History of Bay County, Michigan, and representative citizens, Part 6

Author: Gansser, Augustus H., 1872-
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond & Arnold
Number of Pages: 738

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AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

of the republic, a final council meeting was held on the Flint River, where the documents were duly signed and sealed. This was a moment- ous event, both for the Indians and the pio- neers who had come to these parts. The In- dians came from all directions, making the oc- casion one of a general reunion, and the Flint River witnessed a typical border scene. The Indians were in good humor, for their chiefs thought they had secured a good bargain. Vis- its in state were made between the more promi- nent chiefs and the representatives of the gov- ernment. Huge council fires were the centers of different groups, where the silent Indian chief did the honors to his pale face brothers :

From the wigwam came the peace pipe Very old and strangely fashioned ; Made of red stone was the pipe-head From the great Red Pipe-stone Quarry Blessed by Manitou the Mighty ; And the stem a reed with feathers. Filled this pipe with bark of willow, Placed a burning coal upon it, Gave it to his guest, the stranger. -Adapted from The Song of Hiawatha.

What few white traders and settlers lived within a radius of 50 miles were there, for such an event was worth witnessing, and life in the wilderness offered few enough diver .- sions. Stately Hurons, adorned in all their savage pomp, delivered orations that were deemed masterful by their people, as well as by the pioneers. The dance of peace was given three nights in succession, with all the weird accompaniments the chiefs could muster. A feast was spread to which all did full justice, and on the following day the assembly dis- persed. Michigan now held undisputed title to all of the lands within the borders, at the very time when statehood was conferred upon the commonwealth.

With the cession of this last hunting ground

of the Indians, the colonial period draws to a close. Settlements now became very numer- ous, and there was the usual rush for lands in the newly opened reserve. The veteran hunt- ers, trappers, and Indian traders, who had long followed the Indian trails of the Saginaw Val- ley, knew where the choicest parcels of land were located, and these land prizes fell largely to them.

A few land entries had been made in what is now Bay County as early as 1831, by Leon Trombley. He erected the first permanent log hut on the site where stand to-day the substan- tial business blocks on Water and Fourth streets. The government had tried for years to instill into the Indians a liking and aptitude for agriculture, and Leon Trombley was one of the Indian farmers of this district. He cleared half an acre of ground from under- brush, and planted some potatoes. This crop he left in charge of an Indian and his squaw, while he returned to Detroit to bring up his family. It was early fall when he returned. The instability of the natives as farmers was proven by this early experience, for the patch of potatoes had never felt the scratch of a hoe! The fertility of the soil, however, saved Trom- bley a supply of the tubers for the following hard winter, for to his intense astonishment the crop had matured without cultivation.

During the spring of 1832, Louis Masho erected a log cabin on the spot where Bous- field's mammoth woodenware works are now located. Gassette Trombley was another In- dian teacher of farming on the west side of the river, about this same time. John B. Trudell, fisherman and trader, erected a log cabin near the present site of the Bay City Brewing Com- pany's plant in 1834. Oddly enough, Trudell was by general repute the first total abstainer in these parts. In 1834 the government sent Benjamin Cushway, a blacksmith, to this sec-

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HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY

tion, believing that the growing demands of the Indians' farms would require his services. The Indian, however, preferred his pipe dreams, his revels, hunts and sports, and there was lit- tle for Cushway to do. He erected his black- smith shop and primitive cabin near the west approach to the Lafayette avenue bridge, and for years was a trader among the red men.

