USA > Michigan > Van Buren County > A History of Van Buren County, Michigan: A Narrative Account of Its Historical Progress, Its. > Part 34
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63
Sickendick, George D., Columbia; Company H; enlisted Sep- tember 1, 1861; discharged September 25, 1865.
Thompson, George H., Arlington; Company H; enlisted August 1, 1861; killed in action at Stone River, Tennessee, December 11, 1862.
Tibbitts, Eugene D., Pine Grove; Company H; enlisted August 1, 1861; discharged September 25, 1865.
Van Fleet, Samuel N., Lawrence; Company H; enlisted August 1, 1861; discharged for disability February 28, 1862. Subse- quently became entirely blind as a result of his service.
MISCELLANEOUS REGIMENTS
Andrews, Isaac B., Hartford; Company G, Thirty-ninth Illi- nois Infantry; enlisted September 10, 1861; killed in action at Drury's Bluff, Virginia, May 16, 1864.
Bardwell, Joseph H., Paw Paw; Battery I, First Illinois Artil- lery ; sergeant ; enlisted February 10, 1862; discharged July 26, 1865.
Beddo, Horace, Paw Paw; Battery I, First Illinois Artillery ; enlisted February 19, 1862; discharged July 26, 1865.
Campbell, William W., Paw Paw; Twenty-first Indiana Bat- tery; enlisted September 9, 1862; discharged June 10, 1865.
Dunham, Hiram G., Hartford; Company G, Thirty-ninth Illi- nois Infantry ; enlisted August 19, 1861; died at Cumberland, Maryland, February 23, 1862.
Magoon, Edward M., Paw Paw; Battery I, First Illinois Artil- lery ; enlisted February 21, 1862; discharged for disability July 11, 1862.
Mitchelson, Thomas F., Paw Paw; Battery I, First Illinois Artillery ; enlisted February 10, 1862; died at Pittsburg Land- ing, Tennessee, July 11, 1862.
Hosted by
.
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
309
Moon, O. F., Decatur; Battery I, First Illinois Artillery ; enlisted February 6, 1862; no further record.
Pierce, Charles J., Decatur; corporal; Battery I, First Illinois Artillery ; enlisted February 12, 1862; discharged July 6, 1865.
St. John, George, Hartford; Battery I, First Illinois Artillery ; enlisted January 29, 1862; died at Moscow, Tennessee, July 2, 1862.
Smith, George, Decatur; Battery I, First Illinois Artillery ; en- listed February 6, 1862; discharged July 26, 1865.
O'Dell, Barnabas, Paw Paw; enlisted in United States navy, March 1, 1865; served on United States steamers, Collier and Great Western; discharged August 20, 1865. Present residence, Paw Paw.
Teed, Augustus, Almena; enlisted United States navy, March 1, 1865.
Foster, Ebenezer; enlisted in Ninth United States Colored Heavy Artillery, August 13, 1864, at Decatur; mustered August 13, 1864; no further record.
Fowler, Galpin; enlisted in Ninth United States Colored Heavy Artillery ; mustered August 13, 1864, at Decatur ; no further record.
Good, Horace; enlisted in Ninth United States Colored Heavy Artillery, at Decatur; mustered August 13, 1864; no further record.
During this great struggle for the life of the nation the state of Michigan furnished to the government something over 90,000 troops, of whom nearly 15,000 lost their lives by sickness or in battle. Van Buren county furnished 1,884 men. When we re- member that the total population of the county in 1860 was only 15,224; that the total enrolment of men liable for military duty in December, 1864, was only 1,540; that the war tax of the county was $155,637 and that nearly $100,000 was paid by the county for the relief of soldiers' families, we get some faint idea of the great sacrifices demanded and cheerfully made. Soldiers from Van Buren county were found in seventy regiments from Michi- gan and other states.
But neither figures of arithmetic, nor figures of speech, can record the sacrifices and the suffering, nor the deep underlying current of patriotism that was the dominant spirit in those days that tried men's souls. That this great nation is once more united, that sectionalism and strife no longer exist, that all are animated by the spirit of patriotism that knows no north, no south, no east, no west, is sufficient cause for our everlasting gratitude and thank- fulness.
We sometimes feel that faith in the perpetuity of our free in- stitutions that was manifested by the little lad when, during the
Hosted by
+
£
310
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
Civil war, he saw a rainbow spanning the eastern heavens. "Moth- er, mother, oh ! mother!" he exclaimed, pointing upward with his innocent little hands, "God is a Union man. I know he is a Union man because I saw his flag in the sky, and it was red, white and blue."
SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR
Van Buren county was well represented in the Spanish-American war. Perhaps no county in the state sent a greater number of young men, in proportion to population, to free the Cubans from Spanish oppression, than did Van Buren. Some were in Cuba, some were in the Philippines and some did not get beyond the borders of their own country. The author regrets that after diligent search, he has been wholly unable to procure a list of the names of the Van Buren county boys who volunteered in that struggle. There seemed to be no way in which a complete list could be procured, as the state has not, as yet, made any compilation of the names of its soldiers who participated in that contest as it did of those who served in the Civil war. Rather than mention a few names picked up here and there, it was thought best not to mention any.
Hosted by
CHAPTER XII
GEOLOGY OF COUNTY
THE CAMBRIAN-ORDOVICIAN-THE SILURIAN AGE-DEVONIAN- LOWER CARBONIFEROUS-THE PLEISTOCENE (LAST CHAPTER).
By R. A. Smith, B.A., M.A., Assistant Geologist Michigan Geo- logical and Biological Survey
In order to understand the geological history of Van Buren county, one must know the geological history of the rock forma- tions of Michigan itself, for Michigan may be considered as a geo- logical unit of which Van Buren county is but a small and insep- arable part. If the thick screen of unconsolidated sands, gravels, and clays which, almost everywhere, form the surface deposits of the state, could be removed, the bed-rock formations would appear lying one within the other like a pile of very shallow but gigantic basins. The rims of the outer basins are exposed in northern Michigan, on the western side of Green Bay, in northern Illinois, in Ohio, and on the eastern side of Georgian bay in Canada. The rims of the smaller basins occur successively toward the center in a more or less concentric manner, until the smallest basin, the Sag- inaw coal basin, lies wholly in lower Michigan and almost in its exact geographical center. These beds or formations are sediment- ary deposits of sandstones, conglomerates, shales, limestones, etc. Obviously, the lowest bed was deposited first and each successively higher bed followed in order, so that the oldest rocks are the low- est and the youngest are at the top.
THE CAMBRIAN
For a long time previous to the deposition of the lowermost paleozoic sediments, the region extending from the Arctic ocean to the Gulf of Mexico appears to have been land. Through geolog- ical forces, it was slowly depressed from the southwest and the sea slowly came in over Texas following the continued sinking of the land to the northeast, until all of the Mississippi valley and most of the Great Lakes region was occupied by a vast interior or epi- continental sea, which persisted all through Palaeozoic times to
311
Hosted by
.
312
IIISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
the end of the Carboniferous,-a period equal to half the time scale since the Algonkian. This sea was, in the main, shallow, for the deposits were largely those of sands and gravels, which are the marks of wave action, shore currents and rivers. This period is known as the Cambrian. At the close of this period of encroach- ment by the sea, Michigan was covered by a shallow sea with prob- able land to the north and east of Georgian bay and to the north of Lake Superior.
Since Michigan was the last region to sink beneath the water, only the upper beds of the Cambrian are found in Michigan. They are for the most part red sandstones and are known as the Lake Superior or Potsdam sandstone, of which the Pictured Rocks on the south shore of Lake Superior furnish a most picturesque ex- ample. These sandstones, if present at all under Van Buren county, must lie buried beneath several thousand feet of later sedi- ments.
THE ORDOVICIAN
The Cambrian period was one of steady encroachment of the sea from the southwest. The Ordovician age which followed was one of continued general depression with wider and clearer seas yet shallow and warm, so that, in Middle Ordovician time, enorm- ous deposits of limestone were laid down, now called the Trenton limestone. Naturally, the Lower Ordovician deposits are those of transition from the sandy shore deposits of Cambrian time to those of limestone in Middle Ordovician and show evidences of local emergences, represented by the Calciferous and St. Peters sandstones. The St. Peters is a true emergence sandstone, present in Wisconsin and Minnesota, but unfortunately it is hard to dis- tinguish it in Michigan from other underlying sandstones that are known to belong to the uppermost Cambrian. We find it present at Rapid river in the Upper Peninsula, but nothing definite is known concerning it in lower Michigan.
