USA > Michigan > Cass County > A twentieth century history of Cass County, Michigan > Part 29
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Frank Reshore, at one time connected with the legal profession in this county, gave up the law for other vocations, which he still pursues in Dowagiac. Born in Ohio in 1853 and brought to this county a year Jater, he graduated from the Dowagiac schools in 1870, and while clerk- ing in his father's store, read law, completing his studies by gradua- tion from the law department of the State University in 1875.
It is a fact worthy of mention that a group of half a dozen law- yers whose professional careers identified them with Cass county were all born in Orleans county, New York. From that portion of the Empire state, by various routes and influenced by different causes
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and circumstances, they foregathered in Cass county. One of these is Harsen D. Smith, the well known attorney of Cassopolis. Born in the county mentioned March 17, 1842. he was a teacher in early life. and in 1867 was admitted to the bar in Coldwater, this state. After several years' practice in Jackson he came to Cassopolis in 1870 and formed a partnership with the late Charles W. Clishee; was with the late .A. J. Smith until the election of the latter as circuit judge. He is now senior member of the firm of Smith & Lyle. When the thirty- sixth judicial district was created he was appointed circuit judge to serve till the regular election. He was prosecuting attorney four years and a number of years a member of the state board of pardons. ( See sketch. )
Charles F. Sweet of Dowagiac, of whom more extended mention is made elsewhere, has been engaged in successful practice in the county for twenty years. He is another Cass county lawyer who came under the influence and tutelage of the late Spafford Tryon. Mr. Sweet served one term as justice of the peace, twice as circuit court commis- sioner and twice as prosecuting attorney.
John Wooster of Dowagiac was born in Hillsdale county, Mich- igan, in 1847, taught school as a means to an end, graduated from Hillsdale College in 1873, and after reading law two years in Kalama- 200 was admitted to the bar. His first office was at Constantine, but the same year he located in Dowagiac. He has served as. city attorney four times.
Other attorneys whose names appear as active members of the Cass county bar are two young lawyers at Marcellus, Walter C. Jones and Otis Huff. and Fred Phillipson of Dowagiac.
From the preceding it will be seen that many changes have taken place in the personnel of the county bar in these years. Many new names have come into prominence, of men fitted to maintain and advance yet higher the standard of the past, whose talents, whose industry, whose devotion to the best ideals of the profession are not less worthy of ad- miration and honor than those same qualities in their predecessors. Perhaps the most conspicuous fact for comparison is that a larger pro- portion of the present members seem to have received collegiate train- ing. and an increasingly fewer number are being introduced to the pro- fession by the old-time method of rough and tumble experience and diligent thumbing the pages of Blackstone under the inspiration of indi- vidual ambition. No doubt those whose experience covers both the old
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and the new would assert that the period of preparation has been re- lieved of many difficulties that characterized it in their time; but on the other hand, the novitiate-while the aspirant waits for his clients- would seem to be as trying and as uncertain now as ever.
.A few years ago a movement was made to organize the Cass County Bar Association. The preliminary meetings were held, consti- tution and by-laws were adopted, officers elected, and the first dues were paid in by some of the members, but since the first flush of organ- ization the association has lapsed from activity, and now exists more by grace of its origin than by any manifestations of active energy. Its officers, who continue in office because their successors have never been elected, are: J. H. Kinnane, president ; H. D. Smith, vice president ; .A. K. Hayden, secretary, and L. H. Glover, treasurer.
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CHAPTER XXI. CASS COUNTY THE HOME OF THE RACES.
Cass county presents a peculiar field for the study of American ability to assimilate races. Of the salient American stock the popula- tion of the county is typical in a high degree. The county is still rural. The distracting features of metropolitan life have not been introduced and with them the European racial elements which we find in manu- facturing centers. Its settlers, as we know, were drawn largely from the best stocks of the east, many from the New England states. Cass county citizens may truly be called representative American stock, a con- mingling of the best social elements and traditions.
