In thousands of later instances, Germans who came to Wisconsin on their own slender means were in a similar case to these early seekers of religious freedom. An immigrant of 1848, J. F. Diederichs, has left a diary and letters from which the process of home making in the woods can be reconstructed.[9] Diederichs, after considerable search, found eighty acres of good government land nine miles from Manitowoc, where early in winter he settled down to work alongside of several other Germans who were as poor as himself. The location was favorable, being near a port. “What good is there,” he writes, “to possess the finest land and be 6, 8 or 10 days journey from market.”[10] The first step was to build a cabin, the next to bring his family from Milwaukee and with a few dollars borrowed for the purpose to lay in supplies for them. Then he erected a comfortable log house and continued clearing till, by the middle of May, he had two acres ready partly for garden and partly for potatoes, corn, and beans to provide the family with food. Diederichs realized that “to begin such work at the age of 44 is some job,” and recognized that not he and his wife but the children would be the chief beneficiaries. Nevertheless, the joy of creation was not wholly denied him. He had, he said, the “prettiest” location; house set on a commanding knoll, with a pure limpid stream flowing within a few yards of it, along whose course was some open land, making a “layout for the finest pastures.” And there was timber enough on his eighty to be worth $30,000 in the home town of Elberfelt. Of this, he would gladly make his friends in Germany a present of about $20,000 worth! The question of nearness to market was a determinant also in the cases of Germans who were well enough off to take open lands. William Dames found, for himself and associates, a favorable tract near Ripon. It contained 160 acres prairie, 320 acres openings, and 160 acres of low prairie or meadow land. The advantages of that neighborhood, he wrote, were these: first, the prospectively near market, by way of the Fox River Canal to be completed the following spring; second, the excellence of the soil; third, the ease with which the land could be made into productive farms. There one need not subject himself to the murderous toil incident to farm making in the woods. And, fourth, the healthfulness of the climate and the superb drinking water.