The deposition of limestone was ended in Middle Ordovician time, however, by the raising up of a long low arch or anticline, extending northward from Nashville and Cincinnati through Ohio. This is known as the Nashville and Cincinnati anticline. In west- ern Ohio this arch divides into two branches, one passing north- ward into western Ontario and southeastern Michigan, and the other northwestward into Indiana. This anticline, together with the "Wisconsin Island" and the ancient Archean highland on the north and northeast, tended to make a great gulf over Michigan running northwest to southeast, thus separating the Michigan basin from the more open sea to the southwest in the Mississippi valley. This emergence resulted in the deposition of muds now represented
Hosted by Google
313
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
by the Utica, Lorraine and Richmond shales. The Utica shales in Michigan are black, while the others are mainly blue.
The elevation of the Nashville and Cincinnati anticline was only an expression of a more or less general upward movement of the continent as a whole until the deposits were largely above water and exposed to the agents of erosion, so that when the land again sank below the water the six hundred feet of Utica, Lorraine and Richmond muds of lower Michigan were deposited unconformably upon an eroded and worn down surface. Little is known of this pre-Richmond emergence in lower Michigan, as very little is known of Ordovician formations as a whole in the Lower Peninsula. They are all so deep that no wells in Van Buren county or in the south- western part of the state have positively reached them, though borings further from the center of the Michigan basin, as at South Bend, Indiana, at Cheboygan and at Manitoulin island, Lake Huron, indicate the Lorraine to be fairly uniform in thickness and persistent throughout the Lower Peninsula. The Trenton, the great oil horizon of Ohio, has been sought by oil prospectors in all parts of the state, but probably it has not been reached in the southwestern counties.
THE SILURIAN
The emergence at the end of the Richmond ended the Ordovician and the succeeding submergence of the land and encroachment by the sea was the beginning of the Silurian age. The sea gradually became clearer until the muds, now the Medina, Clinton and Ro- chester shales-the latter often dolomitic-gave place to the thick (270-600 feet) deposits of dolomites and limestones of Niagaran age.
During the period from the Richmond to the Medina and Clin- ton, there was an abundance of iron in the muddy sediments, es- pecially in the Clinton, which from New York to Alabama and in Wisconsin has an iron content that makes it locally of considerable commercial importance. In the southwestern part of the state, some of these ferruginous shales do not appear to have been de- posited. These formations, though often more than 2,000 feet be- low the surface. are much better known. as drillings at Kalamazoo and in many parts of the state have pierced them.
As the Trenton marks the period of the greatest transgression of the sea upon the land in the Ordovician, so the Niagaran marks a similar period in the Silurian. All of Michigan seems to have been covered by the great sea, which extended from the Gulf of Mexico across the Arctic zone and southward into Europe. Vast as the Niagaran sea was, it was still a shallow sea with a fauna
Hosted by
.
.
314
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
characteristic of clear, shallow, warm water. The Niagara is one of the thickest and most extensive deposits of coralline limestone known in any age. If forms the shore of western and northern Lake Michigan and of northern and eastern Lake Huron, and the precipice over which the waters of the Niagara river tumble. Its outcrops in Alabama, Iowa, Alaska, Greenland, Spitzenbergen, Great Britain, Scandinavia, Russia, China and Southern Europe give an idea of the enormous extent of the Niagara limestone. Wells in the southwestern part of the state show that the Niagara limestone occurs from about one thousand to nearly two thousand feet below the surface.
Following the great limestone age, there came one of excessive aridity. The Michigan sea was nearly, if not quite, enclosed by land, so that great deposits of salt, anhydrite, and limestone were laid down. These form the Salina (or Lower Monroe) of the Mid- dle Silurian age, which carries most of the beds of rock salt in the southeastern part of the state. No rock salt occurs in the strata under Van Buren county and the Monroe is much thinner than it is in the eastern part of the state. This suggests the possibility that the western part of the state may have been out of water for a time, so that there may have been an erosion instead of a depo- sition of sediments. This western Michigan bar appears to have divided the Michigan sea into two parts,-a closed eastern sea like Great Salt lake, in which both gypsum and salt were deposited, and an open western one in which obviously conditions necessary for the deposition of gypsum or salt could not obtain. Toward the end of Silurian time, normal conditions gradually returned with a corresponding gradual transition upward in the deposits from salt and anhyrite to limestones, now the Lower Monroe dolomite.
