After the untimely death of John Nieman’s first wife, he leaves for Hermansville, Michigan in the early 1890s to participate as a businessman and merchant in the logging boom of northern Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula. 

Eventually in the late 1890s, John marries his first wife’s younger sister Martha, and they have five children together: a daughter who passed in infancy, Edwin J., Herbert A., Alice, and John W. Nieman. Martha, however, insists that they move back to Cedarburg, Wisconsin. So John moves his family and the hard-earned wealth he has accumulated during the logging boom back to Cedarburg.