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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
FÖTTER
EB 2 B279 ₱860 RR
HISTORY
OF
BARRY COUNTY
BY HON. W. W. POTTER
ILLUSTRATED
With Biographical Sketches of Prominent Men BY FORD HICKS and EDWARD BUTLER
Engraved and Printed by THE REED-TANDLER COMPANY Grand Rapids, Michigan
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PREFACE
TT is not claimed that the following is a complete history of Barry County. It is only intended to sketch the most prominent points of county history as distinguished from the history of the several townships and individual biography. The biographical sketches of prominent men which follow, fill out and amplify the outline of county history which is here presented, and when these are considered in connection with the brief history which follows, they give a fairly accurate account of Barry county.
WILLIAM W. POTTER.
Dated November 1st, 1912.
History of Barry County
Introduction
It is difficult to segregate local events from those of wider influence. The history of Barry County, though replete with happenings of special interest to her people, is intimately inter- woven with that of the state and nation.
Michigan, in common with all the region of the lakes, has been the scene of events of mighty significance in the fate of nations. It was here that the current of English colonization, flowing from Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, met that of France starting from Quebec, Montreal and Ottawa. The region of the lakes was at once the Keystone in the arch of French influence radiating from Louisiana and Quebec, and the link sought to be forged to connect the chain of British posts along the Atlantic seaboard, with those of the Hudson's Bay Company. For a hun- dred years through Indian feuds and colonial wars the struggle for control continued; but it was not until after Montcalm sur- rendered to Wolfe that the British exercised a dominant influence on the affairs of the two peninsulas.
Geology
The surface of Barry County is covered with glacial drift of varying depth, so that while many fossils are found but few of them are where they were formed. As the icy masses of the glacial period moved southward the moraines left their traces be- hind in the lines of granite boulders. It is due, perhaps, to the fact that these great masses were breaking up when they reached this region that the surface of the county is so broken. Post glacial evidences of great antiquity are abundant in the bogs and marshes, and in the beds of peat and marl may be read the open book of later geological periods. Here roamed the elk, the moose, the mastodon, and with them primeval man with rude implements of stone struggled for the mastery.
Cut from east to west by the Thornapple river, which drains perhaps more than one-half the county, the southern portion be-
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
longs to the valley of the Kalamazoo. Its undulating surface of hills and dales is dotted by more than a hundred small lakes of varying sizes. The southern portion was originally covered with oak openings, for centuries kept clear of underbrush by the forest fires of the natives ; the northern, central and eastern portions were covered with beech and maple, plentifully besprinkled with ash and basswood and giant elms, while here and there a lonely pine raised its head above the surrounding forest. Swamps and marshes abounded, and from their stagnant waters arose swarms of mosquitoes now unknown. No other portion of Michigan of like size is more diversified in soil. Alexander Winchell called the height of land between the Kalamazoo and the Thornapple, "Barry Summit." It reaches an elevation of more than two hun- dred and fifty feet above Lake Michigan. Its highest elevation is said to be just south of Pine lake in Hope township, at a point designated on the early maps as "Mt. Hope."
The First White Men
When the region now known as Barry County was first vis- ited by white men is not certainly known. No sooner was New France settled than the fur trade excited the cupidity of the sons of sunny France, and hundreds of young men, tired of the tales of undiscovered Eldorados, which still lured on Spanish chivalry, embarked in the fur trade. Through their influence the savages were first prevailed upon to bring their furs to market on the St. Lawrence. Competition, born of greed, drove them on re- lentlessly. Soon they were not content to wait the action of the shiftless savages. They plunged into the wilderness and visited the Indian in his native haunts. Every river in the whole north- west echoed with the wild chansons of these runners of the woods, as bending with each glittering paddle stroke, they drove forward their frail crafts, upon the water highways of the north. They learned the Indian language, courted the dusky maidens beneath the forest's shade, formed with their family, ties which bound the tribes to them, and shared the rude life and reckless abandon of the savages, but plied industriously their avocation with their friends. The French fur trader left no records. It is probable that the streams and Indian villages of Barry County were famil- iar to fur traders nearly, if not quite, a century before the Ameri- can revolution.
