The following is an excerpt from “Good Harbor, Michigan: The Story and the People, 18501931, written by Norbert Bufka.”
John and Dorothea Wichern Johan (John) Wichern (18261890) was born in Hanover, Germany. At age 25, he boarded the passenger ship Patria in Bremen and headed for New York where he arrived on July 2, 1852, according to the New York Passenger List. Dorothea Schaffer (March 1838-1920), his wife, was born in Hesse Darnstadt. The records of her arrival vary from 1849 (1860 Census) to 1857 (1910 Census, corrected by a reader to 1851. A likely scenario is that the two of them met in New York and married there where their first daughter Cathrine (b.1856) was born.
The three of them journeyed onto Michigan where they settled on North Manitou Island by 1860 for a brief time. The postal address for the Island was St. James on Beaver Island. They moved from there to Port Oneida on the Leelanau County mainland where john purchased 48.73 acres under the term of the Land Act of 1820 at T28N R13W Sec. 7 on 1 April 1862. This parcel was in the current Cleveland Township in the Port Oneida area. In 1866 John Wichern was appointed to the Board of Commissioners for Highway in that township. In November 1889 John Wichern was sick and slowly recovering.
