“The First Residents”
A common thread, which runs through the fabric of the history of Lebanon, is profound appreciation for the natural beauty
and resources of the area. Little is known about the Native Americans who first inhabited this region. In earlier days
arrowheads and other implements of stone used by the hunter/gatherer peoples would surface while modern inhabitants
plowed or cultivated. By now, most such evidence of earlier inhabitants have been gleaned from the land.
Unlike the mound builders of Aztalan, the Native American inhabitants in this area were nomadic. They followed the deer,
the fish, and the berry crop; fishing, hunting and gathering their food. The dense growth of trees and underbrush was not
seen as conducive to raising crops, and the abundant marshes were not suitable for wild rice. So the earliest residents of
“Lebanon” were constantly on the move. Although their dwellings were temporary and portable, the earliest European
settlers quickly copied the design for their own first “houses” on the homestead.
For a generation or two the Euro-Americans who populated the area were treated to periodic visits from the original
inhabitants. One of the patriarchs of Lebanon recalled in his memoirs that as late as 1878 small groups of Indians would
camp along the Rock River, remain a few weeks and move on. (Ernst Gottlieb Dornfeld, 1831-1907)
The new inhabitants of Lebanon—coming from Germany, Ireland, Norway, and the eastern United States—treated the
original inhabitants with a mixture of hospitality and bigotry. Like their Native American predecessors, the first Caucasian
inhabitants were drawn to this area by its abundant resources and natural beauty. The “Old Lutherans” (an historical term
referring to Germans who emigrated to America between 1839 and 1855) from the Mark Brandenburg and Province of
Pomerania, Kingdom of Prussia, Germany sent agents to North America to select the best available land. In their reports, the
agents asserted that the south central area of the Wisconsin Territory was the place for the emigrants to settle. Soil, which
had produced such wonderful forests of maple, elm and oak as those found in Wisconsin, must be the very best soil for
agriculture. The abundant marshland was likewise considered a plus.
During 1843 and 1844 most of the land in an unorganized township in Dodge County, known as Township No. 9, north
Range 16, east was purchased by immigrants from Germany. Three other groups of settlers arrived at the same time. The
German immigrants comprised about 65% of the settlers, Norwegians 17%, Yankees (New Englanders) 12%, and 6% from
the British Isles (Scottish, Irish and English)
Most of the Yankees had come from New York State where they left crowded and worn-out farmlands. While in Lebanon
they were prominent and influential; however, most did not stay, choosing instead to move to the newly opened Western
Territories. The Norwegian families also were only sojourners in Lebanon electing to join the larger Norwegian settlement
in Ixonia, to the south.
While the government land cost the new settlers only $1.25 an acre, clearing the land for agriculture was no easy task. The
earliest of settlers arrived in fall of 1843. Since most of these folks had been comfortably situated in Germany they came
with sufficient cash to buy large tracts of land and purchase adequate provisions for their first year. During the first winter
trees were chopped down, stumps pulled with teams of oxen and small parcels of land made ready for spring planting. On
these plots the first crop was planted in the spring of 1844, providing a harvest small but sufficient to feed families and
livestock.
Clearing the balance of the land was accomplished using a technique learned from the Indians called “ringing”. With a
hatchet a strip of bark was cut circling the trunk of the tree. The tree would wither and die. Corn and potatoes would be
planted amid the dead trees until the trees could be cut and the stumps removed.
The density of growth is hard to envision today. Foot travel was the only possible means for journeying through the forest.
Even with a footpath hewn to Watertown—seven miles away—the journey took one full day, one way! Already at the time
of the first immigration a primitive road had been carved out of the wilderness from Milwaukee to Watertown. Roundtrip
from Watertown to Milwaukee—about 35 miles—by ox and wagon took a full week. Even a small rainfall could easily
double the travel time.