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
Soon after the fleur de lis of France was supplanted by the Cross of St. George we find authentic records showing a familiar knowledge with the interior of Michigan. In 1772 the Indian de- partment of the British at Detroit made a record of the estimated distance to various places in the Indian country toward the Missis- sippi, and in it is given the distance "to one of the branches of the Grand River or Washtanong that falls into Lake Michigan," the distance "to Reccanamazoo river," and the distance "to the Prairie Ronde," showing a familiarity with the location of the Thornapple.
In 1778 Louis Chabollier, one of the proprietors of the gen- eral store at Mackinac, was granted a license to trade with two canoes on the Grand river. Barthe, Lefevre and Bouropa are also named as traders on the Grand.
In 1779 Charles Langlade, who is frequently mentioned in Henry's travels, was sent by Major DePeyster, then in command at Mackinac, as an emissary to incite the Grand River Indians to assist Capt. Hamilton in his expedition against Vincennes. After this place had been recaptured by Col. Clark in the spring of 1779, in a manner so graphically depicted by Maurice Thompson in "Alice of Old Vincennes," DePeyster speaks of the Virginians having sent belts to the Ottawas and Chippeways of the Grand River inviting them to stay at home, and of the Grand River traders being on their way to Mackinac. Lieutenant Bennett, sent from Mackinac to St. Joseph to intercept an expedition from Colonel Clark's army, expected to pass that way, on its route to Detroit, was at the mouth of the Kekalamazoo river fifteen leagues north of St. Joseph.
In 1795, when General Wayne was in command of the forces of the United States sent against the Indians of the Northwest, Alexander McKenzie, employed by the Indian department of the British at Detroit, reported that starting from Detroit to St. Jo- seph on February fifth, 1795, he arrived on the ninth at the house of "a trader named Pepan on the Kekalamazoo river who is fur- nished goods by George McDougall, merch't of Detroit," and February eleventh, of arriving at Kekalamazoo and going to the house of Mr. Burrill, where he ascertained that persons whom he met there were on their way to Muskegon to invite the Indians there to a council to be held at Fort Wayne the following spring.
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
During the War of 1812, Messrs. Joseph Bailey, E. Lamor- andie, McBurnett, Bourasse and Coursalle were all traders on the Grand and vicinity. In March, 1815, Joseph Cadotte, probably a relative of the family of the same name mentioned by Henry and made by Mrs. Catherwood to play an important part in "The White Islander," was sent to the Grand River to bring in from eighty to one hundred Indian warriors to be used in the defense of Fort Mackinac. The Grand River Indians, under the leader- ship of the British, played an important part in the War of 1812.
Trading Posts
Competition in the fur trade, after the organization of the American Fur Company, of which John Jacob Astor was the moving spirit and financial head, grew more keen. That institu- tion sought to stifle individual initiative in the fur trade, to bring under the control of its posts all of the fur business not only of Michigan but of what is now the neighboring states, to stretch its line of influence even to the Pacific, to establish and perpetuate a great monopoly, in what was then the source of the forests' greatest wealth, much as the Hudson's Bay Company did for two hundred years in Canada. To that end trading posts were estab- lished on all of the important streams which flowed from the inte- rior of the state, at such points as would be most sure to intercept trade with the Indians in that vicinity.
In 1796 one LaFramboise established a post at the junction of the Grand and the Thornapple rivers. He was killed by the Indians in 1809, and from his death until 1821 the post was con- tinued under the control of Madame LaFramboise, his widow. In 1821 Rix Robinson assumed control of this important post together with those of the American Fur Company on the Kala- mazoo.
The United States acquired title to the territory of which Michigan forms a part by the treaty of Paris in 1783, but the British did not surrender the military posts in Michigan until after the Western Indians beaten by "Mad Anthony" Wayne concluded the treaty of Greenville in 1795 and the British had ratified Jay's treaty in 1796. When these were surrendered, the British sur- rendered little else, for they still controlled to a great extent the savage denizens of the wilds.
The Chippeways transferred their title to the southeastern
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
portion of Barry County to the United States by the treaty of Saginaw in 1819, and the combined tribes of the Chippeways, Pottawatamies and Ottawas gave up their claims to the north-
Mrs. Willard Hayes, One of the First White Women to Come to Hastings. She Arrived There in October, 1837
western part of the county by the treaty of Chicago in 1821. As soon as the Indian title was extinguished active preparations were made to open it to settlement. Barry County was surveyed in
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
1826 and 1827, and it was not long before the tide of emigration reached its confines.