So much as regards the white AAmericans, and the ethnic varia tions presented by the Teuton and Slav, the Gaul and Saxon, who in varying proportions constitute the bulk of the population, are not to be discriminated in this article. But among this dominant race in Cass county are to be found two other races, and to what extent these are integrated with the bodies politic, industrial and social of the county it is the purpose of this article to inquire, at the same time recording the historical connection of these two peoples with Cass county. Cass county's history becomes unique because of the presence of these three heterogeneous racial groups within its borders, and a chapter may prop- erly be devoted to this phase of its history.
It is a remarkable fact that the epochs of American domestic his- tory have turned upon the two races whose representatives are now living side by side with the white citizens of this county. The annals of settlement and expansion in America from the landing of the May- flower immigrants to the final winning of the great west from the wilderness were marked with conflict with the red men, who were the aboriginal possessors of the land. And the introduction of the black race from Africa at about the same time with the landing of the Pil- grims sowed the seed which more than two centuries later bore fruit in the Civil war, the crisis of the nation's existence. And now, in the peace and prosperity of the twentieth century, the destinies of the three racially distinct people are being wrought to the infinite purpose while
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dwelling side by side in Cass county. It is from this higher historical viewpoint that the history of the Indian remnant and the negro colony of Cass county should be considered.
At an earlier point in this narrative we have related how Pokagon and his followers would not sign the Chicago treaty until they had been exempted from the clause providing that they leave their ances- tral home. Old Chief Pokagon was an Indian above the average in character and intelligence, understood the advantages to his race of civilization and was devoted to the Catholic religion, which the mis- sionaries had taught him. It was his purpose to settle his people in their old home and as far as necessary conform to the institutions and laws of the white people. In effecting this he first directed his efforts to securing title to sufficient land for his tribe, and used his influence to invest the cash apportionment of his followers in a tract of land in Silver Creek township, which, though entered in the name of Pokagon. was really owned in severalty. In the original land entries Pokagon's entries, which were nearly all made in the winter of 1836-37. con- sisted of the following tracts in Silver Creek: Section II, 296 acres ; section 14. 258 acres; section 21, 160 acres ; section 22, 160 acres-in all 874 acres in his name, all located in adjacent sections of the town- ship and in the vicinity where the present Indian community lives.
On this land Pokagon's people lived, maintaining in part their tribal organization and in part the relations of American citizens. The church which they built and which became the center of Catholic in- fluence in the county is elsewhere described. While Pokagon lived all went well. After his death in 1841 his son Pete became chief and dis- sensions arose that did much to disintegrate the tribe. The last cen- sus shows only eight or nine Indian families in Silver Creek. The last government annuity was given them in 1865 and with the cessa- tion of this allowance all reason for the tribal organization passed. And vet the Indians chung to this form of social organization, and when Simon Pokagon died about six years ago, being the last of the Pokagon line and thus ending the chiefhood in the family inheritance, the remain- ing number. following the custom of generations, came together and proceeded to elect Lexis, one of their number, as chief, thus tenacious- ly holding on to old forms and customs. Further, a petition was made to the Indian commissioner that Tom Topash be appointed interpreter between the government and the Indians. But the reply came that an interpreter was no longer needed. that the relations between the gov-
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eminent at Washington and this remnant of Pottawottomies had ceased, and that with the discharging of the last debt a few years ago the de- scendants of Pokagon's band were placed upon the same individual basis with all other American citizens. For these Indians in northwest Cass county are citizens. They attend the town meeting and vote, are safeguarded and restrained by the same laws, churches and schools are open to them, and the Indian community of Cass county has nothing in common with the picture that usually rises in the mind at the mention of America's aboriginal race, dwelling in wigwams, the men lying at indolent ease on the ground and the women scratching the soil with a stick, and such other illusions as will always be associated with the In- (lian race.
In general reputation for thriftiness and substantial character, the Boziel family, residing northeast of Silver Creek church, are the lead- ers of the settlement. They own about a hundred acres and are well liked in the country. Thomas Topash is chairman of the business con- mittee of the Catholic church, and his uncle, Steve Topash, near the town hall, is another well known Indian.
