Germania tour 1

The story of the Germania “Colony” begins in Lunenburg, MA, the birthplace of Henrietta Jones, who was born in 1816. Her first marriage (1836), to Reverend Joseph Ellis, ended with his death in 1842, leaving Henrietta with their two young daughters. Five years later (1847), Henrietta married Major Abraham Peirce, and the family travelled westward to Wisconsin, living in the Kenosha area for several years before moving to Marquette County in 1850 and homesteading 40 acres on the shore of Lake Comstock. The family’s living quarters consisted of a dugout in a bluff on the eastern shore of the lake. In 1853 Major Peirce died and Henrietta moved back to Massachusetts with her two daughters from her first marriage and her young son Clarence Peirce (b. 1850). However, she retained possession of the Marquette County land that would become the Germania “Colony.”