USA > Michigan > Lenawee County > History and biographical record of Lenawee County, Michigan, Volume I > Part 5
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My first real practical trial of pioneer life may be said to have commenced when I began to prepare for building a log-house, and to split rails, &c. I had never before cut or split anything larger than some stovewood, and had to take some lessons in such things from older backwoodsmen. I thought that I proved a pretty apt scholar, as I soon learned to do about as much for a day's work as almost any of my neighbors, although I had to hire a great deal of rail-splitting and such work done. Also, by getting a lesson or two in shingle- splitting and shaving, I made out, to split and dress my own long
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OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
shingles, or shakes, as some called them, for a log house, and after- wards for a barn and shed.
As I could not do much to any advantage on my land during the winter, some of the officers of the newly formed school district in Clinton, asked me if I would not teach their school there that winter. I told them I had had no experience in teaching a primary school, and did not know how I might get along with it-my only experience in school keeping having been as teacher of languages and mathematics in Meadville (Pa.) Academy, a situation obtained for me by my friend, the Rev. Dr. Bruce, of the Western University of Pennsylvania, at Pittsburg. However, I finally agreed to take the school, and so I became the first teacher of a school in Clinton, as was noted in the address read at the special pioneer meeting, held at Clinton in June last. I had, I believe an average of about twenty to twenty-five scholars; amongst them were Welcome V. Fisk and Joseph S. Kies, now two of the most prominent business men in the village of Clinton, and Charles N. Felton, now in California, as one of the officers of the mint or sub-treasury in San Francisco. I got along, I believe, so as to give general satisfaction to those sending children to school, as well as the boys and girls themselves, except to one of the sons of Pontius Hooper, at whose hotel I boarded, who was rather inclined to be a ringleader in all violations of the rules, and who, on account of a punishment I was once obliged to inflict on him, threatened that he was going to thresh me when he got to be man. As that was forty-six years ago, he has probably got to be a man before this time, but still I have not got that threshing yet. The last I have heard of him is that he was in Illinois somewhere, following his father's occupation-that of keeping hotel, in which I wish him every success.
In May, 1832, when the alarm of the breaking out of the Black Hawk war first came through the territory, I was, like all the other male settlers, notified to be and appear armed and equipped, &c., as the law directs, and I volunteered like almost all the rest, and was mustered in at Clinton as a private in Captain Hixson's company, and marched forthwith, May 22d, I think, for Niles, or the seat of war. The first night out, we slept or watched at Blackmar's tavern, on the Chicago road, west of the present Junction so called, in Cambridge. I laid down at the head of the stairs, on the floor in the log house, and during the night I heard a gun fired, which in the morning I found to be from Sol. Fenstemacher, who was on guard, firing at one of Blackmar's hogs as it insisted on coming within the lines without giving the countersign. I found also in the morning that we had had, during the night, quite a hard frost, which I knew would be fatal to some corn and other vegetables which I had planted, and were just coming up out of the ground when I left. We kept marching on west for several days, without anything of special note, except the sham skirmish known as the battle of Coldwater prairie, which I had learned at head-quarters was to come off in the evening after we
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
reached there. But the history of that, and of all the incidents on the march to Niles and back again, have all been told at length by S. C. Stacy and others, and I have neither time nor space now to rehearse them. The only untold incident which I remember, was seeing the friendly Indians at Niles, laughing at our target-firing with some of the old flintlock muskets which had been sent along for us to use.
While talking of military matters, I may as well finish here my military history, as it is very short, and not much more of it. In the fall of 1835, I took part in the famous Toledo war, as a second lieutenant in the Wolverine militia, that made the Ohio midnight judges retreat within their own acknowledged boundaries,-they well knowing that Uncle Sam, or Old Hickory, would be after them if they undertook to take possession of, or exercise jurisdiction over any of the territory of Michigan, until so authorized by Congress. Having thus become, as it were, a hero of two wars, I was promoted by being commissioned as Division Paymaster of the 5th Division of Michigan Militia, in which capacity I never either received or disbursed any funds-not even my own pay. But for services in the Black Hawk war, I afterwards received, like all my fellow soldiers, a bounty land warrant for 160 acres of land.
