USA > Michigan > Cass County > A twentieth century history of Cass County, Michigan > Part 13
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CALVIN.
Calvin township was estimated as having two hundred inhabitants by: 1837. AAmong the earliest of these was the family of William Grubb, who came from Logan county, Ohio, in 1830. The same year came David Shaffer, a skilful hunter whose annual record gained in the wil- derness of this county was said to include as many as two hundred deer. In the southwestern portion of the township Peter Shaffer located in 1832 and resided there until his death in 1880. His son, George T. Shaffer, was prominent locally, and as a military man his record is unique. He was a member of a militia company during the war of 1812, and half a century later entered the service of his country in the rebellion. He became successively first lieutenant, captain, major, lieu- tenant-colonel, and in March, 1865, was brevetted colonel and brigadier- general of volunteers.
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Another Calvin settler was Levi D. Norton, who located here from Jefferson. His name is found frequently in connection with the civil affairs of his township. It is also noteworthy that he was among those who turned the first furrows in Jefferson township and assisted in the production of the first crops.
In 1833 the East settlement was established in the northeastern portion of this township. The family of this name and its numerous connections have left a distinct impress on the history of the county. William East and his wife Rachel, who were members of the Society of Friends, thus giving another touch of distinction to the settlement, were the parents of the large family which formed the nucleus of this settlement. To mention the names of their sons will recall some of the early and prominent settlers of this township. They were, James M .. Calvin K., Armstrong, John H., Jesse, Alfred J. and Joel.
Another well known family of early date in Calvin, and also strict Quakers in faith, were the Osborns. Charles Osborn, the progenitor of the family and himself at one time a resident of Cass county, was a famous Quaker preacher and abolitionist, having traveled in the interests of his church pretty much over the civilized world. His later years were devoted almost entirely to anti-slavery agitation, and his position on this question was among the extreme radicals. William Lloyd Gar- rison called him "the father of all us abolitionists." His work gave him an international reputation among the advocates of emancipation. The first paper ever published which advocated the doctrine of imme- ciate and unconditional emancipation was issued by Mr. Osborn at Mount Pleasant, Ohio, in 1816, entitled the Philanthropist. In order to attain to complete consistency with his views, he held that none of the products of slave labor should be used. He himself refused to wear any garments made of cotton, nor would he eat cane sugar, on the ground that slave labor was used in its manufacture. Singularly appropriate it is that the history of this opponent of slavery should be connected with the township which sheltered one of the first colonies of freedmen.
Josiah Osborn, a son of the abolitionist, settled on Section 24 of Calvin township in 1835. His connection with the township is notable because he planted one of the first fruit orchards and nurseries in the county, clearing away the virgin forest to make place for his fruit trees. He also was one of those concerned in the Kentucky raid of 1848, and suffered such severe losses thereby that he is said to have been obliged to work ten years to pay off all the obligations incurred.
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The history of the colored settlement in Calvin, which has played such an important part in the annals of the township, will be considered on later pages.
HOWARD.
Turning now to some of the townships which were settled and or- ganized after the pioneer period, a few facts and names may be recalled that will complete this outline of early growth and development in the county.
Howard township, although in the direct line of settlement, was passed by at first because of the prejudice against its numerous oak openings, or barrens, whose fertility and value had not yet been tested. But it was not long before the productiveness of its soils was established. and by the late thirties its population was up to the average of the newer townships. Long before the substantial settlement of this portion of the county had begun, there lived on Section 18, close to the western line of the county, one of the famous pioneer characters of the St. Joseph country. William Kirk, whom we have mentioned as an associate of Squire Thompson, and whose first home was in Berrien county, while hunting one day discovered a fine spring in Section 18 and at once moved his family and built his log cabin beside the bubbling water, although he thus became situated far from neighbors. In his entertainment of im- migrants and land lookers he united pioneer hospitality with his inherent southern lavishness, and thus dissipated the greater part of his posses- sions. He was fond of the solitudes, not because of any ascetic nature, but because hunting and fishing and the life of the wild woods attracted him more than the occupations and society of an advanced civilization. It is not surprising, therefore, after the advent of the railroad and the progress of settlement had practically destroyed his hunting grounds. to find him bidding farewell to Cass county scenes and moving to the far west. He died in Oregon, in 1881, at the age of eighty-nine years.