On April 7, 1846, Township No. 9 was given a name. The laws of the Territory of Wisconsin were very open toward the
immigrants. The right to vote was granted as soon as an immigrant filed his intention to become a citizen. Meeting in the
home of Christian Dornfeld (the official record of the meeting incorrectly lists Friedrich Dornfeld, Christian’s eldest son, as
the owner) the voters of the township gathered to organize the township government. The Yankees with their experience in
New England-style town government were elected to all the town offices. However, it was the Germans who chose the

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name. Christian Dornfeld, Wilhelm Woltmann, and Wilhelm Setzkorn formed the committee that selected the name
“Lebanon.” Ostensibly, these pious Lutherans chose the name because the lushly foliated hills reminded them of the biblical
descriptions of the cedars of Lebanon.
The 1850 census reveals the nascent township to have grown to 190 farms supporting a population of 1000. Germans held
over 50% of the land and represented 65% of the population. It is interesting to compare these figures with the 1940 census.
In that year there were 165 farms with roughly 90% of them owned by persons with German names. The population was
97% German.
Most significant is the observation that the vast majority of the 1940 residents were direct descendants of the German
homesteaders who had arrived ninety-seven years earlier. Quite contrary to the “wanderlust” which infected so much of the
American population, the residents of Lebanon put down roots and have stayed put for 4 or 5 generations. At least 23 farms
remain in the hands of direct descendents of the original owners!
“Ditches”
South central Wisconsin is abundant with flat, fertile farmland. However, before extensive ditching, tiling, and terracing, the
Lebanon area stood in marked contrast to surrounding townships. Set in the midst of an agricultural paradise, the Lebanon
area was distinguished by its tone-laden drumlins, boggy swampland, and hills too steep for cultivation. Yet, this was the
region to which the land scout for the Pomeranian, and Brandenburger émigrés were attracted.
The level and less densely forested lands to the north, west and south of Lebanon were essentially uninhabited when the
Germans arrived. Nonetheless, they gravitated here. As their first settlement they chose a thickly forested piece of land in
the midst of what was dubbed the Great Marsh. The area, known today as Sugar Island, was an impenetrable tangle of sugar
maple trees and thorn bushes surrounded by a marsh made impassable most of the year by the whims of the Rock River.
It was the sugar maple forest and the marshland that drew them! To understand this unique attraction one must know
something of their previous history.
The ancestors of our Lebanon forebears originated in the states and cities of southern Germany and Austria. After the
Reformation and the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) the quarrelsome German states were further estranged by the issue of
religion. As a term of the peace treaty ending the Thirty years War, the ruler of each state was empowered to declare his
personal religious beliefs to be the religion of his realm. The states of southern Germany and Austria were ruled by Roman
Catholic adherents, the northern German states by Lutherans. A grand people-movement was begun as dissenters fled from
their homelands to avoid imprisonment for failing to convert to the religion of the king.
A goodly number of Lebanon’s first settlers were descended from south German Lutheran who had been exiled to the north.
While free to practice their faith in the Lutheran northern states, the exiles were denied citizenship. Land was scarce, so the
exiles survived as day laborers or peasant farmers for nearly one hundred years.
In the early 1700’s, Frederick the Great of Prussia was annexing state after state to his north German domain. As his empire
moved east into Brandenburg and Poland and north into Pomerania, Frederick recognized two resources at his disposal: an
abundance of marshland—the Oderbruch—made unusable by the frequent flooding of the Oder River and a pool of cheap
labor from the peasant exiles.
Frederick combined the two resources in one of the masterpieces of modern planing and technology. He ordered the
rerouting of the Oder River channel along with the building of an immense system of dikes and ditches. This would result in
the reclamation of 30,000 acres of land for farming. Frederick invited the peasant exiles to work the project. In return for
their labor each would receive a parcel of land between eight and eighty acres depending upon the amount of labor
performed. Citizenship was guaranteed and no taxes would be levied on the land for one hundred years.