The first town meeting which I attended in Michigan, was that held in Brownville, for the township of Tecumseh, on the first Monday of April, 1832. That township then included all the five northern surveyed towns of the county, and the north half of the tier of towns next south, making a township of nine miles by thirty. All settlers living then within the northern nine miles of the county, who wished to attend town meeting had to go there to vote. I recollect that I rode part of the way home with Cornelius Millspaw, then keeping tavern on the Chicago road about eighteen miles west of Clinton, in what is now the township of Woodstock.
The second annual town meeting which I attended, was that in which the township of Franklin was organized, in April, 1833, which town then, and until April, 1836, included not only the present town of Franklin, but also what are now the towns of Cambridge and Woodstock. At that meeting, I think, or soon after, I found that a Mr. Joseph Slater, who had been a fellow passenger with me on the steamboat from Buffalo to Detroit, when I first came to the Territory, had also become a settler in the town of Franklin, in the southeast part of it, which was more heavily timbered than the northern part, and generally preferred by those accustomed to farming on timbered land. Mr. Slater is still a resident of Franklin, living where he first settled, a successful and prosperous farmer.
But enough as to personal matters,-my record as a delegate to the first constitutional convention, and then as Secretary of the State Senate for three years, and afterwards a member of the State Legislature, in both branches, and as a State officer, are sufficiently embodied in state journals and documents, to render any detailed
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OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
statements here unnecessary, especially as much of it could not be considered as belonging exclusively, or more particularly, to the history of Lenawee county.
NOTE .- About the time of the publication of my Pioneer sketch of the history of Lenawee county, there was some discussion as to the origin and meaning of the name given to the county, when first laid out. In a hurried note at the time, I gave as my understanding of the name, that it was derived from the Delaware or Shawnee word for Man or Indian. Having had occasion to refer to the reports on the Pacific railroad surveys made in 1853-4, of which ten volumes were published by Congress from 1855 to 1859, and of which a full set was presented to me by Honorable Charles E. Stuart, then one of the United States Senators from Michigan, I came across the vocabularies of Indian languages collected by Lieutenant Whipple, and with remarks by Professor Turner, who was connected with the surveys. The Delawares are there spoken of as the eastern, and the Shawnees as the western division of the Algonkin stock, and as the only two branches of that stock. The Indian name of the Delawares is there given as " Le-na-pe," and by some other writers they were designated as "Leni-Lenape," as if to say "Man Indian." In Lieutenant Whipple's vocabulary of Delaware and Shawnee words, " man " is given as "Len-no" in the first dialect, and "Il-le-ni" in the other. In none of the other Indian dialects given in Lieutenant Whipple's report do I find anything from which the name of our county could, with any probability have been derived. J. J. ADAM.
TECUMSEH.
ITS INCIPIENCY AND ITS FOUNDERS.
N the autumn of 1823, Musgrove Evans, Esq., a native of Pennsylvania, and belonging to the society of Friends, left Jefferson county, in the State of New York, to explore the West, and, should fortune smile, to enjoy those smiles more nearly to the setting sun. On arriving at Detroit he found some friends, and made the acquaintance of Austin E. Wing. Mr. Wing had been a resident in the Territory for several years-some six or seven. Of the comparative merits of its various localities, he was well qualified to judge. He at once suggested to Mr. Evans the Valley of the Raisin, as a region of special attraction, beautiful, rich and full of promise. After some explorations of other points, Mr. Evans was inclined to accept Mr. Wing's judgment in the matter, and resolved, in the coming spring, to investigate the claims of this new field. He immediately returned home to Jefferson county, New York, and, during the winter, was actively engaged in efforts to interest and enlist his friends in his western enterprise. He was quite successful.
Early in the spring Mr. Evans, with his wife and five children, General J. W. Brown his brother-in-law, and twelve others, started together for Detroit. They passed up Lake Ontario and Niagara River, to Black Rock. There they and some other gentlemen, from Buffalo, chartered the schooner Erie, the famed craft which subse- quently went over the Falls of Niagara, and ascending the Lake, arrived in Detroit on the last of April, 1824. Here the men left their families and having chartered a Frenchman and pony to carry their baggage, started into the woods on foot, and following an Indian trail, took a western course to Ypsilanti, thence to Saline, and thence onward still until they struck the River Raisin, some little distance above the point where now stands the village of Clinton. Here they discharged the Frenchman and his pony, and allowed them to return. They now took their provisions, etc., upon their backs, and pursued a south- westerly direction till they reached Evans Creek, which they descended to the point of land on which the " Globe Mill " now stands.
