USA > Michigan > Cass County > A twentieth century history of Cass County, Michigan > Part 6
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It is with this in mind that we should view the actors and events of the pioneer past. With them the history of Cass county began. The work they began and the influences they set in motion have not ceased to be operative to the present time. Character is pervasive and continuous, and the character of our pioneers has not yet spent its force in Cass county.
Of transient residents within the borders of the present Cass county there were many. Perhaps some of the followers of La Salle got this far in the closing years of the eighteenth century. French trappers and ex- plorers and missionaries certainly were birds of passage during the fol- lowing century. Then, after the country passed from French to English control in 1763, there must have been some under the protection of the
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Union Jack who ventured far from the strongholds of settlement into this then untamed wilderness. Adventurers of all nationalities explored the region.
But the only person who would have penetrated this country for business reasons was the trapper and fur-gatherer. Several are named who pursued this vocation within the limits of Cass county. One Zac- cheus Wooden, who penetrated the lake region of southern Michigan and set his traps among the lakes of Cass county as early as 1814, was in the employ of John Jacob Astor, who at that time, in rivalry with the British fur companies on the north, was spreading his fur-gathering activity throughout the western territory of the United States. There were doubtless many engaged in similar pursuits with Wooden who likewise at different times had their headquarters in Cass county. But this class can hardly be called settlers, and it is only necessary to call attention to the fact that there were such men.
One other type of early resident may be mentioned before we pro- ceed to consider the "permanent settlers." There come down to us in the history of every community several instances of "relapses" from civilization-men who, because of natural aversion to their fellow men, by reason of some sorrow or the commission of crime, turned their backs to the life in which they had been reared and severing all connection with social usages thenceforth chose to live apart from the world and bury their existence and their deeds in the depths of the wilderness. Of these restless wanderers, haunting the midshores between civilization and bar- barism, and making common cause with the Indians and other creatures of the wild, one example may be given.
The story of the eccentric, misanthropic Job Wright is well told in the Cass county history of 1882. Born in North Carolina, he was the first settler of Greenfield, Ohio, in 1799. He built a log cabin there, and, like the literary Thoreau, satisfied his slender needs by making hair sieves. The wire sieve not yet having been introduced, he found a good market for his products in the households of the neighborhood. But it was contrary to his nature to follow this or any other pursuit on a per- manent business basis, and with enough ahead for his wants in the immediate future he turned to the more philosophic, if less profitable, occupation of fishing. According to the account, he "followed it with a perseverance and patience worthy of his biblical protonym and with a degree of success of which even Isaak Walton might be proud."
Job soon found that his happy environment was being taken away
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from him. The woods and meadows that had existed without change throughout the centuries were being occupied by an energetic people. Even the streams were being obstructed to furnish power to grind the settler's corn, and the fish felt their imprisonment and were leaving. The country was getting crowded. It was no place for a lover of nature in its first dress. The Indians had gone, the deer were leaving, and it was not long before civilization crowded Job farther west.
Various corners of the world knew him after that, but the virgin wilderness was always his best loved home. Only the promptings of patriotism brought him forth to serve his country in the war of 1812. Then he returned to his wanderings. He is said to have made his ap- pearance in Cass county in 1829, very naturally selecting as his location the island in Diamond Lake. He built a small log cabin near the north end of the island, and for some time lived there as a "squatter," but finally entered the land, when there appeared to be danger that it might pass into the hands of some one else.
At his island home Job led, the greater part of the time, a hermit's life. During a portion of the time he spent upon his little domain, however, his mother, son and son's wife, whom he brought from Ohio, lived with him. Job Wright was tall and gaunt, but powerful. His hair was red and he wore a long beard. On one hand he had two thumbs, and claimed that this peculiar formation was the badge and token of the gift of prophecy and other endowments of occult power. By many persons he was said to have a knowledge of witchcraft, and they re- lated, with impressive confidence, how he could stop the flowing of blood by simply learning the name and age of the person whose life was en- dangered, and pronouncing a brief incantation. Most of his time was spent in hunting and fishing, but he cultivated a small part of the island, raising a little corn and a few vegetables for his own use.
