A few months prior to gaining statehood, Welshman John Andrew Williams arrived in Wisconsin during the spring of 1848. Homesteading 80 acres granted to him by President James Polk, he named his new property Wern Farm, meaning fertile valley surrounded by hills. One of his daughters later wrote of being hidden from Indians as a little girl, and of life on the farm during the Civil War. Importing the first Guernsey cows to America, his son in law D. L. Williams was an ambitious fellow who turned his family farm in to one of the biggest dairy operations in the United States. He added a milk bottling plant, milk delivery routes, a railroad for shipping to distant markets, electricity, paved roads and even a public school to the area. For a time he was the county’s largest employer and cows out numbered people in Waukesha County. D.L.’s two sons, Homer and Chester, followed their father’s footsteps for many years, but eventually went their separate ways. Splitting the two thousand acre farm in two, they sold the bottling business and milk routes to the Borden Company in 1968. Reluctant to modernize the farm, Chester continued breeding and milking about 300 head until the late 70’s. 1984 marked the last year of cows on the farm.