We have mentioned how necessary to development was the sawmill. It is stated that the first water-power sawmill in Howard township was built about 1834 by Joseph Harter, who had located in the township in 1830. In 1836 a carpenter and joiner arrived in the township in the person of William H. Doane, and he became well known in township affairs. He brought a stove into the township in 1837, and it was the attraction of the neighborhood for some time, being known as "Doane's Nigger."
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A man of mark in the township was Ezekiel C. Smith, who located here in 1835. Almost at once he was elected justice of the peace, and during thirty-six years in that office he is said to have married four hundred couples. He also served as supervisor, and was sent to the state legislature in 1850.
Another figure in the affairs of early Howard township was James Shaw, who located here in 1840, and served several times as supervisor, two terms in the legislature, and afterward was Democratic candidate for the senate. Other names that belong among the first settlers are found in the election polling list of 1837, which comprises: Ira Perkins, John W. Abbott, Jonathan Wells, O. D. S. Gallup, Zenos Smith, Henry Heath, J. V. R. Perkins, Amasa Smith, Ephraim Huntley, Joseph C. Teats, Ebner Emmons, Arthur C. Blue, Charles Stephenson, Zina Rhodes, Nathan Dumboltom, Eli Rice, Jr., Daniel Partridge, Gurdon B. Fitch, Sylvenon Dumboltom, Calvin Kinney, Nathan McCoy, Henry L. Gould, Jonathan E. Wells.
MILTON.
Milton township, which till 1838 was the west half of Ontwa, had similarly attractive features with its neighbor and developed from the pioneer stage about the same time. This township also contains a por- tion of the famous Beardsley's prairie, where the pioneers were enabled to reap plenteous crops by the first year's effort and which consequently first attracted the attention of the settlers.
The first names are those of John Hudson and J. Melville, neither of whom remained long. Cannon Smith and family, who made Edwards- burg their home from the fall of 1828 till the spring of 1831, settled on section 14. Mr. Smith's house was a model pioneer dwelling such as the typical one described in the first part of this chapter. He did all the work himself, his only tools being an ax, draw-shave, hammer and anger. After the trees had been felled and split, and hewn out into siding as nearly as possible, the draw-shave was used for the finishing. The studding and braces were split out like fence rails, and then labor- iously smoothed on one side to an even surface. The frame was fast- ened together with wooden pins, and the roof consisted of "shakes" held down with poles. Mr. Smith was a good Methodist, and this humble house often sheltered his neighbors while listening to the words of the circuit rider of those days.
Peter Truitt was the merchant and business man of early Milton. In
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his double log cabin, built in 1831. he opened the first stock of goods in the township, and as his merchandise did not monopolize all the space in his house nor its disposal require all his time and attention, he also transformed his place into the "White Oak Tree Tavern," at which for many years he welcomed the tarrying traveler through this region.
SILVER CREEK.
Silver Creek, famed as the last retreat of the Pottawottomies who remained behind after the great exodus, had only about one hundred white inhabitants in 1837. If there is any connection between the voting population and those who build the first homes, first plow the soil and fell the virgin forest, the burden of pioneer development in Silver Creek must largely have fallen on those who participated in the first election in the fall of 1838, whose names are recorded as fol- lows: E. Shaw. W. W. Barney, Joseph Spencer, John McDaniel, Henry Dewey, John Barney, John Woolman, A. Barney, Samuel Stockwell, Jacob Suits, P. B. Dunning, William Brooks, James Allen, Timothy Treat, James Hall.
The first entry of land in this town was made in section 12. hy James McDaniel, December 16. 1834. When he located there in the following spring he erected the first house and plowed the first furrow. the initial events of development. He also began the construction of the sawmill which subsequently was purchased and completed by John Bar- ney, who arrived in 1836, and whose connection with the early manu- facturing interests gives him a place in another chapter of this work.
