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town Brillion area in Calumet county,
Wisconsin, approximately -four miles
northwest of the present Brillion and
three miles northeast of the present
Fcrest Junction, is the ancestral home of the
Joachim Persohn family in America.
Some of the descendants by that name, some
with other names through marriage, still live
in that neighborhood. Others of the seven-
odd hundred descendants now living have
spread to 14 states of the Unicn and into
Canada. One of them, the former Alpha Zick,
now the wife of Clement Heydenburk, is engag-
ed in foreign missionary activity under the Iran
Interior Mission and is stationed in Iran.
Progenitors of the family in America were
Joachim Persohn and his wife Karoline. He
was born in Neuendorf in the province of
Pomerania, Germany on Nov. 23, 1812. His
occupation was that of shepherd for a wealthy
landlord. Accompanied by a good watchdog,
who would keep the sheep in their propel
places, the shepherd would while away the
hours by knitting stockings.  A small stool
was strapped to his body enabling him to
sit down at convenience.
His wife, born Aug. 1, 1814, in Steffanhagen
in the neighboring province of Mecklenburg,
was the only child of a Lutheran minister
named Lange. They were married in 1836 and
eight children were born during the years from
1837 to 1854, before the parents emigrated to
America in 1857. Of one of the children, a
boy, who died in early childhood in Germany,
there is no further record.  The remaining
seven children, however, accompanied their
parents to the New    World.   The voyage
was made in    a sailboat.   Waukesha   in
Wisconsin was the destination.
Their stay in Waukesha was relatively brief
-long enough however, for the second oldest of
the children, 18-y ear old Wilhelmina, to become
enarmored of Johann Heinrich Timm, who was
apparently of another group of German immi-
grants at Waukesha. The two were married
the same year of the arrival of the Persohns.
The adventurous spirit of the son-in-law led
him to take his bride, possibly on -their
honeymoon, far to the north cf Waukesha into
Calumet county. In the town of Brillion,.
which had been established only a year before
by being detached from Woodville, they settled
in the primitive forest on what is now the Alvin
Greve farm in the North West Quarter of
Section 10. Though Wilhelmina was ill with
asthma the greater part of her life, land was
laboriously cleared and a primitive home
erected.  They had ten children, 'four of
whom are known to have died of the black pox.
In 1858, the Joachim Persohns with their
other children followed, to the town Brillion
home of the Timms to live with them on the
same tract of land. Land patents issued by
the State of Wisconsin to these early settlers
do not disclose the price at which the land was
obtained, merely stating that the buyers had
fulfilled the reauired conditions. On a threeacre
plot in the northeast corner of the farm, a
home was built for the family, cn which the
parents stayed for the remainder of their lives.
Deeply religious from their native Germany.
they sought church relationship and attende-i
the services of a pioneer church of the-
Evangelical Association in the neighboring
town of Maple Grove in Manitowoc county.
which had been started by circuit riding
preachers from Two Rivers and Cooperstown
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