THE DEVONIAN
At. the very end of the Silurian age or at the beginning of Dev- onian time, a very pure white sandstone, the Sylvania, was laid down. This bed is so pure that it is used for glass manufacture in some states. Toward the north, in Michigan, the bed grades into calcareous sand or into limestone. Above this bed, lie the lime- stones of the Middle and Upper Monroe formations. These carry beds of anhydrite or gypsum, indicative of the recurrence of arid and Mediterranean conditions. An emergence at the end of the Upper Monroe occurred, as shown by the superposition of the Dun- dee limestone unconformably upon the eroded surface of the former. This is significant in the explanation of the deposits of salt and anhydrite in the Middle Monroe, as just such an emer-
Hosted by Google
315
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
gence would cause the Michigan gulf to become a closed or Mediter- ranean sea.
Middle and Upper Devonian rocks are mainly alternating beds of heavy limestones and shales, indicative of a somewhat variable character of the age as a whole, though the heavy limestone show that stable conditions existed for part of the period. The three divi- sions of these sediments are the Dundee limestones, the Traverse formation of limestones and shales, and the black Antrim shales. The latter have often been mistaken by the oil drillers for the black shales just above the Trenton. This error has been made in drill- ings in the southwestern part of the state. The Trenton horizon probably has never been penetrated in Van Buren county, nor in any of the southwestern counties.
LOWER CARBONIFEROUS
The Berea grit at the base of the Mississippian or Lower Car- boniferous, is another very pure sandstone. It is indicative of a general emergence of the land, as it is so widespread in Ohio and Michigan. The brines, which it contains, are extremely salt, so that Mediterranean conditions must have obtained for a time, but the concentration was not carried to such an extent that salt was deposited. This bed, the Berea, is found all along the eastern side of the state in wells but it gradually disappears toward the west, so that it has not been recognized in western Michigan.
Very muddy seas prevailed for a long time after the deposition of the Berea as nearly one thousand feet of shales lie above it. These are the Coldwater shales, which everywhere underlie the loose surface deposits of Van Buren county. These shales, in the western part of the state, are really shaly limestones rather than shales. The western part of the Michigan sea therefore seems to have been clearer, thus favoring the deposition of calcareous sedi- ments.
THE PLEISTOCENE (LAST CHAPTER)
If other deposits were laid down upon the Coldwater shales of Van Buren county, they were afterwards eroded away so that no trace of them remains. At the end of the Carboniferous period, the land east of the Mississippi was elevated above water and Michi- gan was never covered by the sea again. Thus, during the enor- mous period elapsing between the end of the Carboniferous and the beginning of the Pleistocene, or Ice Age, a period represented by nearly half the time scale since the Algonkian, the land surface of Michigan was exposed to the agents of erosion, so that it may have been much eroded and worn down to base level by great river systems, which must have existed in what is now the Great Lakes
Hosted by
.
316
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
region. Probably a thick mantle of soil had accumulated, but of this we know little or nothing, for in the Pleistocene or Ice age, great continental ice sheets from Canada invaded the whole region north of the Ohio and the Missouri rivers and removed the loose sur- face accumulations from nearly the whole region. One of the sheets spread from a center west of Hudson bay, and another from Labrador. The ice advanced in the form of tongues or lobes. The basins of Lake Michigan, Green Bay, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, Sag- inaw Bay, etc., were each occupied by one of these lobes which not only scoured their respective basins deeper but scraped the soil mantle clean from the adjacent lands. The bed rocks were also much ground and worn away. Their surfaces, where exposed, are nearly always found to be smoothed and polished, with grooves or striae cut in them, showing the direction of the ice movement. The ice movement in Van Buren county was chiefly from the north- west, as the ice moved radially outward from the Lake Michigan lobe. The hills in general were rounded off and, while valleys as a rule were worn deeper, some were filled up with loose materials such as clays, sands, and gravels.
With the melting away of the ice sheet, the glacial materials be- neath and within the ice were left in irregular masses, or in more or less level sheets, sometimes six hundred feet or more in thick- ness. In Van Buren county, the glacial drift is not nearly so thick, being sometimes less than one hundred feet, and rarely much more than three hundred feet in thickness. The irregular hilly tracts, the accumulation of glacial materials along the melting ice front, are called moraines, while the level or gently undulating tracts, the accumulations of glacial debris beneath the ice, are the till plains. The latter are mainly composed of clay, except where running water from the melting ice has more or less worked over the glacial material or drift, so that we have beds of sands and gravel. The till plains of clay form the finest of soils and the basis of much of the farming in Michigan.
