USA > Michigan > Lenawee County > History and biographical record of Lenawee County, Michigan, Volume I > Part 3
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
The only other son then left, Edgar B., served with distinction in the Union army, during the late civil war, and rose by promotion to the rank of brigadier general. The son, though crippled for life in one arm, from a severe wound, is still alive and well, otherwise, living on a plantation on the Mississippi river, sixty or seventy miles above St. Louis. The old General himself, after all the hardships and privations and labors of a pioneer life in the wilderness-taking an active part in building and operating the first saw-mill and grist-mill in the county, besides farming, keeping hotel, and running lines of stages on the Chicago road and elsewhere-is still alive and with us, as a hale and hearty old gentleman of eighty-four years-taking quite an interest in all relating to the early history of the Territory and State, and attending all the meetings of the County Pioneer Society.
Before proceeding to note some incidents concerning the early settlement of other parts of the county, besides the three first settled points above mentioned, it might be well to finish, as it were, the account of the first settlement of the present township of Raisin, of which the west or main part was included in the settlement of Darius Comstock and his associate Friends. The eastern part of the town did not begin to be settled until 1830. In the spring of that year Robert Boyd and some three or four others, started from Tecumseh, with General Brown as a guide, to explore that part of the town ; and Mr. Boyd soon after located the land where he now lives, and another
21
OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
young man of the party took up some land adjoining him. The nearest settlement to them on the south, was at the village of Blissfield, distance about ten or twelve miles, through heavy timbered land. In 1831 quite a tide of immigration set in to this part of the township, mostly families of the Congregational or Presbyterian persuasion, being thus distinguished from the older or west part of town, which was mainly settled by members of the Society of Friends.
One of the earliest settlements of the county, after those in Tecum- seh, Blissfield and Adrian, was made about where the village of Deerfield now stands, by Wm. Kedzie, of Delhi, N. Y., in 1826, he having previously bought some government land there in 1824. He and his family of nine, were followed in 1827-8, by Benjamin and D. H. Clark, Anthony McKey, Charles Miller and others. In 1828 a post-office was established, with Wm. Kedzie as first postmaster-the post-office being named "Kedzie's Grove," afterwards changed to Deerfield. After the death of Mr. Kedzie, which took place in the winter following, Anthony McKey was appointed postmaster. Mr. McKey was one of the most prominent men of the settlement ; active as a farmer, surveyor and engineer, and served as a member of the State Senate for two years, in 1837 and 1838. The mail, at first, was carried on horseback from Monroe to Blissfield, by way of Deerfield, making weekly trips. Some of the early settlers in Deerfield and vicinity were over twenty days in getting through with teams from western and central New York-a trip which can now be made by railroad in about half as many hours. The first school house was a log one, built in 1829; and now they have, in that neighborhood, a two-story brick, and five other good comfortable frame school houses. For the first two or three years, the early settlers had to go to Monroe to market, to mill, to post-office, for blacksmithing, and for a doctor. It is related by one of the Kedzie family, that one of them had once to go a distance of five miles, on a winter morning, for fire, or the means of making one. And they were not the only pioneers of Lenawee county who had occasionally to go quite a distance on like errands, as those times were long before the days of friction matches. Another incident, showing the difficulties and hardships of early pioneer life in Lenawee county, was told by L. Ormsby, Esq., of Deerfield, at a meeting of the Kedzie family, and others, held there in August, 1876. He stated that Mr. Kedzie, the father, once took a grist to mill at Monroe, and when he got there the mill was out of repair, and he had to bring it back unground. He then took it to Tecumseh, traveling through an almost unbroken wilderness with only marked trees and old Indian paths for his guides. The distance to Monroe and back, and then to Tecumseh and back, was about one hundred miles.
It may not be out of place here to give some idea of the then grist- mill at Tecumseh, to which Mr. Kedzie had to go, and which was the first one in the county, and the only one for more than three years after it was built. Although the time of erection, and the ingenious
22
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
device by which the place of a pair of regular burr mill-stones was supplied by the manufacture of an upper and a nether mill-stone out of a large granite boulder, has been told by A. L. Millard, Esq., of Adrian, in a paper furnished to your society, and being published among its proceedings, yet, having before me the original contract between Wing, Evans and Brown, of the one part, and Turner Stetson, of the other, for the building of the mill, dated July 16, 1825, I thought that it might be well to state a few facts as to its size and cost and other particulars.