Thus, in 1756, did many of our Lebanon forebears become land holders i the rich Order River basin. Centuries of flooding
had left the Oderbruch rich with loam and silt. Within a few years the region became the breadbasket of Prussia.
Unfortunately, the religious toleration that the new landholders had sought in Prussia evaporated before the 100-year tax
remission had run its course.
When scouts, sent to America by the would-be emigrants, discovered the Rock River bottomlands around the island of sugar
maples they quickly recognized the potential for a duplication of the Oderburch homeland.
Marsh land and sugar maple trees were valued more than gold by our Lebanon forebears. Tracts of government land
acquired by the German settlers included both marsh acreage and a sugar maple woodlot. Four benefits were derived from
owning a piece of the Great Marsh and a portion of the Sugar Island.

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Virgin marshland was covered with long slender grasses. This grass was prized for roofing material. Great bundles of marsh
hay were dried and bound into dense grass “shingles” which were laid on rafters of unhewn timber. While these roofs
proved impervious to water and would have provided good insulation for the family dwellings, the potential for fire, ignited
by sparks from the fireplace or Dutch oven, made the use of grass roofs on the houses hazardous. The contents of barns and
other outbuildings, however, were kept dry under the cover of a grass roof.
Peat burns easily. This is the second of the benefits in having a piece of the Marsh. Owning a peat bog was an instant source
for heating fuel, prized more highly than the hardwoods of the Island.
From the experience of their ancestors, our Lebanon forebears knew the fertility of marshland, drained, ditched and plowed.
The effort of several teams of oxen, hitched to a shovel plow, operated by a crew of four to six men, effectively turned
swampland into productive farmland. A large “V”-shaped steel implement standing as tall as 6 feet, the shovel plow was a
giant, one-bottom plow. Pulled by the oxen, the plow point was set in the ground, its depth regulated by the overseer who
stood atop the implement next to the teamster. This behemoth plow was able to draw a furrow twelve feet wide at the top
and two feet wide at the base. Wooden wings attached to the upper edges of the steel “V” would lift and throw the muck
over the edge of the furrow. Two or more men followed with large-toothed, wooden rakes spreading the muck over the
surrounding land to provide a new layer of rich, black topsoil. The resultant ditch would drain the marsh and protect it from
all but the most devastating of Rock River floods.
The fourth and final advantage in owning combination parcels of marsh and woodland was the value placed upon the sugar
maples. Raw or refined sugar was an expensive commodity in pioneer Wisconsin. Dear though it might be, it was essential
in the process of curing and preserving meat for future use. Tapping the maples and cooking the spring sap into syrup or
crystalline sugar provided the indispensable ingredient for smoking and curing rations.
Thus, our forebears settled on the Marsh and the Island as their new home. Once the great ditches had been carved,
crisscrossing the Great Marsh like the seams of a patchwork quilt, a new industry was born. Ditch diggers were necessary,
not to dig new ditches, but to keep the existing ditches free from silt and run-off topsoil.
“Fachwerk”
Fachwerkbau or deutscher Verband (half-timber work) is a kind of wall construction in which heavy timbers–mortised,
tenoned and pegged together–are used to form a structural frame or skeleton. The open spaces or panels are filled with some
type of masonry material.
The earliest Fachwerk buildings in Lebanon were constructed with a mixture of clay and stray as the masonry element for
the panels. Networks of branches and twigs were woven together and set in the open spaces between the timbers. In some
cases, wooden staves were substituted. The mixture of mud and straw was then applied. After a period of sun drying, the
walls hardened as durable, water-resistant, weather tight, and rodent-proof. The material had remarkable insulation value.
Later examples of Fachwerk construction employed kiln-dried brick, either the warm vermilion Hustisford brick or the
drabber gray-cream Watertown brick.
In some instances, the Pomeranians duplicated what had been the custom of their native land, combining stable and house in
a single structure. Such a building allowed for the construction of one major farm structure rather than several. It allowed
the farmer access to the animals in even the foulest of weather without having to go out of doors. Finally, it allowed for a
shared heating source.
