Soloman John Cramer

Solomon John Cramer

The area of Plain was originally known as Cramer's Corners because Solomon, John, and Adam Cramer owned the land after moving there from Richland County, Ohio (previously from Pennsylvania). The Cramers are listed as land owners in an 1857 Town of Franklin map. (This Cramer family should not be confused with the Kraemer [Kr%C3%A4mer] family from Irlach, Bavaria, Germany, who settled in Plain, Wisconsin, in 1867.)

Donated the land that was called Cramer’s Corners in the 1850s before it was called Logtown and then finally, Plain in the 1860s. The Cramers were protestants who came to the driftless area of Southwest Wisconsin in the early 1850s from Ohio, and even earlier from Pennsylvania. There were German-Swiss and were among the first pioneers in what was then a wilderness.

The first generation were all farmers in and around Plain, and at least one of them, Solomon Cramer, Sr., also was a carpenter and entrepreneur who made carpenters, builders and merchants of his seven sons. Solomon, Jr. and brother Pearson Cramer ran a building business that worked on landmark structures such as the Jones sisters Hillside School, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Romeo and Juliet Windmill, the gothic Catholic church at St. Lukes in Plain and the Spring Green High School.