Upon arriving in the New World, the family shortened their name to Burger and established their home in Jeffersonville, Sullivan County, New York where they resided for about ten years. The upper Midwestern U.S., particularly Wisconsin, had become a desired destination for many Germanic Europeans as the region so closely approximated the climate and topography of the "Old World." In 1856, the Burger family relocated to Milwaukee, Wisconsin where a rather large contingency of German, Dutch, Norwegian, French, Polish and Scandinavian immigrants had settled. In 1857, at the age of 18, young Henry began honing his skills by apprenticing as a shipbuilder at Milwaukee's Wolf and Davidson Shipyard. In 1863, at the age of 24, he married Mary Esslinger, the daughter of a prominent German businessman from Manitowoc, Wisconsin, a small community on the shores of Lake Michigan some 80 miles north of Milwaukee. It was there and during that year in the midst of the Civil War that he began his own production of small, 20' - 30' Mackinaw fishing boats for the local commercial fishermen. J.I. CASE - Schooner His expertise and penchant for building extremely high quality vessels quickly became known on the Great Lakes. Between 1866 and 1869, Henry and his small group of merry boat builders built and launched the scow MENOMONEE, the schooner FLEET WING and the schooner S.A.WOOD. In 1870, during the heyday of wooden sailing ships, Henry B. and Mr. Greene-Rand consolidated their shipyards to form the Greene Rand, Burger Shipyard-building among many others, the schooners CITY OF MANITOWOC and J.I. CASE. This partnership continued until Mr. Rand's death in 1885.