In 1827 James Moreau established, and for nearly a decade maintained, a trading post on the Thornapple, near what was later known as Bull's Prairie. Close at hand were the wigwams of the savages, and not far away the burying-ground where the deceased members of the tribe were buried. Near this place the first government surveyors designated upon their plats "Indian Cornfields." Another enterprising trader, tradition points to Chabollier, at a time believed to have been considerable earlier than that at which Moreau's post was established, erected a block house on Scales Prairie in Thornapple township. This post was near "to one of the branches of the Grand river" mentioned in the British Narrative of 1772, where "there is another village of Pottawatamies of eight large cabins," and this village was the middle village, the Pottawatamie village midway between that on the Kekalamazoo and that upon the Washtanong or Grand. When Grand Rapids was first settled the fruit trees, then in bear- ing, from Scales Prairie were removed to the banks of the Grand. We may ask who built this block house, and seek the date which saw it raised. The only answer from the forest's gloom of long ago is, we do not know.
Barry Ideal Indian Ground
Barry County was ideal Indian ground. Here the red man held sway in barbarous majesty, or crouched cold and shivering in his rude bark wigwam drenched with rain and sleet. Here he danced the weird dance, recounted his valorous deeds in war and performed that sacred rite of sacrifice, the burning of a snow white dog to appease the Manitou. The dense timber sheltered his wigwam, generally put up near some bubbling spring, from the severity of nature's storms. Wild grapes, plums, berries and pawpaws in season were abundant. The walnut, the hickory and the beech furnished nuts in profusion. Maize and potatoes were native on this continent. Harriet Martineau after a visit to Michigan declared her belief that Milton must have been familiar with this region before he penned the garden scenes of Paradise Lost. The broad sheets of bark from the massive elm seemed designed for wigwam covering; the whitewood, tall, soft and light, seemed to grow especially to be fashioned into pirogues,
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
adapted to navigate the rocky rapids of the inland streams. The myriad small lakes, scintillating like diamonds against a back- ground of forest green, teemed with all varieties of fresh water fish, and even now at the call of "back to nature" these self same lakes are peopled in the summer time by cottagers who on their verdant shores seek respite from the heated city's throng. Deer were plentiful, and here also lived the black bear, the plague of settlers' pig pens, and an object of totemism among the Ottawas. When the early white settlers came to occupy with homes the lands of Barry County, the beaver had already disappeared before the fierce onslaughts of the fur traders, who for more than a cen- tury had plied their trade assiduously in all the forest wilds of Michigan. The otter, mink, raccoon, and fox, have either disap- peared like the wild pigeons which once darkened the skies, or their number have been decimated by the keen rapacity of mod- ern industrialism. Wild turkeys roamed the timbered lands and oak openings, and ducks and geese sought homes in all the lakes and streams. In a region possessing such a wealth of resources it was but natural that the Indian should live in great numbers.
In 1835 when Joseph S. Blaisdell, the first settler of Assyria, located there, he found Indian villages on both sections twenty- four and twenty-five of that township, the one of about thirty lodges and the other of twenty or slightly fewer. Rude fences of brush protected their patches of corn from the nightly visits of the deer. Close by was the graveyard and a part of the Indian council house was still standing, until 1850 Capt. C. D. Morris built his residence upon its site.
During the winter season many of these villagers left the Wanondaga and encamped near the head waters of the Basquon. On the shores of Bristol lake there was a village of about twenty wigwams presided over by a chief whose very name has been forgotten.
There were many red men near Thornapple lake, the home of fish and fur, and not far from what is now known as Indian Landing were Indian cornfields, and at an early day there was erected near the bubbling spring, a short distance from the lake, a lodge, used as a school house and church by the Indians, many of whom when the Federal government ordered the removal of the
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
Pottawatamies west of the Mississippi in 1840 took title to small parcels of land in the vicinity.