Wherever the water was for a time ponded in front of the ice or in the depressions we have lake sands and clays. A large lake called Lake Chicago occupied the southern end of the Lake Michi- gan depression, being ponded in front of the ice border to the north. The lake stood at so high a level that its waters flowed through an outlet near Chicago into the Mississippi. The waters of this lake covered much of Van Buren county and in the western part of the county near Lake Michigan there remains an area of the resulting lake clays and, in the northern and northwestern, there are considerable areas of the light lake sands. Large streams from the melting ice front worked over a large part of the glacial material or drift and, in the eastern part of the county, spread it
Hosted by Google
317
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
out into gravelly or sandy plains called outwash aprons. Most of the material in the central and western parts of the county is a boulder clay, or till, as it is called, and was a direct deposit under the ice. In places, it has been partially worked over by streams, giv- ing rise to sandy or gravelly strips.
The long range of irregular hills running north and south through the western part of the county and an irregular hilly area in the central and northern part are morainic accumulations in front of the ice margin, when the latter remained stationary for a considerable time-that is, the ice advanced just about as fast as it was melted away. Thus a great deal of glacial debris would be left in irregular masses, forming a line of hills running parallel to the ice front for hundreds of miles. The moraine, or the range of hills mentioned above, extends from Muskegon county through Van Buren county and around the southern end of Lake Michigan into Wisconsin. It marks the position of the ice front in one of its many halts during its retreat. The materials of these deposits are mainly clays, sandy loams, clay loams, etc., and form good soils, but their hilly character often renders them less adapted to ordinary farming than the till plains.
With the deposition of this material from the retreating ice sheet, and its partial reworking by water, the last chapter in the geological history of Michigan was closed.
Hosted by
318
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
ORCHARDS IN BLOOM
CORN FROM RECLAIMED SWAMP LAND
Hosted by
CHAPTER XIII
AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE
WESTERN VAN BUREN-LAKE MICHIGAN, A BENEFACTOR-FRUIT RAISING AT SOUTH HAVEN-FRUIT BELT WIDENS-COOPERATION THROUGH SOCIETIES-"MASTER L. H. BAILEY"-A. S. DYCKMAN AND T. T. LYON-CROPS OF THE COUNTY-SEMI-AGRICULTURAL IN- DUSTRIES-AGRICULTURE IN EASTERN VAN BUREN-"OAK OPEN- INGS" FIRST CULTIVATED-PIONEER FARM IMPLEMENTS-AFTER THE CIVIL WAR-LIVE STOCK-GOLDEN ERA (1865-90)-THE LEAN YEARS OF THE NINETIES-DEVELOPMENT OF THE GRAPE IN- DUSTRY.
Fruit has been grown on a commercial scale in the western part of Van Buren county for over fifty years.
The first orchards in this section were set sixty years ago, and for the greater part of those six decades fruit-raising has been its chief industry. It has always been more important in this section than either grain-farming or stock-raising, and this is increasingly true as one approaches Lake Michigan.
Except for the earlier years of the community, from its first settlement to the close of the Civil war, during which period the timber industry in its various branches was the leading one, the fruit industry has held undisputed sway as the chief interest and principal support of this thriving and prosperous community.
LAKE MICHIGAN, A BENEFACTOR
Natural causes brought about this condition. Chief among them was the proximity of Lake Michigan which acts as a vast regulator of temperatures. The lake modifies the extremes of heat and cold all through this region; it protects the fruit trees by checking a premature development of their buds in spring, and by retarding their growth in the fall; it prevents in a large degree frosts in spring and fall, and in times of drought is. a great reservoir for disseminating needed moisture.
During the earlier days of the fruit industry, and particularly
319
Hosted by
.
320
HISTORY OF VAN BUREN COUNTY
in the decade of the seventies during which it forged to the front, these influences of the lake were carefully observed and records kept that showed the advantages derived from that body of water. And Van Buren county, situated as it as at the eastern edge of the broadest part of the lake, gains the fullest measure of benefit from this source.
Contour of the land for favorable water and air drainage and suitable soil have also been elements contributing largely to the development of the fruit industry, and a no less potent factor has been the nearness and accessibility to markets, particularly the magic city of Chicago, which not only consumes vast quantities of the fruit and other farm products from this section, but affords a center for the speedy and economical distribution of the surplus to sub-centers serving millions of people in the middle west, north- west, southwest and south, and even east and southeast.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.