Despite his isolation in the center of the lake, he was very much disturbed by the rapid settlement of the surrounding country. He again set out on his wanderings. But the years had now laid their weight upon him and denied him the strength of middle age. He returned to his island refuge, where, amid the trees and in sight of the sparkling water, he soon passed away.
The rest of the account reads as follows: "A few friends and ac- quaintances among the settlers of the neighborhood, not more that a dozen in all, followed the remains of the old recluse to the Cassopolis burying ground. George B. Turner, passing, and happening to notice
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the little knot of men gathered about an open grave, was led by eurios- ity to join them. There was no minister present. The preparations were all made, and the rude whitewood coffin was about to be lowered into the ground when one of the men, a rough-spoken but tender-hearted and humane old farmer, uttered a suggestion to the effect that some re- marks ought to be made before the remains of a fellow mortal were laid away to rest. He called upon Mr. Turner, who, after a moment's hesitation, stepping upon the little mound of fresh earth at the side of the grave, delivered Job Wright's funeral sermon.
"The secret of the cause which had driven the eccentric pioneer to this life of seclusion was buried with him."
In discussing the first settlements of Cass county, the presence of the near-by Carey Mission must be constantly borne in mind. We have alluded to the importance of that establishment in rendering the surrounding country more available for settlement. The Mission was the radiating point for the streams of settlers. While prospecting for a suitable location, the homeseeker would make his headquarters at the Mission.
It is due to this fact that the first settlements in Cass county were made on the western edge of the county. The pioneers entered the county from the west, not from the south or east, as might be supposed.
The beautiful Pokagon prairie, in the township of the same name, was the spot selected by the first permanent settler of Cass county. The man who will always be honored as the first citizen of the county was U'zziel Putnam. Right worthy he was to bear this distinction. It would seem not to have been a futile chance that directed him toward this re- gion. The quality of his character had nothing in common with the restless Job Wright. A purpose supplemented by all the rugged vir- tues of the true pioneer directed him in the choice of a home in this then wilderness.
He eame of a stock fit to furnish pathfinders and builders of a new country. Born in Wardsboro, Vermont, March 17, 1793, inheriting the peculiar strength and courage of the Green Mountain New Englander, when fourteen years old he moved with his parents to western New York. After serving a full apprentiee period with a elothier, he proved his fitness for the hardships of a new country by making a journey of five hundred miles, most of the way on foot, to the home of his parents, who had located near Sandusky, Ohio. He experienced in youth all the disadvantages of poverty, but there is little account to be made of
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this, for in a new country a manly strength and the homely virtue of patient industry were the best capital. While in Ohio he was a soldier in the war of 1812. In 1822 he married Ann Chapman, with whom he lived more than a half century. and their pioneer experiences were en- dured together.
As early as 1821 the fame of the valley of the St. Joseph had been carried by Indians, trappers and traders to the frontier settlements in Ohio, and it excited in the minds of the many adventurous individuals a desire to explore the region and to substantiate the representations made of its beauty, fertility and natural resources. Among the number was Bald- win Jenkins, who, leaving Ohio in October, 1824, pursued his investi- gations in northern Indiana and about the St. Joseph in Cass and Ber- rien counties, after which he returned home. Another was Abram Townsend, who in the same year as Jenkins visited the valley of the St. Joseph, and on his return to his home in Sandusky county, Ohio, gave a most flattering account of what he had seen, and announced his inten- tion to remove with his family to Pokagon prairie. His praises of the region were echoed by an Indian trader named Andrus Parker, who had also explored along the course of the St. Joseph.
Among those who listened with interest to the narratives of Town- send and others was Uzziel Putnam, then thirty-two years old and in the prime of his strength. He was foremost among the many who be- came convinced that the fertile region about the Carey Mission held in waiting the opportunities that his ambition craved. And having made up his mind to emigrate to the Michigan country, he at once began to get ready for the long and difficult journey.