The mill was to be twenty feet wide and twenty-five feet long, two and one-half stories high-the first story thirteen feet high, the second eight feet in the clear, and from the top of the upper floor to the top of the plate, four feet-the first story to be built separate from the upper, and of timber twelve inches square, braced in the strongest manner-each story to be of four bents-the whole building to be boarded with inch boards, over which the sides and ends to be clapboarded with whitewood or black-walnut, and the roof to be shingled with oak shingles. The contract also included provisions for doors, windows, stairs, double floors, etc., for four and one-half foot mill-stones, or in case the rock intended for them should get spoiled in making, then, the stones might be made of four foot diameter-the contract also provided for the gearing of the wheels, for elevators, and the taking of water from the west flume, etc. The whole of the timber used in the erection of the mill and flume to be sound oak. The foundation to be dug deep enough to receive the mill, which was to rest on three mudsills. The party of the second part was to do all the work, and put said mill in complete and perfect operation by the first of January, next, (January, 1826). The parties of the first part were to pay therefor $125 by the 20th instant, and $125 by the first of of January, next; and to assign to the second party two subscriptions drawn by the inhabitants of Tecumseh, and dated June 1, 1825, amounting to about two hundred dollars in cash, labor and materials -also to furnish all the iron and glass, and give 'said second party the use of the tools to make the stones, and give the free use of their saw-mill, time enough to saw all the timber and boards for the erection of the above mill and flume. The parties of the first part were also to furnish all the timber, in the woods, except the whitewood and black-walnut, and to give the use of their wheels to draw the logs. On the back of the contract are endorsed a receipt for the above mentioned subscriptions at the date of the contract, and one for the first $125, as paid August 2, 1825. The other $125 was paid on the completion of the work, and its acceptance.
The mill, it will be seen, was on a small scale, but with regard to milling, as well as other matters, it was the day of small things, but adapted to the wants of an infant settlement, and towards which almost everyone in the community gladly contributed. After the erection of other and larger mills, it was known as the "old pocket mill." The second grist mill of the county, was the red
23
OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
mill of Comstock and Dean, at the village of Adrian, built in 1829.
The surveyed towns nearest to the villages of Adrian and Tecumseh were, naturally, the first to attract immigration and to become settled. The town now called Madison, and of which a portion near the north- east corner was included in the village, and is now a part of the city, of Adrian, began to be settled in 1827, Nelson and Curran Bradish being the first settlers. Nelson built the first log house, and his wife was the first white woman to settle in the township. Their son, Myron, born in April, 1830, was the first white child born in the town. Calvin Bradish built the first saw-mill. The township, when first organized, was called Lenawee, but in 1838 was changed to Madison.
One of the first settlers in the township of Macon, and who is said to have entered the first land in the town, was John Pennington, who moved there in 1831, from the township of Raisin-but Peter Sones is said to have made the first actual settlement and improvement. Among the most prominent of the early settlers of Macon, were Israel Pennington, the first postmaster, and Dr. Joseph Howell, who built the first frame house in the township. After the organization of the township of Franklin, which embraced all directly west of the present town of Tecumseh, Mr. Pennington, Dr. Howell and others, circulated a petition for the organization of a new township on the east of Tecumseh, which was acted upon by the Legislative Council in the spring of 1834, and the township of Macon was then organized, including the surveyed town east of Tecumseh, and also the town south of that. Dr. Howell was one of the eight delegates from Lenawee county in 1835, to the convention to form the first State Constitution. He and the writer of this sketch, also then a delegate to that convention, are still living and residents of the county. Another delegate from the county to the same convention, Joseph H. Patterson, of Raisin, is, or was until lately, still alive, but had become a resident of St. Joseph county.