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OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
At this place they encamped, and for a week or more, were busily occupied in viewing the country, but more especially, the streams-the Raisin, and Evans Creek-and the form of their banks, and the bordering valleys, the idea of obtaining a good water-power being a leading object of pursuit. It is proper to say here that Mr. Wing had been of great service to Mr. Evans and his co-adventurers, and, although no agreement of a binding character had been entered into, yet so much had passed between them as to authorize a mutual expectation that he, in some way and to some extent, would aid the fortunes of their enterprise. Having this idea in view, from the time Mr. Evans took leave of him in Detroit, during the preceding autumn, and learning that immigrants were extensively exploring in Washtenaw county, and parts adjacent, and fearing that the advan- tages at the junction of Evans Creek and the Raisin might be found, appreciated and snatched away, had the sagacity and prudence to enter the lands adjacent in his own name. These lands were the west part of section twenty-seven, and east part of section twenty-eight, and included the water-power in Brownville. Mr. Evans and his associates, having satisfied themselves that they had found, if not the best point in the interior of the Territory, they had at least found a location worthy of their acceptance, resolved to secure it.
With this purpose they gathered their effects and started for the " Land Office." On reaching Monroe they found Mr. Wing. Immediately Messrs. Wing, Evans and Brown entered into a formal co-partnership, and took up the north half of section twenty-four. The adjacent lands were soon taken up by the companions of Mr. Evans, and adventurers from other places.
Messrs. Wing, Evans and Brown having formed a co-partnership, and secured a location, deemed it important to their interests, if possible, to have it made the county seat. With a view to this, they delegated Mr. Brown to visit Governor Cass, at Detroit, and request him to nominate Commissioners to visit Tecumseh, and, if it should be deemed advisable, to designate it as the seat of justice for the county. The Governor treated the request with obliging consideration, and named Messrs. C. J. Lanmon, Oliver Johnson and one other gentlemau, that committee. The committee, in due time, entered upon its mission, examined the situation, and approved of it. On the last of June, 1824, the Legislature was in session, and the committee being present, made a report, which was accepted and adopted. In consideration of this enactment it was stipulated that, in laying out the grounds for a village, the company, Wing, Evans and Brown, should set apart for the public benefit, four squares ; one for the court house and jail, one for a public promenade, one for a cemetery, and one for a military parade ground, and build a bridge across the River Raisin east of the village. The company accepted the condition, and appropriated for the court house and jail, a square on the north-east corner of Maumee and Chicago streets ; for pleasure ground, a square on the south-east corner of Maumee and Chicago
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
streets ; for a cemetery, a square on the south-east corner of Ottawa and Killbuck streets; for a military parade ground, a square having Shawnee street on the north, Ottawa on the east, and, what is now styled Railroad street, on the west. The bridge was also built.
On the first Monday in June, 1824, Mr. Evans and Peter Benson, with their families, left Monroe and started for what had now become the " bright particular " gem of the Raisin Valley-Tecumseh.
After a difficult journey through a nearly pathless wilderness, and over the low marshy grounds that intervened, they arrived at the place of their destiny on the following day, June 2d, 1824, about five o'clock in the afternoon. There being no means of crossing the' Raisin on the land now owned by Wing, Evans & Co., i. e., on the east side of what afterwards became the village plat, they passed round upon the north side of the river and encamped upon the land which Mr. Wing had purchased the fall or winter previous, at a point a few rods north of the Brownville mill. Here Mr. Evans erected a log house twenty feet square. It was without any floor, as there was no saw-mill nearer than Monroe, and covered with bark, peeled from the trunks of elm trees. During the summer it had neither chimney nor fire-place. For cooking purposes a fire was made upon the ground ; the smoke, when the atmosphere was in repose, ascended through a hole in the roof; at other times it went up or down, or here and there, as played the fitful winds. A bake-kettle supplied the place of an oven for several months, during which time Mrs. Evans prepared food for her husband and children, for the workmen in his employ, together with "goers and comers," amounting usually to from fifteen to twenty persons.