In 1835, Joseph Trombley left the employ of the American Fur Company, which had a flourishing agency in the valley, and with his brother, Medor Trombley, prepared to open a store of their own. The stock was purchased at Detroit, and shipped here on the schooner "Savage." The brothers selected a rather open spot in the wilderness bordering the river, lying high and dry where Water and 24th streets intersect. The store was built of pine logs, flattened on two sides, and was 25 by 30 feet in size. The brothers opened the first store in this end of the valley in time for the Indian payment in the fall of 1835. For many years they did a thriving business, exchanging their flour, pork, blankets, and similar useful articles, for the fur and venison of the Indians. The stock in trade had to be brought mostly by boat, as at that time there was only a turnpike from Detroit as far as Royal Oak, a distance of 14 miles, and a rough corduroy road as far as Pontiac. From there radiated many Indian trails, but these were impassable for men with heavy packs. The first Trombley land entry was made through Major Causley, United States land agent at Detroit.

These first colonists were rugged types of the hardy frontiersman. Of Joseph Trombley, it is written that he would start from Detroit before daybreak over the Indian trails with a pack on his back and arrive at Flint, 70 miles away, that same evening! In 1828, guided by two Chippewa Indians,-Was-a-wa and Bee- chance,-he sailed in a bark canoe along the

shore of Saginaw Bay to where Sebewaing is now located. Their sole food was the game they shot. Trombley did not find the water deep enough to suit him there, hence returned to Detroit. A log hut built at Carrollton by his uncle, Gassette Trombley, in 1819, shel- tered him on a later trip of exploration in this vicinity, when he took up the fur trade business for John Jacob Astor.

Trombley was raised among the Indians, and excelled at all their favorite sports. Hav- ing defeated their. most famous young chiefs in feats of strength and daring,-in shooting, wrestling, running, jumping, swimming, hunt- ing or fishing,-they stood in mortal awe of his "big medicine," as they termed his rugged vitality, and for years he was a commanding figure in their councils. He occupied a fore- most place in the councils, transferring the last Indian reservation to the government, and contributed as much as any other one man to the creation of a thriving and peaceful settle- ment on the site of Greater Bay City. Years after, it was his particular enjoyment to race on foot some friend who was riding a horse over the Indian trails to Flint and back the same day, a distance of 90 miles, and Trombley invariably won.

In 1836, during the height of the land spec- ulation craze in the Northwest, Dr. Daniel Hughes Fitzhugh, living between here and Saginaw, decided to buy a parcel of land which Joseph Trombley also had in view. The latter heard that Dr. Fitzhugh had started for Flint on horseback, to close the deal. Trombley promptly gathered the necessary gold, piled it in his canoe, which he paddled to the Tittaba- wassee, and from there he ran practically all the way to Flint. He had the land entered and paid for before Dr. Fitzhugh and his horse arrived. During the early evening, Trombley returned after his canoe, showing his certifi- .

AND REPRESENTATIVE CITIZENS.

cate to a trader named McDonald at that place. McDonald would not believe that Trombley had been to Flint and back in that short space of time, but lost his bet of a gallon of wine, when the mail carrier, who then delivered the few letters, proceeding this way on horseback, came along and acknowledged that Trombley had passed him that morning. going into Flint at top speed, and a few hours later had again passed him on his way home.

In 1836, Judge Albert Miller, who was the first school teacher in the valley, purchased some land from the Trombleys, and prepared to have it platted.

The stray colonists and hermit pioneers were soon to be surrounded by ambitious com- munities. A new era was dawning for the rich valley of the ancient Sauks. The rugged trapper and the trader were being followed by the farmer and the artisan. The sons of New England were hurrying to the far Northwest, just being opened. "Saginaw's tall and whis- pering pines" were becoming the rallying point of the sons of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire, to whom the odor of pine was life itself. The silent scout who opened the way was disappearing, and ere long the mechanical industries, the workshop, the loom and the saw- mill replaced his hunting lodge and trader's tepee. His doings will be but a legend to the

next generation, and sound like a fable at the dawn of another century. Yet for nigh unto two-thirds of the elapsed period since Father Marquette first explored these regions, this silent, rugged outpost of civilization alone had kept watch and ward over this valley, so blessed by Nature. He has given way to the axe and the plow of the colonist, or hied himself farther North and deeper into his beloved solitude. And now the colonist in turn is swallowed up by the tide of immigration, and his individuality and his little clearing alike are lost in the boom- ing frontier communities. Their lives and deeds are to-day little more than a memory.