The veteran of the community is Alexander Bushman, a half- breed Shawnee, whose maternal grandfather was a white man, made a prisoner by the Shawnees in the Revolutionary war, continued to live with them and act as interpreter when this tribe was removed to the Osage river west of St. Louis, and became a well-to-do farmer and fruit grower. The latter's daughter moved with the Shawnees to Kan- sas and married a white man named Bushman, one of their children be- ing Alexander, who is now seventy-eight years old and has lived with the Pottawottomies since he was ten years old. He is a shrewd and intelligent old man, and having been placed in positions of responsibil- ity in acting for his people in their relation with the government at various times, he has had opportunities to observe and compare and judge his people from a larger point of view. He speaks of his family with pride evidently born of his white blood as "working people." He himself was trained in a manual labor school and learned how to work. He married in Kansas, and after the war he came to Michigan on ac- count of relatives of his wife who lived here. Bushman was pleased with this country, and, having money, he bought land near the town hall in Silver Creek and there has lived to the present time.
"The Indian is spoiled by giving him too much money" is one of the facts of Indian character that he states from his observation and
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experience. "The Indians are good workers, but are without steadi- ness and continuity of purpose : they take little interest in their homes and farms as compared with the white people, and seem, as it were, stranded on the shores of civilization, alike unable to revert to their former condition or to possess and become a part of the life in which they live. The love of personal display is strong among our people. They will, when money comes to them, buy top buggies and other luxuries to the neglect of home comforts and personal necessities. Their social diversions are refined from the old customs. They have dances for which the music is often furnished by Indian fiddlers, and big din- ners follow these routs, which are often the aftermath to wood-cutting bees. But the bane of my people, as it has been for generations, is drink, and the Indian character seems powerless against this tempta- tion."
Such was his estimate of his own people, and in the main it seems just. The judgment of a white citizen who has had close relations with these people was much more severe, but it was directed mainly against the Indian lack of thrift and inability to perform the duties and re- sponsibilities which are the lot of white citizens. To measure the In- dian strictly by the commonest standards of white people seems unfair. In point of intelligence the comparisons result more favorably. The Indian children who attend the district schools are not rated inferior in this respect to their white mates, and the teachers who have had such children under their direction find little cause of disparagement.
THE CALVIN NEGRO COLONY.
In 1836 a fugitive slave named Lawson came to Calvin township with a Quaker preacher named Way. Lawson was the first negro set- tler of Calvin township and Cass county, so far as known, and was the pioneer of the movement which in a few years made Cass county a ref- uge and secure retreat for the black race. But the first comers of this race were accidental settlers, and nothing in the nature of a definite movement of the unfortunate people began until the later forties.
It was the Quaker settlement, elsewhere described, which undoubt- edly was the first cause of Cass county's colored settlement .. Due to the uncompromising anti-slavery attitude of the Friends, it was among the settlements and following their general line of direction that the institution of the "underground railroad" flourished. The "under- ground railroad" for the transportation of fugitive slaves from the
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south to free Canada is so closely identified with the slavery period and hence so familiar a topic of American history that no description is needed here. But it should be stated that Cass county was on the direct route of this "railroad," and according to some writers was the junc- tion point for the lines from Illinois and from Indiana, which con- verged here. As the slaves were hurried along this route it happened that some of them stopped in Cass county, finding homes and protec- tion among the abolitionists and their own people. For already a col- ony of freed negroes had located in the county. The majority of these were originally from North Carolina, having first taken up their homes in the north in Logan county, Ohio, and about 1845 or 1846, owing to the cheapness of land in this county, as well as to the settlement of their white friends and sympathizers from the same part of Ohio, came in considerable numbers to Cass county. Many of these freed negroes purchased small farms and became, as it were, the backbone of the col- ored settlement. Among these early settlers were Harvey Wade, Neu- som Tann, Nathaniel Boon, Turner and Crawford Byrd, Kitchen Artis and Harrison Ash. A little later the colony was augmented through the provisions of the will of a Cable county. Virginia, planter named Sampson Saunders, who left $15,000 with his administrators for the purchase of land and the settlement of his liberated slaves in a free state. Calvin township, with its cheap lands and friendly abolitionists. was selected as the site of this colony, and the Saunders colony, con- sisting of four brothers and their families and others, was a very im. portant addition to the negro population of the county.