The late Mrs. Willard Hayes, who with her father, Daniel Mclellan, came to Hastings township in 1837, speaks of there being about a hundred Indian families encamped along the north side of the river near the Michigan avenue bridge in Hastings, and tells of an Indian medicine dance near their home, probably at the village near Indian Landing, at which two thousand Indians were present. As late as 1855 school district number five of Hastings township was organized on the petition of seven Indians who held lands on section twenty-five in that township.
Gun lake was near the border line between the Pottawat- amies, the Chippeways and the Ottawas, all however branches of the Algonquin family. Under the provisional treaty of Wash- ington in 1836, it was agreed that at a council to be held for that purpose, the chiefs of the tribes should designate three classes of half breeds, or persons of partial Indian origin, who should be entitled to share in the sum of one hundred fifty thousand dollars set apart by the treaty, "as a fund for said half breeds." The classes of persons entitled to share in this fund were determined by their relative influence in the tribe. Classes one and two were made up of chiefs; class three was not made up of chiefs, but in- cluded in class three is Penasee or Gun Lake. Perhaps the most prominent and most important band of Indians in Barry County was the mixed band of Ottawas, Chippeways and Pottawatamies, who in 1838 numbered about one hundred fifty souls, and who then lived upon the peninsula jutting far into Gun Lake from the eastern shore and now occupied by the Hastings Gun Lake Association, and who also lived and raised their corn near the land now platted as the "Wigwams." Sagimaw, said by the early historians to have been a man of strict integrity, noble bear- ing, of great good sense and a distinguished gentleman, was the acknowledged chieftain. This band was removed by Rev. James Selkirk in 1838 to Wayland township, Allegan county. Many of their descendants now live near Bradley. Sagimaw was killed, distinguished gentleman though he may have been, in 1845 by his son-in-law, in a drunken brawl. Penasee, Gun Lake, or the "Bird," the half breed mentioned in connection with the treaty of 1836, followed him as chief, and upon his death he was suc- ceeded by She-pe-quonk, or Big Thunder, more commonly known
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
among the whites as Moses Foster. One McKnight, who in 1836 or 1837 lived upon section nine in Orangeville township, and Joseph Coffin, who prior to 1840 lived upon section three of the same township, kept up a brisk trade with the Gun Lake Indians in furs and "fire water." The Indians of the Middle village on Scales Prairie, as long as they lived in Michigan, returned each year. In the summer of 1840 more than one hundred families of Indians encamped about this, the home of their fathers. There were many families among the oak openings on the south bank of the Coldwater; and in the northeastern part of the county, in the vicinity of Jordan and Sobby lakes dwelt many tribesmen under the leadership of Chief Sawba, who was regarded by the early pioneers as a bad Indian and who had the disagreeable habit of going to the shanties of the early settlers, intimidating the women and children, ransacking the cupboards and carrying off whatever pleased his fancy.
Slater's Mission and Noonday
Rev. Leonard Slater, who in 1826 had founded a mission at the rapids of the Grand, fearful that the degrading influences of civilization would counteract his efforts to Christianize these wor- shippers of Pagan deities, resolved in 1836 to remove his mission to Prairieville, and in 1836 and 1837 he brought to sections twenty-six and twenty-seven of that township perhaps three hun- dred Indians. Here he erected a church and a school house and here the Indians dwelt until 1852, when they were removed be- yond the "Father of Waters." Easily the most distinguished of the Slater Indians were Chief Noonday, a man over six feet in height, broad shouldered and well proportioned; a man of won- derful muscular power, he easily maintained his leadership among the savage tribes of the Grand River valley, whose legions he had led against the Americans during the War of 1812. It is claimed that he was present at the burning of Buffalo, took part in the battle of the Thames, and personally witnessed the death of Tecumseh, then a brigadier general in the British army. He be- came attached to Rev. Slater and when the mission was removed from Grand Rapids to Prairieville, Noonday came to this county, where he died and is buried. The late Henry Little of Richland thus describes Mrs. Noonday :
"Her ladyship, Mrs. Noonday, was a short, dumpy, unassum-
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
ing lady of the old school. Nature had not seen fit to make her very attractive by the bewitching fascinating charms of personal beauty, but what little there might have been of feminine comeli- ness in her features had been sadly marred by an ugly scar on the left side of her face."