Yet we know they chose wisely when they settled in these parts, and they smoothed over many rough places for the thousands that were soon to follow their daring lead. Little enough is known of their lives and their deeds, and but few of their names have survived oblivion in the passing years. But every thoughtful resi- dent of this blessed valley must ever have a warm spot in his heart for the pioneers and colonists who dared the rigors and privations of the wilderness, and created amid untold dangers and suffering the garden spot on Sagi- naw Bay we call our home.

Land of the lakes! With reverence and love we cling To thee, once rugged nurse of savage men! Land of delight, where milk and honey flow!

CHAPTER IV.

EARLY SETTLEMENTS AND SETTLERS

THE INDIANS AND TRAPPERS GIVE WAY TO THE SETTLERS-PLANTING OF SETTLEMENTS -MEMOIRS AND REMINISCENCES OF PROMINENT PIONEERS - THE PERIOD OF RECK- LESS LAND SPECULATION AND "WILD-CAT" BANKS-INDIAN MOUNDS AND LEGENDS -THE MOUND BUILDERS-O-GE-MA-KE-GA-TO AND OTHER INDIAN CHIEFS-INCIDENTS OF PIONEER LIFE ON THE SAGINAW RIVER AND ITS TRIBUTARIES-CHARACTER SKETCHES AND ANECDOTES.

Before these fields were shorn and tilled Full to the brim our rivers flowed; The melody of waters filled The fresh and boundless wood; And torrents dashed and rivulets played, And bisons rested in the shade. -Bryant.

Indian and pale face trapper alike retreated before advancing civilization. Like Daniel Boone, of Kentucky, who in his 92nd year emi- grated 300 miles west of the Mississippi, be- cause he found a population of 10 to the square mile inconveniently close, even so the border pioneers of Michigan. The buzz of a sawmill was the death knell for all that these children of the forest held dear in life, and they retreated hastily to other forest fastnesses when with an ominous crash the giants of the forest fell under the woodman's axe. Hence a complete change of inhabitants was noted in this valley, after the Indians left their favorite hunting grounds and retired to their several reserva- tions. True, many of the bands came period- ically to the valley, holding their councils and weird dances on the spots made sacred to them

by long associations, and by the traditions and customs of their forefathers. Death had claimed many of the Indians during that de- cade. An epidemic of smallpox during the winter of 1836-37 carried off hundreds in the valley, and old pioneers used to relate that many died and were left unburied, the bodies being eaten by the hogs and wild animals. The pio- neers did all in their power to help the sick and starving Indians during that trying ordeal, and thenceforward there was little friction in this part of the State between the races. Indeed, as we review the records of early settlements in these parts, we are struck by the good-feel- ing, peace and good-will apparently existing between the pioneers and the Indians.

From the time that Jean Nicollet, Father Marquette, and other explorers visited the east-

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ern shore of Lake Huron and the Saginaw basin, there were few years that did not find pale face trappers, hunters and adventurers in this valley. Most of these adventurers started from Detroit, and it often happened, that when they bade farewell to loved ones in that stockade, it was also the last time they were seen alive. They started for the land of the Sauks, and were never more heard of. Whether they succumbed to sickness, or fell a prey to wild beasts or Indians, none could tell, but these losses were invariably charged to the treacherous red men. The early pioneers of our land were almost as superstitious as the red men, and hence many of the Detroit set- tlers believed as implicitly, as did the Hurons, that "O-Sauk-e-non" was haunted. After the Americans secured jurisdiction over the North- west, and hunting and warfare gave way to more peaceful pursuits, this valley became the goal of many traders. Here the Hurons came to hunt, to celebrate and to trade. They pre- ferred to deal with the hardy traders who dared to come to this solitude, instead of carrying their furs to Detroit, where they often brought better prices. A number of these traders van- ished as suddenly and as completely as though the valley of the Sauks had swallowed them. Other reckless spirits promptly took their places, and trade did not languish.

