#7 -- The Peirce Mansion
Location: W2015 Eagle Road
Clarence Peirce, born in 1850 on the banks of Lake Comstock, ten years before the Colony was established in Germania, is the first Germania-born member of that group. He became a personable, influential entrepreneur who financed the building of a grist mill in Lawrence (just west of Westfield), ran an extensive dairy and stock breeding operation (Pond View Farm) on this site in Germania, and served in the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly. In 1887 he moved his family into this elegant house built just west of the Big House. Remnants of the walkway between the “Big House” and the Peirce Mansion can still be seen today. The farm buildings, including the barn and windmill, ice house, hen house, and machine sheds, have largely fallen victim to deterioration and fire over the passing years. Living grandchildren of Ellis Bandt, who purchased the Peirce farm in 1925, remember seeing, as young children, multiple fancy horse carriages with velvet cushions abandoned in and around the buildings on the estate.