Sommer and Brede Family in Waukesha County (1900 - 1916)
The village of Brookfield must have seemed far from this palace in Hannover when Carl Sommer settled in Wisconsin in 1858.
By 1914, the Sommer farm in Brookfield had become the Bradee Farm. A huge community of friends, most of them German-speaking, lived close by.
By the early 1900's, William Bradee's parents had relocated to a fourteen acre farm at Lily Road south of Burleigh (between the Green and Wetzel farms.) In 1914, Mrs. Heinrich J. (Bertha Hintz) Ziemer lived just a short distance directly to the east of Wilhelm and Sophie Brede, adjacent to the Wm. Schmidt family. In 1900, a William Ziemer lived and worked on the Schmidt property -- most likely the William Ziemer who appears as a godparent and in communion lists at Friedens Church in the 1880's.
The Bradee family lived and worked on the former Sommer farm, which was eighty acres in 1914. In December, 1916, the contents of the farm were auctioned off. Today, family members are searching to discover why the farm appeared to have failed at this time.
More about Bradee friends and neighbors in this space soon.