Whatever may be said of the treatment of the settlers else- where by the Indians, there was never any serious cause for com- plaint here. The two races intermarried to some extent and in
Cornelius Mason on the Site of Noonday's Cabin Near Cressey
many families there runs the blood of the native Americans who once could call this country their native land.
The Indians throughout the west were invited to join the uprising of Black-hawk. A grand council of the savages was held at Gull Lake to determine whether the savages of this locality would join the insurrection or not. This council is thus described by Mr. Frank Little in the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society collections :
"A few days after this I attended a grand council of the Indian chiefs held in a mammoth wigwam near the shore of West
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
Gull Lake. This was to ascertain the temper of the Indians of the locality in reference to the Black-Hawk insurrection. The chiefs in full dress were seated in a great circle upon valuable robes, mats and skins of animals spread upon the ground. A more grave, imposing body of men I never saw. The calumet or pipe of peace, of elaborate workmanship, was slowly passed around the circle and each took a whiff in silence. Then speeches began in regular order of age and rank. It was found that the young men were for war but the older, experienced sachems counselled peace."
In any event the Michigan Indians remained neutral.
Indian Traits and Habits
The Indian seldom had a permanent residence. He gen- erally lived where he could live the easiest, prompted but slightly by a desire to provide for the future. During the spring he went where the fishing was best; during the summer he raised his tee-pee near some swamp or berry patch. In the later winter and early spring many of them went to the timbered lands to make maple sugar. After making an incision in the tree they fixed under it a wooden spile along which the sap flowed to drop in a birch bark bucket, constructed by binding together the four cor- ners of a piece of birch bark. The sap thus collected at the time the early settlers came to this country was boiled down in brass kettles, procured by the savages from Mackinac traders. When the sugar season was over the sugar was packed in mococks or birch bark hampers for convenience in carrying, and the birch bark buckets were unlaced and stretched out and dried and then piled one on top of the other; after being well dried the buckets and kettles were cached until the following spring, when they were dug up again and used for sugar making.
Formation of Barry County
Barry County was formed by act of the Territorial legis- lature of April 29, 1829, along with a number of other counties in the state, taking their names from men prominent in national affairs at the time,-Jackson, Berrien, Cass, Calhoun, Van Buren, Barry, Eaton, Ingham and Livingston. Barry County taking its name from William T. Barry, Postmaster General of the United States under President Jackson.
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HISTORY OF BARRY COUNTY
By act of November 4, 1829, the counties of Kalamazoo, Cal- houn, Branch, Barry and Eaton, and much of the country north of the base line and west of the principal meridian south of the county of Michillmackinac, was attached to and formed a part of St. Joseph County. The next day, November 5, 1829, an act was passed which provided that the counties of Kalamazoo and Barry and all of the country lying north of the same which was attached to and formed a part of St. Joseph County by the previous act, should form the township of Brady, and that the first township meeting was to be held at the house of Abram J. Shaver in said township. This house was on the west side of Prairie Ronde. When Kalamazoo County was organized, July 30th, 1830, Cal- houn, Barry and Eaton counties were attached to it for judicial purposes. The first court was held at the house of Abraham J. Shaver on Prairie Ronde. Over this court presided as one of the county Associate Judges, Bazil Harrison, said to have been the hero of Cooper's "Bee Hunter."
Early Settlers
Barry County was not on the direct line of travel toward the west, but in 1831 Amasa S. Parker, a native of Connecticut, and the first white settler who took title to land in Barry County, built a house in Prairieville township. Orville Barnes, in 1833, settled in the same township. In 1834 Rev. Moses Lawrence, a local Methodist preacher, came into what is known as Barry township and located lands on sections twenty-seven and twenty- eight. His nearest neighbor was Amasa S. Parker, mentioned above. The same year Charles W. Spaulding located lands on section twenty-three in Prairieville township. Calvin G. Hill set- tled in Thornapple township in 1834, and the next year Henry Leonard came to the same township. Joseph Blaisdell came to Assyria in 1836, and the same year Samuel Wickham settled in Carlton township; Slocum H. Bunker in Hastings township; George Brown in Orangeville; Lorenzo Cooley and Estes Rich in Rutland; Calvin Lewis in Yankee Springs; Albert E. Bull in Irving, and Harlow Merrill and William P. Bristol in Johnstown.
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