One of the most prosperous of the early traders was Louis Trombley, grandfather of Joseph and Medor Trombley, who half a cen- tury later did so much to develop this district. Louis Trombley was a goldsmith by trade. He did a thriving business with the Chippewas, making silver ornaments and medals for them, in exchange for their furs and game. He came to the Saginaw Valley about 1792 in a small boat. Shortly after he had begun building another small yawl, at the mouth of the river, trading meanwhile with the wandering bands

of Indians, he had a violent quarrel with an Indian, who thought he had been cheated in the trade of a muskrat spear. The Indian plunged a huge knife into Trombley, who with blood streaming from his wound leaped into his boat and started for Detroit. He never got there, and his relatives never learned whether he had been overtaken by the Indian in a canoe, and murdered, or whether he fell overboard. His upturned boat drifted ashore near Port Huron. His half-finished yawl was burned, and his stock of goods, left in his log cabin, was stolen. Such outrages were rare, however, in times of peace. The Indians admired the courage of these adventurers and needed their goods.

The intermarriage of white traders with Indian squaws did much to bridge over the chasm separating the two races wherever they met in the wilderness. Many half-breeds lived in this territory, and while a shiftless class as a rule, having apparently inherited all the bad characteristics of both races, still they were not as vindictive toward the early settlers as some of the red tribesmen, and usually warned the traders and trappers when mischief or war was brewing. But now that the Indian had parted forever with his great hunting grounds, these roving pale faces made common cause with the Indians, and retreated with them into the wilds lying north of here. Hence we find but few Indians spoken of in the early records of this vicinity. These authentic rec- ords begin, practically, with the last Indian treaty, completed on the Flint River in Septem- ber, 1837.

While Michigan was yet a Territory, the government at Washington had begun the erec- tion of a military road from Detroit to Sagi- naw, an undertaking made difficult by the large and numerous streams that had to be bridged. When Michigan became a sovereign State, this

HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY

work was pushed even more vigorously, yet it did not extend much beyond the Flint River when the first settlers came on from Detroit for the Saginaw Valley. Consequently a num- ber of families tarried on Flint River, who had planned to go farther north.

James McCormick, a sturdy Scotchman, was among this number. Born at Albany, New York, May 25, 1787, he incurred the dis- pleasure of his father, a Presbyterian, by mar- rying Ellen Garratt, a Universalist, of Gar- rattsville, in Otsego County, New York, which place was named after her father. By thrift and industry he accumulated what in those pioneer days was a nice competence. In 1830 he went on the bond of some friends for $16,000, which later he had to pay, leaving him only $300 with which to support a large family. He left Albany on May 1, 1832, for Michigan, then the Far West. The family went by canal boat to Buffalo, the trip requiring seven days; then on the steamer "Superior" to Detroit in 72 hours, a record-breaking trip, made possi- ble by favorable winds, the steamer also car- rying spars and sails. Detroit then had about 3,500 inhabitants. Leaving his family in rented rooms in a farm house, where the Bid- dle House in Detroit now stands, Mr. McCor- mick and his two oldest boys, Robert and James, took a wagon into the interior. Jenkins Davis was at that very time constructing a bridge across the Flint River. Hiring a past- ure for the horse, the boys found employment on this bridge, while their father purchased, from a half-breed named Ewing, 125 acres of land situated on the north side of the Flint River, and which 30 years later became the center of the thriving city of Flint. Here he planted potatoes brought for that purpose, and as there were only two log cabins in that vicin- ity, and both occupied, he built a similar crude habitation, while his son James went to Detroit