Jacob \. Suits came in September, 1836, and built the fifth house in the township. The next year there came Timothy Treat and family : James Allen, Joseph and William Van Horn, Benj. B. Dunning, Eli W. Teach, Patrick Hamilton, Harwood Sellick, James McOmber, Jabes Cady, Israel Sallee, George McCreary, James Hall, William Brooks, and others. In the same year the township was cut off from Pokagon and organized.
MASON.
Once more directing our attention to the south side of the county. we will mention briefly some of those concerned in the development of the small township of Mason. The attractiveness of Breadsley's prairie caused the first tide of immigration to pass over Mason's fertile soil, and, as we know. it was not until 1836 that a sufficient population had come to justify organization into a separate township.
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The first settler was Elam Beardsley, who moved on his claim in section 12 in the early months of 1830. He erected the first cabin and set out the first apple trees. He was a member of the noted pioneer family of that name, and another was Darius Beardsley, who put up his cabin in 1832. The fate of Darius Beardsley illustrates another sad feature of life in a frontier country. One day in the winter of 1833 he started on foot for Edwardsburg, the nearest trading point, where he bought his household supplies. The snow was two feet deep and the entire distance was a trackless waste of white. He was detained in the village until well towards evening, and then set out alone in the gath- ering twilight toward his home. It was intensely cold, and as darkness came on he was unable to make out the road he had traveled in the morning. He was soon wandering about in the shelterless forest, and at last exhausted by the cold and the fatigue of struggling through the snow, he sat down under a tree to rest. Here, within half a mile of home and family, his neighbors found him frozen to death and carried him home to his grief-stricken wife, who, unable to leave her small children, had been compelled to await the results of the search which after several days gave her the lifeless body of her husband. Such was a not uncommon tragedy enacted in many a frontier community.
One of the well known personages during the early years of Mason was S. C. Gardner, who, in 1835. found a home in Section 13. Not long after, his house being located on the "territorial road." an important artery of early immigration, he became a landlord and his house was filled almost nightly with the tired travelers who in those days asked nothing better than the simplest victuals to eat and a roof to shelter them while they pillowed their heads on the hard floor.
Others who were identified with the early development of this town- ship were Jotham Curtis, at whose house the first township election was held: the Miller family, numbering all told twenty persons, who formed what was known as the Miller settlement : Henry Thompson ; J. Hubbard Thomas; Elijah and Daniel Bishop, who came about 1838.
NEWBERG.
The first land selected for settlement from the now well peopled Newberg township was in Section 34, where John Bair chose his home in October, 1832. Here he made the first improvements effected in the township, built a cabin in which he dispensed hospitality to all who came, whether they were ministers of the gospel. land viewers, hunters
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and trappers, white men or Indians; and he himself divided his time be- tween the cultivation of a pioneer farm and the avocation of hunting and fishing, which he loved with a frontiersman's devotion.
He soon had a neighbor in the person of Daniel Driskel, who lo- cated on Section 36 in the fall of 1834. In 1835 land was entered by George Poe, Marvick Rudd, Thomas Armstrong, Samuel Hutchings, Felix Girton, John Grennell, William D. Jones. These and such men as Barker F. Rudd, William D. Easton, Alexander Allen, Spencer Nicholson, Samuel Eberhard, Hiram Harwood, formed the nucleus around which larger settlements grew up, resulting in the separate or- ganization of the township in 1838.
MARCELLUS.
And finally the course of development also included the extreme northeast corner of the county, where the dense forests and heavy timber. the marshes and malaria, had seemed uninviting to the early settlers. But hy the middle thirties the tide of settlement was at the flood, and there was no considerable area of the county that was not overflowed by eager homescekers. All the prairie lands had been occupied, and now the forests must also yield before the ax and be replaced with the wav- ing corn.