As already noted, the present township of Ridgeway, including a portion afterwards set off as a part of Deerfield, was, until 1841, included in the town of Macon. On the first Monday in April, in that year, Ridgeway was first organized as a separate township-the whole number of votes then cast being eighty, which were all given to Augustus W. Montgomery, as Supervisor. For the first ten years after the organization of the township, he and F. A. Kennedy, another prominent citizen and early settler, seemed to be elected alternately, every year or two, to the office of supervisor, except in 1850, when Mr. Kennedy was a member of the House of Representatives for Lenawee county. The present town clerk, Mr. Jay A. Santus, writes me, that of all elected to office at the first town meeting, or then holding office, Mr. Montgomery, Sanford Hause and Joshua Waring alone remain, "all others having since died or removed." Jonathan Hall may be considered as one of the first settlers of the town, as he commenced in the spring of 1828, to clear up the farm where he still lives, and has resided for nearly fifty years. About the same time, or
24
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
a little earlier, a Mr. Martin settled on the prairie part of the town, but his house was burned down the ensuing fall, and was not rebuilt. The town was but little settled until 1833, when a company from Seneca county, New York, and another from Yorkshire, England, came in.
The present township of Palmyra remained as a part of Blissfield until 1834, but began to be settled along the river as early as 1826. The first saw-mill in Palmyra was built in 1834; and a large flouring mill, with four run of stones, was built in 1836-37, costing about $60,000, mostly furnished by Toledo capitalists. It was burned in 1870, and has never been rebuilt. George Crane was the first supervisor of the town when organized ; a man of wealth and enterprise, and who aided very materially in means to build the railroad from Toledo to Adrian, which ran through the township and village, and through some of his own land-Crane's hill, so called, being the first grade outside of Toledo to try the powers of the locomotive, when drawing heavy trains of cars. Judge A. R. Tiffany was also one of the prominent early settlers of the township, and was chosen as one of the eight delegates from the county to the constitutional convention of 1835, and was also elected to that of 1850, and was a member of the House of Representatives in 1855-6; he was Prosecuting Attorney of the county in 1834-5; Judge of Probate for eight years, 1836 to 1844; and was the author of two standard works on Justice of the Peace practice, and of one on Criminal Law, &c. He died in Palmyra, January 14, 1868.
In the south and south-west part of the county, the first land entered in Fairfield was in 1830, and the first house was built in 1831. In Seneca, the first houses were built in 1832, and the village of Morenci was laid out, and its first settlement commenced, in 1835. The first settlers in the town of Medina, moved there in May and June, 1834. In the south-east part of the county, the town of Ogden began to be actively settled in 1836, though some scattering settle- ments were made several years earlier. There were some settlers moving into the south part of Riga in 1836, but the north part was but little settled until Roswell W. Knight and others moved into it in 1839. Mr. Knight got a station on the E. & K. R. R., named Knight's station, and was the active and leading business man there for many years. After his death the name of the station was changed to Riga.
The first settlement of Hudson and Rollin, and of what was known in early days as the Bean Creek country, was not really commenced until 1833, although one man from Seneca county, N. Y., had entered in June, 1831, an eighty acre lot in what is now the township of Rollin, and Addison J. Comstock, of Adrian, in May, 1832, had entered another eighty acre lot in the same town. But neither of these locations had been settled on until after other lands had been entered in Hudson and Rollin, and some actual settlements com- menced. The first house built in the Bean Creek valley, was in the
25
OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
Ames-Kidder settlement, in October, 1833, a log house 16x22 feet, which accommodated twenty-six persons, by their sleeping on the floor in two rows. Hiram Kidder, one of the first settlers of Hudson, had previously, in 1831, been a settler in Raisin, and helped to pioneer the first settlers to the Bean Creek country. Soon after the building of the first log house, the settlers began to get out of provisions, and had to dispatch two of their number to Adrian for supplies, a distance of sixteen to eighteen miles, which journey, there and back, they accomplished in five days, sleeping at night under their wagon, and cutting their way, in places, through the woods-as they went by a different route from that by which they moved in. Stephen Lapham had previously, in May of that year, built a shanty in the town of Rollin, and moved Levi Thompson into it, who thus became, as it were, the first actual settler in the Bean Creek country. Mr. Kidder and Beriah H. Lane built the first two saw-mills in the valley, and Mr. Lane also built the first frame house in Hudson, in November, 1835. About this time they got up a petition for the organization of the township of Hudson, but as the State Legislature only sat six days in November of that year, the petition and all other such business, had to lie over until the legislature met again in February, 1836.