Heating and some cooking and baking chores were accomplished by means of a large brick oven built into the center of the
Fachwerk house. The oven was situated in what was called the “black kitchen.” This large central room was used for the
smoking and curing of meats and sausages. In summer this brick or masonry room at the core of the house remained
relatively cool. When the oven was stoked for summer baking chores, its heat would be confined to the black kitchen,
sparing the rest of the house the raging heat of the bake oven.
Architectural authorities from around the world remain interested in these treasures that we take for granted. After nearly
150 years, a number of these remarkable houses remain in daily use in our area. This durability is yet another tribute to the
ingenuity that was brought to this area by our Lebanon forebears.
“Cycles”
Farm life in this area was not always dominated by dairying as it is today. In fact, the agricultural life of the Lebanon area
has gone through several distinct cycles. Dairy farming is the third such cycle.

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The earliest settlers had mixed intentions for the land. Predominant however was the goal of growing wheat as a cash crop.
Recall that Yankees and Irish settled the area at the same time as our German forebears. The non-German contingent came
from New York and other eastern states where they had been wheat farmers. Wheat farming in those areas had so depleted
the soil that it was no longer productive. This group kept moving further and further west as the land played-out.
Immigrants arriving from Germany envisioned more of a multi-faceted farm similar to what they had experienced in their
native lands. It must be remembered that farming in the mid 19th century was a labor-intensive enterprise. Even a farmer
with many children to assist with the work could manage little more that 40 acres.
Experience in Germany had been that of raising some wheat, cutting marsh hay for bedding and for cattle feed, and keeping
one or two cows for meeting family needs only. When settling in Lebanon, the Germans intended to imitate that model.
However, the Yankees influenced the immigrants to try raising wheat as predominant cash crop.
Besides being a drain on the soil, in that age prior to mechanization, wheat required a tremendous output of energy on the
part of the farmer and family. The grain was cut by means of a scythe with a cradle attached. Several people would follow
the cutter and gather the stalks from the cradle and tie them into bundles. Still another contingent of workers would gather
bundles together into shocks for drying.
Once sufficiently dried, the bundles were hauled to the wooden floor of the barn, the threshing floor. There the grain was
flailed until straw, chaff and grain were separated.
Having completed this arduous and time-consuming process, the farmer took a quantity of wheat sufficient to feed his family
for a year to the miller to be ground into flour. The water mill at Monches, near Holy Hill, was the miller of choice for most
Lebanonites.
The balance of the grain needed to be transported to Milwaukee. This is where wheat growing became particularly
unprofitable. The railroad had not yet arrived and hauling grain via teamster on the plank toll road to Milwaukee was
expensive. What little profit may have been realized was sure to be consumed in tolls and freight charges.
In short order the Yankees and Irish moved on to larger farms in the west, and the Germans reverted to what had been their
original plan, to develop multi-faceted farmsteads. The first agricultural cycle moved into cycle two.
One legacy that the Yankees and Irish did leave was the bank barn. Germans had built stables in the same way they had
done so in the old country. Stables were often attached to the house and were built at ground level with a small loft for the
storage of hay and grain. The major drawback to this style of construction was the relative inaccessibility of the loft. Hay
and grain had to be lifted to the second floor for storage.
In Pennsylvania, the Yankees had observed the phenomenon of the bank barn. They brought the idea with them to
Wisconsin. Large barn and stable combinations, stable in the lower foundation level and barn in the second story, were built
into a hillside. This allowed for easy access to the barn for threshing and storage. The bank barn endured as normative for
almost 150 years until the recent advent of the free stall and pole barn concept.
Once the fascination with wheat farming subsided, the German farms of our forebears became what they were first
envisioned to be, self-sufficient enterprises. Each farm was expected to produce almost everything necessary for a family to
survive independently. Orchards were planted, large vegetable gardens were maintained. Field crops included corn and
grass for forage, wheat for flour, flax for spinning linen thread or for combination with wool to make linsey-woolsey, oats for
the horses and fowl.