He was not alone in this undertaking. When the eventful journey began on the 17th of May, 1825, the party consisted of Putnam with his wife and child, and Abram Townsend and son Ephraim, and Israel Markham. A most detailed description would not enable us to under- stand and appreciate the arduousness of such a journey. Their custom- made wagon, strong though it was, was hardly equal to the strain put upon it by its great load of domestic goods and by the roughness of the way. Three yoke of oxen furnished the traction, and between sunrise and sunset they had often advanced not more than seven or eight miles. Rains constantly hindered them, the wagon mired down in the unbeaten way that they chose in lieu of anything like a modern highway, which, of course, did not exist. The bad roads and the heavy pull caused the oxen to go lame, with consequent delays. And in the end it was found
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necessary to improvise a bark canoe and transport most of the goods by water to Fort Wayne.
Through the gloom of rainy days, the vexatious delays caused by mud and accident, and the constant fatigue and exposure inseparable from such a journey, the courage of the pioneers was all the more lus- trous; their patient perseverance the more admirable ; and the more in- spiring is their success in overcoming all obstacles and finally making a home in the wilderness-not for themselves alone, but for all future generations. The journey of the Putnam party was typical. Thou- sands of pioneers, both before and after, had similar experiences, and we dwell somewhat at length on those of the first Cass county settler to illustrate some of the difficulties that were as a matter of course in the opening of a new country to civilization.
But finally they reached the land they sought. Crossing the St. Joseph at the mouth of the Elkhart, and following the track by way of Cobert's creek and Beardsley's prairie, they reached in safety the cabin of William Kirk, which then stood about sixty rods east of the present railroad depot at Niles. On the following day Baldwin Jenkins (who had already arrived on the scene) and Mr. Kirk piloted Putnam and Townsend through the woods to Pokagon prairie, a distance of six miles, where they examined the ground and selected places for farms. They found small bands of Pottawottomies living on the prairie, and when they explained to Chief Pokagon their wish to settle there and cultivate the land, the old Indian objected, saying that the Indians' corn would be destroyed by the settlers' cattle and that his people would move off in the fall to their hunting grounds, after which the whites could come and build their houses.
Mr. Putnam, having selected his location, now returned to Fort Wayne and in the last days of October brought his family and the rest of his goods to the new settlement, reaching Mr. Kirk's after a week's travel.
The 22nd day of November. 1825, is the date fixed for the first permanent settlement in Cass county. On that day Uzziel Putnam moved his family into his new home on Pokagon prairie, and from that time until his death on July 15, 1881, this pioneer had his residence on the beautiful prairie which it was his privilege to see become the home of many prosperous and happy people. His first house was a shanty twelve feet square, covered with bark and without floor or chimney, which Mr. Markham had put up for his convenience while cutting hay there during
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the previous summer. Poor as this shelter was they remained in it until Mr. Putnam had completed a new and more comfortable one. Even the new one at first had neither floor, door nor windows. All the tim- bers had to be hewn into shape with an ax or cut with a hand saw, since there was no sawmill within a hundred miles.
Six days after Mr. Putnam moved into this rough cabin on Poka- gon prairie, Baldwin Jenkins located in the same neighborhood, a short distance north of Summerville, where he is said to have utilized an Indian wigwam as a place of abode during the winter. As already men- tioned, he had arrived at the Mission some time before Mr. Putnam, and during the summer had succeeded in raising a small crop of corn near by. In the fall he returned to Ohio, and brought his family over- land to Pokagon, arriving just a little too late to be regarded as the first settler.
At this time it is said there were but nine families in Cass and Berrien counties, excepting those at the Mission-two in Cass and seven in Berrien.