In the autumn, Mr. Brown, wife, and five children arrived; also Mr. George Spafford and wife. A bedroom was added to the house, and an oven and chimney built, the oven standing out and some distance from the house. Here Mr. Evans, wife and five children, Mr. Brown, wife and five children, the youngest child of each family being a small infant, and Mr. Spafford and his wife, all domiciled during the winter of 1824-5.
During the summer of 1824, Mr. Evans, being a surveyor, laid out the village plat. It was laid out into squares of twenty-four rods each, and each square into eight lots, each lot being six by twelve rods- twelve rods north and south and six rods east and west. The squares, so-called, set apart for the court house and public promenade being, in fact, but two one-half squares.
In the summer of 1825, Joseph W. Brown built a frame house on the corner lot, bounded on the north by Chicago street, and on the west by Maumee street. This was the first frame house erected in the county of Lenawee, and besides furnishing private apartments for the owner and his family, contained others also, which were opened for the entertainment of travelers and other transient persons. At that time it was the first and only public house in the Territory, west of Monroe.
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OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
In the same year, during the summer of 1825, a Mr. Knaggs, a Frenchman from Monroe, purchased the lot on the south-west corner of Chicago and Maumee streets, and built a store, which he opened, in part to aid the new settlers, but mainly for the purpose of driving bargains with the Indians. This enterprise proved, both directly and indirectly, of much benefit to the early settlers. They here found, at least to a limited extent, such commodities as otherwise they would have suffered seriously the want of, and besides, it induced the Indians, still lingering in the neighboring woods, to come in and trade with the community. In 1826 Mr. Evans took the initial, and made some advances in the work of building a more comfortable abode for his family. It was completed, we believe, the following season, and, as in the case of Mr. Brown before him, it became the comfortable abode of his family and also a house of public entertainment. Many who there found shelter from the storm, relief from hunger and thirst, rest from weariness, with generous sympathy and soothing cordials when burning fever and death-like ague was upon them, took pleasure in after years in speaking of these things,-some long ago and forever silent, others still live, with tearful gratitude, to repeat the grateful story.
In 1827 Mr. Brown sold his house, on Maumee street, to James T. Boiland, went over to Brownville and built, of hewed logs, the house so long known as the " Peninsular House."
In the fall of 1824, the company of Wing, Evans & Brown, resolved to build a saw mill. For such a mill the want was very great. The inhabitants were indeed few, but those few were in great want of lumber. Without it they could not construct shelters either for themselves or their stock. The frame of the mill was soon raised, the machinery got into position, the waiting waters let on, and the saw was playing as though instinct with life, and actually felt that it was a "luxury to do good." Thus was completed the first saw-mill in the county of Lenawee, and no successor has ever found a warmer welcome.
Early in the spring of 1826, Wing, Evans & Brown resolved to build a grist mill. The frame was soon raised. And now for the stone -an item indeed, in a grist-mill. French burrs were quite too costly for their limited means. It so happened, that about a mile and a half away, and a little north of east, in a district where a stone was one of the rarest things of nature, there was found an immense bowlder-a large rock of pure granite. They were not geologists, hence they asked no questions about its origin, from whence it came, or how it got there. Enough that it was there. They fell upon it in earnest. With drills and powder they soon split off two large slabs, each of which they wrought into stone of suitable size to answer their purpose. And what was quite remarkable, the stone contained an element resembling clay-slate, which, in working, crumbled out, leaving a surface not wholly unlike the genuine burr-mill-stone grit.
It is proper to add that this mill was able to grind about ten bushels
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HISTORY AND BIOGRAPHICAL RECORD
of grain per hour; and for five or six years was the only grist mill in the interior of the Territory.
THE BLACK HAWK AND TOLEDO WARS.