Livestock included sheep for wool, three or four cows for milk, butter and cheese (surplus dairy products could be used to
barter for salt and other staples in Watertown), pigs for meat and lard, chickens for eggs (extra eggs were good for barter),
geese (often “noodled” to produce large livers which were prized in Milwaukee and New York), and ducks prized especially
for their blood in making Schwartzsauersuppe (sour blood soup).
Of interest is the division of labor observed on these German farms. Men did not milk cows, that was strictly women’s work.
Not until dairying became the dominant form of agriculture did men begin doing the milking and tending to the cattle.
Women and children made butter and cheese, tended the livestock and cared for the garden. Men concentrated on the field
work during the growing season which included frequent hoeing of the corn and grain crops. During the cold months, men
spent their time mending implements, making new implements, building furniture, and performing general repairs to
buildings and harnesses.
Spring and summer were the times for tending to the growing of fruits, vegetables and field crops. Autumn was harvesting
time and time for preserving fruits and vegetables for winter usage. The days of autumn turning shorter and colder signaled
time for butchering and the salting or canning of the meat. Sausage, ham, and bacon were smoked in the early snow days, a

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process that required a great deal of time and patience from the male population. Armour’s famous observation, “We use
everything of the hog but the squeal” truly applied to our forebears. Blood sausage and brains were delicacies. Head cheese
and sweet breads are merely euphemisms for portions of the animal otherwise considered unappetizing or unmentionable.
The unique role played by the University of Wisconsin in Wisconsin agriculture is most prominently evidenced by the
promotion and growth of dairying as the primary agricultural industry. Through the extension program and the county agent,
the University reshaped the economy of the state. Lebanon was in the midst of the transition.
Cows began to dot the pastureland, corn and forage grasses and legumes became dominant crops. Barns doubled and tripled
in size. At first slowly, then rapidly, silos sprouted aside of barns. Cheese factories, cooperatively owned and operated,
sprang up like mushrooms on a dead stump.
Slowly, sheep, geese, ducks and even hogs disappeared from the farmsteads. The sale of dairy products through coops
provided income which allowed the farmer to buy cloth and other needed items. Life on the Lebanon farms had undergone
an irreversible change.
The Love of Music
In 1843, when Germans from Brandenburg and Pomerania began to settle in this area they brought with them a love of
music. Through their churches and in their homes, the gift of music was passed down to each new generation. It was in
1890 that a local parochial schoolteacher drew together a number of instrumentalists to form the Lebanon Cornet Band.
Around that same time another group formed as the Lebanon Concert Band. Both groups functioned separately until 1939
when they merged to form the Lebanon Band.
Today the fourth and fifth generations of the founders play in this community band. It is not unusual to have three
generations from a family playing side-by-side within the band. The Lebanon Band epitomizes the love of music and a
strong attachment to family and community. It is truly a “living” monument to the Germanic culture and heritage of
Lebanon. It is likely that the Lebanon Band is the oldest continuous community band in the State of Wisconsin. This
institution, with two and sometimes three generations of the same family playing side-by-side, is a unique part of Lebanon
history.
Brick Cheese Originated in Lebanon
In 1877, a cheese factory, known locally as the Peirick Cheese Factory, was built on a piece of land owned by Christian
Krebs. In those early days of the dairy industry in Lebanon, Limburger cheese was produced most commonly in area
cheese factories. However, John Jossie, an immigrant cheese maker from Switzerland, observed that when the curds for
making Limburger cheese were drier and had a lower moisture content, a product with a different texture and flavor
resulted. Based on these observations Jossie developed a variety of cheese known as brick cheese.
It was in this factory that Jossie began to produce brick cheese – first cheese factory in the United States to produce brick
cheese. At one time, there were 11 cheese factories in Lebanon. Only one remains active today.