Before going further in the settlement of this region, a few words might be said concerning the life of the second settler of Cass county, Baldwin Jenkins. His was an unusual character, in an age and country that called for distinctive attributes of mind and body. Born in Greene county, Pennsylvania, October 4, 1783, he lived to be sixty-two years old. At the age of sixteen he accompanied the family to the timber re- gion of middle Tennessee, where he had the training and environment of a frontiersman. To avoid slavery the family later moved to Ohio, and from there Baldwin made his various journeys of investigation to the west, and eventually moved out to Michigan. He was one of the largest land owners among the early settlers. Possessed of that broad spirit of hospitality which was the noblest characteristic of new coun- tries, his home, situated on the direct line of emigration, became a noted stopping place for travelers and homeseekers, from whom he would receive 110 compensation. He carried this hospitality to such an extent that the products of his farm and labor were largely consumed by the public. He possessed great confidence in his fellow settlers, loaning them money, selling them stock and farm products on time, without re- quiring written obligations and charging no interest. He was a man of parts. In religion he was a devout member of the Baptist church. He had a remarkably retentive memory, and his mind was an encyclo- pedia of local knowledge, so that he could not only tell the names but
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also the ages of nearly all his neighbors. He was one of the first just- ices of the peace in western Michigan, having been appointed by Gov- ernor Cass for the township of St. Joseph, which then comprised all the territory west of Lenawee county. He was the first road commis- sioner in Cass county, was one of the first associate judges appointed under the territorial government, and one of the delegates to the first constitutional convention of the state.
The settlement on Pokagon prairie soon began to grow. In the summer of 1826 was added to the little community Squire Thompson. It is said that he and William Kirk were the first permanent settlers, under the influence of the Carey Mission, to cross the St. Joseph and make their homes on its north side in Berrien county. Mr. Thompson had visited the vicinity of the Mission in 1822, before the completion of the buildings, and in the spring of 1823 returned and made choice of a location and built a cabin on the banks of the river. He lived there without neighbors until the arrival of William Kirk in the following spring. On moving to Pokagon, he settled on section 20, and lived there until his departure for California during the height of the gold excite- ment.
Other arrivals were Abram Townsend, who, we have seen, ac- companied Uzziel Putnam hither, and who now returned as a settler : and Gamaliel Townsend and his family, together with the Markhams ( Israel, Jr. and Sr., Samuel and Lane) and Ira Putnam. Gamaliel Townsend should be remembered as being the first postmaster in the township, receiving and distributing the scanty mail at his father Abram's house.
Most important of all was the arrival, on August 12, 1826, of Uz- ziel Putnam, Jr., who was born on that day, and as nearly as can be ascertained in such uncertain problems as priority of birth or residence, he was the first white child born within the present limits of Cass county.
Through the leafless forests and over the prairies swept by the wintry blasts there came in the carly months of 1827, from Warren coun- ty, Ohio, Lewis Edwards and his family. Their journey was replete with hardships, and it was with difficulty that Mrs. Edwards and her year-old baby kept from freezing to death. Lewis Edwards became the first collector and first justice in the county, and was one of the prom- inent pioneers. Of Welsh descent, he was born in Burlington county, New Jersey, in 1799, and at the age of twenty-one was adventuring in various enterprises in the Ohio valley. He had all the versatile genius
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of the typical frontiersman, and before moving out to Cass county had been employed several years in the carpenter's trade, so that he was probably the first regular carpenter to settle on Pokagon prairie. He brought along with him his set of tools, and while his family was shel- tered under the roof of Uzziel Putnam he was engaged in construct- ing a model home for those days. His cabin contained well made win- dows and doors, and his skill also improvised practically all the house- hold furniture. His interest in fruit culture is also noteworthy. He brought from his father's New Jersey orchard some fine apple grafts, and for some years he raised the best and greatest variety of apples in the county. As "Squire Edwards," he became one of the noted charac- ters of the vicinity, and numerous incidents connected with the transac- tion of official business are associated with his name.
Beginning with 1828, the settlers came in too great numbers to receive individual mention. Alexander Rodgers and family of wife and eight children located in the township. He was the first supervisor elected after the organization of the county, although he did not serve on account of illness. From Giles county, Virginia, came the Burk family and also Archibald Clyborn (the family name also spelled Cly- bourne and Clyburn), who was a member of that noted family who were prominent in many communities of the middle west. furnishing at least one of the historic characters of early Chicago.
ONTWA TOWNSHIP.
