Matz traveled from Landsendorf, Germany, to Milwaukee in 1848, reunited with his brother Christian, worked on local railroads to raise money, and in 1852 went west to the town of Berry to buy his first land, where the Matz family raised oxen, cut hay, and grew corn and potatoes. Friedrich wrote that his first living quarters were simple, with a house built only enough to live in and a barn finished quickly with the sky as the roof and the ground as the floor. At the time, plowing oxen sold for $120-150, which he called unbelievably expensive, and wheat sold for $1 a bushel. Katharina, originally from Germany’s Oberfranken region, arrived in America in 1850 with her son Friedrich and her parents and brother, and she married Friedrich Matz in Sauk City on May 1, 1854. They had five children: Richard, William, Herman, Henry, and Anna. In March 1865 Friedrich was conscripted into the Union Army, mustered at Camp Randall, assigned as a private in the 11th Infantry, Company E, took part in the Battle of Fort Blakely in Baldwin County, Alabama, and was discharged on September 5, 1865. About ten years after first settling the land, and after returning from Civil War service, he built a local stone house that later burned in 1949. A photograph of the family includes Friedrich and Katherina’s son William, his wife Anna Evert, and their children Raymond, Erwin, and Linda. To honor Berry men who fought for the Union Army during the Civil War, the Women’s Club of Berry planted thirty-eight fir trees in 1861, and a few still stand at the intersection of Hwy 19 and Old Settler’s Road. Dane County Halfway Prairie Wildlife Area, which includes the farmstead, opened to the public in 2012, and many of the family’s descendants still live in the area. In an 1855 letter to his family in Germany, Friedrich wrote that he was happy with America and thanked God for placing him in a free and better country.