I was not aware, until looking over the proceedings of the special meeting of the County Pioneer Society, held in Hudson in September, 1877, that a book on the early settlement of the " Bean Creek Valley" had been published. Such, however, I found to be the case, and I have been indebted to F. A. Dewey, Esq., President of our County Pioneer Society, for a perusal of a copy then presented to him by the author, James J. Hogaboam, Esq., of Hudson. I found it a book of about 150 pages, full of incidents of the early days of the settlement of that part of Lenawee county, including, also, some sketches of the settlement of nine towns on the Hillsdale side of the county line, and in a supplement, beside some other memoranda, there is a copy of the address of S. C. Stacy, Esq., editor of the Tecumseh Herald, giving a full and detailed account of the first two years of Tecumseh as a white man's country, up to July 4, 1826. With such ample means for obtaining further detail than could properly be embraced in one short paper, I think that the State Pioneer Society will hold me excused from further specifications in this part of my address.
I am indebted to General Brown for some reminiscences of an exploration trip made in the spring of 1826, by himself and three others, from Tecumseh to the Cary Mission, on the St. Joseph river, opposite to where the city of Niles now stands. And I have thought that it would be well to give here a few particulars of the trip, as it was made in what was nominally a part of Lenawee county, for about three years after the organization of the county; and the General says that he has never before furnished any account of it, and I had certainly never seen or heard of any notice of it. Dr. M. A. Patterson, in an address to the Raisin Valley Historical Society, stated that the original plot of the village of Niles was recorded in the
26
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
first volume of the registry of deeds for Lenawee county-a rather striking proof of the extent of country embraced in the county in those early days.
The Cary Mission was a rather noted point at that time, and the party were anxious to see for themselves what the character of the intervening country was - there being different rumors as to its capacity for settlement and cultivation. The party consisted of General Brown, his brother-in-law Musgrove Evans. Dr. Caleb N. Ormsby, then in Tecumseh as a physician, and Horace Wolcott, from Connecticut, who had come to Michigan the year before to settle as a merchant, or Indian trader. They set out in the month of May, on horseback, with ten days' provisions-taking the Indian trail on the north side of Evans creek. After passing the lake at the head of the creek, which had previously been named after Mr. Evans, they came upon another small lake, which they all thought was the prettiest sheet of water, for its size and surroundings, they had ever seen. They had some discussion as to what it should be named, and finally agreed upon calling it "Sand Lake." They were about (as it was the habit then,) to christen it by that name, in some tonic which they had taken along as medicine, but by some mishap their tonic bottle had all leaked out, and that part of the ceremony was omitted. They there took the Chicago trail, on or near the present line of the Chicago road, intending to follow it to the Cary Mission. None of the land west of Lenawee county was then in the market, nor was the country even laid off into counties for more than three years afterwards. They crossed the upper part of the St. Joseph river, about where the village of Jonesville now is. After leaving Tecumseh they found no settlers or white persons until they came to White Pigeon prairie, where they found a man by the name of Hale, located there as a "squatter "-there being no land there to be purchased at that time, the first land offered for sale, in what is now the counties of Hillsdale, Branch and St. Joseph, being in October, 1828, and in Cass and Berrien, in June, 1829, and in 1831.
At the time of the Sauk war, ir 1832, when General Brown went west, he found the same Mr. Hale on Door Prairie, Indiana, having a well cultivated farm and good buildings, and was invited to stay over night with him, which he did.