The extent of the migration and the distribution of the colored people can be very well understood from the census of 1850. At that date there were 10,518 white persons of the county and 389 negroes. Equally distributed, the colored people would have been a mere sprinkling in the county. But two townships contained two-thirds of the entire number, so that they were already a very noticeable element among the population. Calvin township had the largest number then as today, there being 1,58 negroes to 466 whites. In Porter township there were 105 colored to 1, 154 whites, and the other townships rep- resented by this race were Howard with 72 colored persons, Penn with 31, LaGrange and Cassopolis with 15. Jefferson with 5, and Silver Creek with 3.
With such a considerable colored population, among whom was a number of fugitive slaves. it was inevitable that Cass county should
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attract considerable attention in the south, not only among the slaves, but from the whites whose blacks had escaped them. The planters of Bourbon county. Kentucky, had suffered especial loss from escaping slaves, many of whom had taken refuge in Cass and Calhoun counties. The presence of the slaves in this county led to a concerted movement on the part of Kentuckians for their recapture, an event which has come down through history under the familiar name of the "Kentucky Raid." It is not to be understood that the raid was made against a single locality and by one party of slave hunters. The Kentuckians di- rected their efforts to a broad field and carried on their operations for a considerable period of time, involving many separate expeditions, each with its own account. Hence the many versions of the raid are not contradictory, but describe the movement of different parties. . Also, these raids extended over a period of several years, beginning with 1847.
One of the chief parties of raiders from Kentucky came to this county in August, 1847. Although they maintained secrecy in their intentions and directed their movements in the same manner that would characterize a gang of horse thieves, it is noteworthy that they clearly had the laws of the United States to support them in recovering their fugitive slaves and were compelled to act covertly only because of the hostility of the citizens to the institution of slavery. It was humane anarchy set against legalized oppression.
The Kentuckians first had their headquarters at Battle Creek, but opposition to their plans was so determined that they moved south to Bristol, Ind., whence they directed their movements into Cass county. Setting out at night, in several detached parties, they endeavored to round up all the slaves that belonged to them and of which they had heen furnished information. In the course of the night they paid visits to Josiah Osborn, the East settlement, in Calvin township, Zachariah Shugart near Vandalia and Stephen Bogue, names of the most influen- tial Quakers and abolitionists in the county. At each of these houses one or more negroes were captured and carried away by their former owners.
But before the southerners could collect the slaves and get away from the county the alarm had been spread by Bogue and Shugart, and a large party of citizens armed with guns and clubs stopped the progress of the Kentuckians and compelled them to go to Cassopolis, where they might prove their ownership of the blacks before a regular justice court. Excitement ran high that morning. and as the crowd of slave-
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owners, negroes and citizens pressed on from near Vandalia to the county seat the news spread to all parts of the county, and when the strange procession arrived an immense throng had gathered about the court house.
The legal proceedings turned upon a writ of habeas corpus, requir- ing the Kentuckians to show cause why the negroes should not be released from custody. George B. Turner was retained as attorney for the Kentuckians and James Sullivan and Ezekiel S. Smith acted in be- half of the fugitives. The case was tried before Circuit Court Commis- sioner Mellvain from Berrien county, who, illegally, so it was later decided, had come from that county to hear the case in the absence of A. H. Redfield, of Cass county. The commissioner decided ad- versely to the Kentuckians, and at once the nine slaves were liberated and the same night were hurried out of the county by way of the underground railroad.