From Pokagon we turn to historic Ontwa, which was settled al- most contemporaneously with Pokagon. In the western part of the township, near the beautiful sheet of water rightly named Pleasant lake, and on the broad prairie where now stands the town of Edwardsburg. Ezra Beardsley, who had come from Butler county, Ohio, unloaded his household goods in the spring of 1826 and became the pioneer of the locality which has since borne the name of Beardsley's prairie. In the previous year he had prospected this site, decided upon it as his perma- nent home, and erected a rude cabin to shelter his family when they should arrive. During the first year his household was the only one on the prairie. But in the following spring the nucleus of a settlement was formed by the arrival of George and Sylvester Meacham, George Craw- ford and Chester Sage. The latter two remained only a year or so, when they moved to Indiana and took a prominent part in the found- ing of the now city of Elkhart, Mr. Crawford surveying the first plat
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and Chester Sage's home serving as the first court house of Elkhart county.
The Beardsley settlement became a favorite rendezvous for home- seekers passing through or preparing to locate in the vicinity, and to accommodate this stream of visitors Ezra Beardsley commenced keep- ing a tavern, which was the first in the county. When the Beardsley house was crowded to its limit, as was often the case, the overflow was sent to the Meacham cabin, otherwise known as "bachelor's hall." Suf- ficient plain food and a shelter between their bodies and the sky were all that were asked by pioneer travelers, and this furnished they were con- tent.
The pioneer merchant of Ontwa, Thomas H. Edwards, was also selling goods from a pole shanty on the south bank of Pleasant lake, and thus the central settlement of the township was somewhat distin- guished by its commercial character from the agricultural community which was growing on Pokagon prairie.
According to the former Cass county history, Ontwa township at this time contained a resident whose peculiarities entitled him to a place with the hermit, Job Wright. This individual, whose name was Gar- ver and who came from Virginia, is said to have lived in his log cabin for nearly a month without any roof, subject to the rain and inclemen- cies of the weather, waiting for the moon to be in the right position in the zodiac before shingling his cabin, so that the shakes would not warp up. A few years later he became so annoyed by the increasing num- ber of his neighbors, and especially by the surveying of a road past his dwelling, that he sold out and moved to a thick wood in Indiana, miles from any habitation. One house within five miles, and that a tavern, where whiskey could be obtained, constituted his idea of Paradise.
LA GRANGE TOWNSIIIP.
Next to Pokagon, and excepting the small settlement in Ontwa, La Grange prairie attracted a small rivulet of that great stream of emi- gration which at this time was flowing with increasing volume from east to west. The first settler in La Grange township was that pioneer with whom we are already familiar, Abram Townsend, whose first home in this county was in Pokagon. He had followed the receding frontier for many years. Born in New York in 1771. he had moved to Upper Canada when young, in 1815 settled in Huron county, Ohio, thence to Sandusky county (where a township was named for him), and in 1825
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began the series of explorations which ended in his becoming a settler of Cass county.
Mr. Townsend soon had as neighbors Lawrence Cavanaugh and wife and son James; Abraham Loux, a son-in-law of Townsend; and Thomas McKenney and James Dickson, who located on section 17. In the autumn of this year, after a dreary drive from southwestern Ohio, the Wright family arrived. William R. Wright was one of the able pioneers of this vicinity, and the family connections and descendants have long been prominent in the county.
Two other familiar names may be mentioned. Isaac Shurte, who came to the settlement in 1829, was born in New Jersey in 1796; moved to Butler county, Ohio, where he married Mary Wright, and from there came in 1828 to Niles and in the following year to his home in La Grange. It was in his house that the first election in the township was held, and his name often appears in the early accounts of the county.
Jolin Lybrook, who came to the township in 1828, was a member of the Virginia family of that name that sent numerous of its scions to this portion of the middle west, and most of them came in for prominent mention in connection with the early and formative history of their re- spective communities. John Lybrook had come to Michigan as early as 1823, assisting Squire Thompson to move his goods to Niles. Sev- cral years later he brought his parents and sisters to this locality, and lived there until his removal to La Grange. It is claimed that he sowed the first wheat in the St. Joseph country. He also imported the first grindstone seen in this region, carrying it on horseback from Detroit. So useful was this instrument that it became almost an institution, and many settlers came twenty, thirty and even forty miles for the purpose of sharpening their implements.
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