In 1854, German brothers Jacob and John Dietrich arrived in America after a fifty-three day sailing voyage, settled first in Connecticut, and were joined the next year by their sister Elizabeth and Jacob's bride-to-be, Catherine Jackel; Jacob and Catherine married on February 18, 1855. In 1857, the young couple traveled west with their little daughter Barnetta Dinah, bought a team of oxen and a wagon at Westport, and came to Franklin County in Kansas Territory, where they chose a hillside home site three miles south and two and one-quarter miles west of the present town of Princeton after camping there one night. They built a cabin in 1857, but it burned the next year in a prairie fire, costing them most of their possessions. Catherine then worked for a neighbor for room and board while Jacob cut logs and earned money, and in 1859 they built a new cabin on the original site. In June of 1863, Jacob Dietrich died of pneumonia and was buried in St. Boniface Cemetery at Scipio, after which Catherine struggled to keep the family on the frontier, even walking six miles to and from Ohio City to collect laundry work from county officials. In 1865, she married Jacob Puterbaugh, a friend of her late husband, and they had one daughter, Addie; she was widowed again in 1873. Despite repeated hardships, Catherine raised her children to become useful citizens: John became an educator and superintendent of schools, Charles farmed locally and became an Ottawa merchant, and Frank taught at Ottawa University and later became a U.S. Circuit Judge. Catherine Jackel Dietrich Puterbaugh lived to be nearly ninety-three and was buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery in Chicago. Over the years, the cabin served as a farmhouse, was enlarged with several rooms, covered with siding that preserved its logs, and later used to store hay after it was abandoned as a dwelling. Its hillside site overlooked a timbered valley with a nearby spring, and at the foot of the hill ran the Humboldt Trail, which became a government mail route from Leavenworth to Humboldt in 1858 and passed through Prairie City and Ohio City; its course remained visible across the prairie in deep-washed gullies from heavy wagon wheels. The cabin itself, about 18 feet by 20 feet, was built of hand-hewn native walnut with dovetailed, double-mortised corners, unusual slant-cut walnut rafters, and an eight-foot-deep porch that offered food, shelter from storms, and overnight refuge to travelers. In 1959, Elsie Gault, a granddaughter of Jacob and Catherine, gave the one-hundred-year-old cabin to the Franklin County Historical Society, and with volunteer assistance from T.J. Bivins of Wellsville it was moved to Ottawa's City Park and restored in 1960-61, becoming a focal point of Franklin County's Kansas Centennial celebration in 1961 and standing as a tribute to the hardships endured by early pioneers in Franklin County.