The slave owners-whose names, so far as preserved, were Rev. 1. Stevens, Hubbard Buckner, C. B. Rust, John L. Graves ( sheriff of Bombon county ), James Scott, G. W. Brazier, Thornton Timberlake, and Messrs. Bristow and Lemon-were thus deprived of any recourse so far as local courts were concerned, and in February, 1848, brought suit to recover the value of their lost slaves in the United States Cir- cuit Court for the District of Michigan. Thornton Timberlake was the plaintiff named, and the defendants were Josiah Osborn, Jefferson Osborn, Ellison Osborn, David T. Nicholson, Ishmael Lee, William Jones and Ebenezer Mellvain-all prominent men of this county except Mr. Mellvain, who, acting as circuit court commissioner, had liberated the slaves. The case was not heard until January, 1851, when the jury stood eight to four in favor of the plaintiff. The case was then compromised by the defendants paying a thousand dollars and costs, which amounted to about $3,000. Thus nominally the Kentuckians got justice, but their slaves were gone and it is said that their attorneys took as fees all the money paid over by the defendants, so that virtually the Cass county abolitionists had triumphed in their sturdy opposition to slavery whether sanctioned by law or not.
The history of the Kentucky raid has been briefly sketched since the two previous histories of the county have described the circum- stances with considerable detail at a time when some of the prin- cipal actors were yet living and nothing could be added to their ac- counts. The incidents are notable in themselves and form a very im-
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portant chapter in the history of the county and nation, while the movement against slavery was gaining strength. Of its effects on the negro colony in the county, it is probable that it increased rather than retarded the flight of fugitives to this vicinity. It advertised the county more broadly as a safe retreat for slaves and also caused the slave owners to hesitate before taking forcible means of recovering their chattels.
Thus the negro population of the county continued on the in- crease during the fifties. The free negroes continued to come here from Ohio and other northern states, and during that decade some of the men settled who became the leaders of their race. Isaac P. Sten - art came from Ohio in 1854, and beginning with eighty acres in Calvin township became a man of substance as years passed on until he owned between two and three hundred acres. Samuel Hawks, now one of the wealthiest and most influential men of Calvin township, settled here before the war and by industry and good management found the key to success. Green Allen, now deceased, at one time paid the largest tax of any man in Calvin. Eaton Newsom, grandfather of Dr. New- som, of Calvin Center, and James A. Mitchell, all from Ohio, were good reliable citizens and respected throughout the community. Tur- ner Byrd, who came from North Carolina by way of Logan county, Ohio, and who was an early settler about Chain lakes and founder and pastor of the Baptist church there, was a successful man and though uneducated was thoroughly respected by both white and black. Har- rison Ash was another whose promises were relied upon with the surety that indicates strength of character. William Lawson came into the county in 1853 and was the first merchant among his race, and also a good farmer. Some of the older citizens still living, besides Mr. Hawks, already mentioned, are William Allen, a son of Joseph Allen and nephew of Green Allen, who is admittedly one of the ablest busi- ness farmers in Cass county, and who made his money by hard work and economy; Jesse W. Madrey, of Cassopolis, who came to the county in 1852 as a boy, and has won a home and substantial place in the regard of his fellow citizens; and C. W. Bunn, who years ago began a sawmill business in Calvin after the timber had supposedly been used up. later establishing himself in the lumber business at Cassopolis. and owns property both here and at South Bend.
What estimate shall be placed upon this unique colored settle- ment. which at the present time in Calvin township possesses the ma-
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jority (60 per cent) of the population and a large proportion of the land and wealth, besides exercising a controlling influence in politics, religion and education? Let the foremost representative of the colored rance answer this question in his own words. In 1903 Booker T. Washington contributed to the Outlook an article entitled "Two Gen- erations Under Freedom," in which he described at length this interest- ing colony in Cass county. The article is one of the documents of Cass county history, and this chapter may be concluded with the quo- tation of its salient points together with a very few comments on the part of the present writer :
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