Joseph Haight, from Orleans county, New York, was the first set- tler, arriving in the summer of 1836. In the following year he was joined by Frederick Goff and Joseph Bair. Goff was a carpenter, and as it was possible by this time to get lumber at convenient distance, he built for himself, instead of the ordinary log cabin, a small frame house, which was the first in the township.
Among other early settlers of Marcellus were G. R. Beebe, who came in 1838, Moses P. Blanchard, Daniel G. Rouse, who has already been mentioned as taking a leading part in township organization. These and others are named among those who voted at the first township meeting in 1843 and in the general election of the same year, that list being as follows: John Huyck, Daniel G. Rouse, Abijah Huyck, Will- iam Wolfe, Joseph Bair, Cyrus Goff. Nathan Udell, Andrew Scott, G. R. Beebe, Joseph Haight. Moses Blanchard, Philo McOmber, John Savage, E. Hyatt, Alfred Paine. Joseph P. Gilson. Lewis Thomas, Samuel Cory.
In describing the period while civilization was getting a foothold in this county, while the wilderness was being deposed from its long reign and men's habitations and social institutions were springing up on
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nearly every section of land. a complete sketch would include the open- ing of roads, the building of schools, the establishment of postal facil- ities, and the many other matters that necessarily belong to an advancing community. But with the limits of this chapter already exceeded, sev- eral of these subjects will be reserved for later treatment under separate titles. In the following chapter we will consider that inevitable cen- tralization of society that results in the formation of village centers.
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CHAPTER VIII. CENTERS OF POPULATION.
The organization of the townships, which has been previously de- scribed, was an artificial process, following the geometrical lines of government survey. But the grouping of population and the formation of village centers are the result of natural growth. In the following pages it is our purpose to continue the story of settlement and growth with special reference to the grouping of people into communities and villages.
It is easy to indicate in a general way the beginning of such a community. . \ fertile and arable region receives a large proportion of the immigration. Assuming that they are pioneers, it will be almost a necessity that most of them till the soil, even though combining that with another occupation. But if the settlement was on a much-traveled thor- oughfare, such as the Chicago road on the south side of the county, one or perhaps more of the pioneer houses would be opened for the en- tertainment of the transient public. On the banks of a stream some one constructs a saw or grist mill. At some convenient and central point a settler with the commercial instincts opens a stock of goods such as will supply the needs of the other settlers and of the immigrants. . 1 postoffice comes next, the postmaster very likely being either the mer- chant or the tavern-keeper. A physician, looking for a location, is pleased with the conditions and occupies a cabin near the store or inn. A carpenter or other mechanic is more accessible to his patronage if he lives near the postoffice or other common gathering point. If the school- house of the district has not already been built, it is probable that it will be placed at the increasingly central site, and the first church is a natural addition. Already this nucleus of settlement is a village in embryo, and in the natural course of development a variety of enterprises will center there, the mechanical, the manufacturing, the commercial and professional departments of human labor will be grouped together for the purpose of efficiency and convenience. By such accretions of popu- lation, by diversification of industry, by natural advantages of location and the improvement of means of transportation, this community in
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time becomes organized as a village and with continued prosperity, as a city. Sometimes the development is arrested at a particular stage. The village remains a village, the hamlet ceases to grow, and we have a center of population without special business, industrial or civic de- velopment. Then there are instances in this county of retrogression. . 1 locality that could once be dignified with the name of village has dis integrated under stress of rivalry from other centers or other causes, and is now little more than a place and a name.
Specific illustrations of all these processes are to be found in the history of the centers in Cass county. But in general it may be stated that during the early years, when communication was primitive and isolation quite complete even between localities separated by a few miles, the tendency was toward centralization in numerous small hamlets and villages. But in keeping with the economic development for which the past century was noted and especially because of the improvement of all forms of transportation, the barriers against easy communication with all parts of the county were thrown down and the best situated centers grew and flourished at the expense of the smaller centers, which grad- ually dwindled into comparative insignificance. Nothing has done more to accelerate movement than the establishment of rural free delivery. The postoffice was the central point of community life and remoteness from its privileges was a severe drawback. Rural delivery has made every house a postoffice, puts each home in daily contact with the world, and while it is destroying provincialism and isolation, it is effecting a wholesome distribution of population rather than crowding into small villages. And the very recent introduction into Michigan of the sys- tem of public transportation of school children to and from school will remove another powerful incentive to village life. When weak districts may be consolidated and a large, well graded and modern union school be provided convenient and accessible to every child in the enlarged school area, families will no longer find it necessary "to move to town in order to educate their children."