Further on in their trip they found a Mr. Beardsley, on what they called Beardsley's prairie; he had come up from Indiana with cattle, horses, sheep, &c. Whilst the party were there, they saw a flock of sheep running for home with some wolves chasing them. Mr. Beardsley and his boys set their dogs after the wolves, and they kept them off from the sheep, and then went off after the wolves, and had not returned when General Brown and the party went on. Here they turned aside a little from the direct Chicago trail, in order to call upon an Indian trader, named Coutieau, a Frenchman, living near, or a little south, of where the village of Bertrand is now, and who had been at Tecumseh on an Indian trading expedition, and there met
27
OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
General B. and some of the others. They took dinner with Mons. Coutieau and his wife, both French Catholics, and friendly and polite people. From this trading post they went on in the afternoon to Cary Mission, a distance of about ten miles. It happened to be Sunday when they arrived there, and they found about a hundred Indian boys enjoying themselves out doors, who were pleased to see four white men ride up on horseback-and they expressed their delight in Indian boy fashion-hooting and yelling and taking hold of the bridles and stirrups, and even of the ponies' tails-which they were allowed to do, as the party knew that they meant no mischief, but rather friendship by it. General Brown rode a large saddle horse, which he had brought from the east, and the boys did not seem to want to take hold of its tail as they did of those of the Indian ponies which the rest of the party rode, and to which kind of horses they were more accustomed. The party stayed sometime at the Mission, enjoying the hospitality of Mr. McCoy, the principal of the station, and his wife. They and the other missionaries and their wives, and the assistants seemed to live in common with the Indians-only that there was some difference. between the supply of the table "above the salt" for the whites at their end of the table, from what it was " below the salt " for the Indians at their end, as well as some difference in manners and fashion of eating. The Mission had a large, well cultivated farm, with twelve milch cows on it, and other stock in proportion. The party saw a large bateau on the river, and upon enquiry as to whose it was, they were told that it was Mr. Coutieau's, which he had lent to them to bring some goods up the river. The Mission was a Baptist institution, established for the conversion and civilization of the Indians. They had a large store full of goods and supplies, getting, however, most of their living from the farm, and plenty of game from the Indians. After the treaty held there in 1828, the Indians moved west, and Mr. McCoy and some of the missionaries went with them. Whilst the party were there. Mr. McCoy had inquired of General Brown if he knew of any young man who could be got to come out there, and who would make a good business manager for them. General B. replied that he thought perhaps he could find some one, and on his return home he spoke to Calvin Britain, then a young man in his own employ, and induced him to go out to the mission in the capacity wanted. Mr. Britain remained there some time, and afterwards moved down to the mouth of the St. Joseph river, and became a prominent business man and politician, serving as State Senator in the first and second State Legislatures, and in other public positions.
On their return to Tecumseh the party came back direct by the Chicago trail, until they came to the last crossing of the St. Joseph river, near where Jonesville now is, finding Messrs. Beardsley and Hale still the only white settlers on the route. On their way back, near the above crossing, they encountered a severe rain storm, and their punk and everything being wet, they found it impossible to make a fire ; so they slept with their heads on their saddles and covered
28
HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
themselves with such blankets as they had along with them. Here they were told of a trail to Tecumseh, said to be shorter and better than the one by which they came out. This went round by Lake Manitou, as the Indians called it, or Devil's Lake as it was after wards named by the white settlers, as they thought the Manitou of the Indians was more of a devil than a good spirit. When they came to the passage between the two lakes, as they thought their horses would not go off very far, they all took off their saddles and bridles, so as to rest their horses better. In the morning they found them all gone, but getting on their tracks, they found them about a mile off. As soon as possible they got under way, and put for home by the most direct and quickest route they could find.
As a conclusion to this account of his exploration trip in 1826, before there were any white settlers west of Tecumseh, and as a contrast therewith, the General tells of a short trip made by him in September last, from Tecumseh to Hudson, by way of Cambridge. A County Pioneer meeting was to be held at Hudson on Tuesday, September 25th, 1877, and General B. was invited, on the Monday previous, by F. A. Dewey, President of the Lenawee County Pioneer Society, to go home with him to his residence in Cambridge, to stay over night, and to ride with him across the country to Hudson the next day, which invitation General B. gladly accepted, as it would afford him an opportunity of contrasting the present situation of the north-western part of Lenawee county, with what it was fifty-one years ago, in its wilderness state. Instead of wild and solitary woods and timbered openings, he now found the whole route covered by improved and highly cultivated farms, with not only comfortable houses, barns, &c., but in many cases large and elegant frame and brick dwellings. Where, in 1826, the only evidences of human occupancy were a few scattered Indian trails, and where the only travel by white persons had been by the land surveying parties, or perhaps an occasional Indian trader, he now found every mile or so, well traveled roads, interspersed every few miles with school houses and churches, and all other evidences of a thickly settled, rich and prosperous community. On passing between Round and Devil's Lake, instead of the open and apparently unoccupied " waste of waters," which he found in 1826, he now found on one of them some fifty pleasure boats, and on the adjoining shore a group of picnic tables, long enough to accommodate at a time, five hundred or more people, and a ball room large enough for fifty or more couples at once. And all this change, and much more, was the result of improvements made, not only since 1826, but in reality since 1833, when the first white settlements were made in or near Hudson, or in the Bean Creek valley.
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.