This farmhouse is typical of those built in the 1860s by German settlers in southeastern Wisconsin. Kohlmann and his parents immigrated to Wisconsin in 1847, and soon he married Elizabeth Setimann, another German immigrant. Eventually, he built this substantial, two-and-a-half-story farmhouse of stone carried to the site by Native American laborers. Germans like Kohlmann who settled Wisconsin in the mid-nineteenth century favored stone construction, not only because the glaciers that once covered this land left behind an abundance of the stone, but also because stone was a common building material in their homeland. Kohlmann finished the exterior walls of the simple side-gabled house with a stucco coating. The narrow porch along the front of the house is a recent addition.