These are the principal considerations that should be understood before we enter on the description of the various centers which Cass county has produced in more than three quarters of a century of growth.
EDWARDSBURG.
Nowhere can the processes above described be better illustrated than along the meandering Chicago road that passes across the lowest tier
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of townships on the south. In the chapter on early settlement the be- ginning of community life on Beardsley's Prairie has already been sketched. It will be remembered that Ezra Beardsley, in order to ac- commodate the increasing host of immigrants, converted his home into a tavern, the nearby Meacham cabin being used as an annex. On the south side of the lake Thomas H. Edwards in 1828 began selling goods to the settlers, and thus early the community of Beardsley's Prairie had a center.
With the Chicago road as the main axis of village life, a plat of a village site, named "Edwardsburgh," was filed on record, August 12, 1831, by Alexander H. Edwards, who appeared before Justice of the Peace Ezra Beardsley and "acknowledged the within plat to be his free act and deed." The original site of the village comprised 44 lots, but Abiel Silver on June 2, 1834, laid out an addition of 86 lots and on March 25, 1836, a second addition.
Jacob and Abiel Silver figure prominently in the early life of the village. They purchased in 1831 the store of Thomas H. Edwards. Other early merchants were Henry Vanderhoof and successors Clifford Shaahan and Jesse Smith; the late H. H. Coolidge, who came here in 1835 to take charge of a stock of goods opened here by a Niles mer- chiant, and who later was engaged in business in partnership with P. P. Willard. In 1839 A. C. Marsh established a foundry for the manufact- ure of plow castings and other iron work, and this was one of the indus- tries which gave Edwardsburg importance as a business center.
During the thirties and early forties Edwardsburg bid fair to be- come the business metropolis of Cass county. It is easy to understand why its citizens had implicit faith in such a future. The Detroit-Chi- cago road, on which it was situated, was at the time the most traveled route between the east and the west. The hosts who were participating in the westward expansion movement of the period, traveling up the popular Erie Canal and thence to the west by way of Lake Erie and the Chicago road, all passed through Edwardsburg. The mail coaches, which primitively represented the mail trains of to-day, carried the mail bags through the village and lent the cluster of houses the prestige that comes from being a station on the transcontinental mail. Furthermore. the agitation for canals which then disputed honors with railroads seemed to indicate Edwardsburg as a probable station on the canal from St. Joseph river to the lake.
All conditions seemed favorable for the growth of a city on the
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south side of the county. But at the middle of the century the mighty rearranger of civilization, the railroad, pushed its way through Mich- igan and northern Indiana. The villages touched by the railroad in its course flourished as though by magic. Those left to one side languished as if the stream of life, diverted, ceased to nourish their activities. The Chicago road was no longer the artery of commerce it had been. The stage coaches ceased their daily visits. A few miles to the south the Michigan Southern, having left the route of original survey at White Pigeon, coursed through the villages and cities of northern Indiana, giv- ing new life to Bristol, Elkhart and South Bend, and depriving Edwards- burg of its equal chance in the struggle of existence. To the west Niles became a station on the Michigan Central and prospered accordingly, while Edwardsburg, thus placed between the two great routes, suffered the barrenness of almost utter isolation.
It is said that just before the period of decline began Edwardsburg had a population of three hundred, with churches, school and business houses. The permanent institutions of course remained although with little vitality, but the business decreased until but one store remained in 1851. For twenty years Edwardsburg had practically no business activ- ity, and was little more than a community center which was maintained by custom and because of the existence of its institutions of church. edu- cation and society.
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