The following is an extract from a speech by Dr. M. A. Patterson, before the Raisin Valley Historical Society, at Tecumseh, June 2d, 1868 :-
In May, 1833, Owen, the Indian Agent at Chicago, sent dispatch riders, with all possible haste to Detroit, who, on the way, spread through our feeble settlement the startling intelligence that the Sac and the Fox Indians, under Black Hawk, were on the war-path, threatening to exterminate the whites from the Upper Mississippi to the lower lakes. The treacherous character of the American Indian is proverbial, and the danger of a union of the hostile western tribes, with the seemingly friendly Potawattomies, of Michigan, who were all around us, was by no means improbable. It was an alarming fact that within two or three days after the news of the hostile intention of the Sac and Fox Indians reached us, the Potawattomies suddenly disappeared. Not an Indian could be found in our vicinity or neighborhoods. Were they lurking in the dense forests of the valley waiting for orders to spring upon us with deadly intentions, or gone to new hunting or fishing grounds far beyond us, were questions often asked, but which no one could answer. Until the locality and designs of the missing Indians were ascertained, the first intimation of their intentions and presence, might have been amid scenes that have been witnessed again and again on our Western frontier, by the glare of our burning dwellings at midnight, amid the shrieks of women and children, the groans of the dying, and the hellish war-whoop of savages. At the bare possibility of such a fate, anxiety was depicted on the countenances of brave men, and there was not a mother in the settlement who did not fold her child still closer to her bosom.
Against a hostile union of the powerful western savages, each armed with a deadly rifle and skilled in its use, the scattered settle- ments on the line from Detroit to Chicago were almost defenceless. And there was cause of alarm when it was known that the United States Agent had urged upon our Governor an immediate draft of the men of Michigan to check the advance of the Indians, until the regular government troops could be mustered on the frontier and hurled against them.
As soon as it was ascertained that the Potawattomies had left us for a gathering of their tribe in the St. Joseph Valley, and at a council of their chiefs and our Territorial authorities seemed peacefully inclined, all apprehension of immediate danger from this quarter was removed. The alacrity then with which the Eighth Regiment, composed of
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OF LENAWEE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
citizens of this valley, marched to the relief of the settlements beyond us, when they had reason to expect a bloody contest, proved that our pioneers were of the right stock, and as ready to fight as to work, when occasion demanded an exhibition of their prowess.
The details of the Black Hawk war, and of duties performed by our citizens in that contest, are too voluminous for our present purpose and may well form an interesting chapter hereafter.
During three succeeding years after the close of this war, emigration to this valley was large and on the increase, and the citizens were earnestly engaged in literally fulfilling the primeval command to " multiply, and subdue the earth," or at least, this part of it.
They were also preparing for the great work of changing their political condition of territorial dependence to the independent position of a State in the Union. But while engaged in these pursuits, they were again called to arms to defend their soil from the unlawful claims and threatening aggressions of Ohio.
It is customary in these days, when the whole thing is settled and the danger gone by, to smile when the Toledo war is named, and to regard it as a "tempest in a tea-pot." This only proves entire ignorance of the merits of that contest. There was an unquestionable attempt made by the authorities of Ohio, and in this remark we do not by any means, include the whole people of that State, backed by a formidable array of force, to plunder from the Territory the only secure harbor on our southern border, and a large tract of valuable land. Plundering is a strong term, but we have no milder word that will properly apply to this act of the Legislature and Governor of Ohio.
The boundary of the Territory of Michigan was clearly defined by an act of Congress so far back as 1805, which had never been amended, and which left the disputed tract in Michigan. But Ohio, not with the sanction of Congress, but by the action of her own convention, extended her boundaries so as to include the long narrow strip in question, provided, as expressly stated by her own convention, at the time, "Congress agreed thereto."
Seven or eight times during a period of thirty years, and down to the very time of the contest, Ohio had solicited Congress to sanction her claim, or, in plainer language, to gratify her ambition for territorial aggrandizement, and Congress had, as repeatedly, refused to do so. In the meantime the land, including the harbor at Toledo, was in possession of Michigan. Our towns, counties, and public roads were all arranged within the territory unlawfully claimed by Ohio, to suit the boundary established by Congress. Such was the strength of our title that the Attorney General of the United States, in an opinion written and published at the request of President Jackson, declared it unquestionable, and the venerable John Quincy Adams, on the floor of the House of Representatives, in a strong protest, also declared that it would be a gross violation of the plighted faith of the nation to take this land from a feeble Territory and give it to a powerful State.
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