to bring up the family. James was but 15 years old, but he was accompanied by a young school teacher from Grand Blanc, Albert Miller, who in after years became one of Michigan's most prominent citizens, and a leading pioneer of Bay County. The friendship between these two young men, begun under such peculiar cir- cumstances, ripened with the passing years and proved an influential factor in the development of this community. The youngsters witnessed the Fourth of July celebration at the old Capi- tol in Detroit, erected in 1825 on the site now occupied by Cadillac Square. John Mosher car- ried the household goods with his team as far as Grand Blanc for $25. James, with the one- horse wagon, carried Mrs. McCormick, his younger brother William R., and three little sisters. Often when the corduroy road became almost impassable, all had to get out and walk. At Grand Blanc, husband and brother met the family, and all camped out for the night. Mosher returned to Detroit, for his team could go no further, and McCormick and his sons began at daybreak to cut a way for their one- horse wagon through the wilderness. After two days of harrowing work, they reached the Flint River, the first settlers to get through by wagon. The family had plenty of potatoes and venison, but lacked all the other comforts of home.

On October 31, 1832, Archibald L. McCor- mick was born in this crude cabin in the wilder- ness, the first white child born between the Flint River and Mackinaw. Little did that sturdy pioneer and his brave wife dream what a future was in store for the child born under such primitive circumstances. When Archibald L. McCormick reached a man's estate, he drifted into Illinois, and at the breaking out of the Civil War he enlisted as orderly ser- geant in Company B, 52nd Reg., Illinois Vol. Inf. For bravery at the capture of Island No.

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10 in the Mississippi River, April 7, 1862, he was promoted to be 2nd lieutenant. At the battle of Stone River, January 2, 1863, he led his company in capturing a Rebel battery, and for bravery in action was promoted to be cap- tain of his company. He was taken prisoner in one of General Giant's assaults on Vicks- burg, and suffered terribly from sickness and privation. Being exchanged, he returned to Illinois to recruit both his health and his com- pany, both of which objects were accomplished in time for the campaigns about Chattanooga. He was with General Sherman on his famous "March to the Sea." At the battle of Kenesaw Mountain, June 27, 1864, Captain McCormick and his company were selected to storm a bat- tery sheltered by strong breastworks. "Re- member the battery at Stone River" were his commander's parting words, which cheered the little band on its desperate errand. They silen- ced the battery, but Captain McCormick fell on the breastworks, pierced by seven bullets, a martyr to his country, and one of the many native sons given by Michigan, that our nation might live.

Such was the stock that blazed the way through the wilderness, that other and less hardy generations might enjoy the fruits of their labor, their hardships and privations, and prosper amid the many gifts which Nature has so richly bestowed on this valley. Such were the heralds of civilization in Michigan, the ad- vance guard of social refinement and civil lib- erty. From the moment that these hardy pio- neers left the older settlements behind them, and turned their faces resolutely Northwest- ward, their lives became one unending strug- gle, each day marked by sacrifice and toil and danger. They toiled in silence, and even their names have been lost to posterity. From the mists of obscurity that cover those years, and shroud the lives and deeds of the builders of

homes and cities in the heart of Michigan, there stand out clear and strong, like beacon lights on the surrounding waters, the lives of a few of those stalwart sons of the New World, like James McCormick and his worthy sons. Their life work is as an index to the lives of their equally hardy and industrious, but less conspic- uous neighbors.

The Chippewa chief, Ton-dog-a-ne, was then at the head of the band that had the Flint River bottom for its hunting ground, and the sage Indian took quite a fancy to the McCor- mick family. He often told the head of the family about the rich lands and boundless for- ests at the mouth of the Saginaw River. About 14 miles south of Saginaw there was a clearing of some 200 acres in extent, on which several government instructors had for years endeav- ored to teach the roving Indians the art of rais- ing crops, among them being the late Capt. Joseph F. Marsac and Gassette Trombley. Mc- Cormick inspected the clearing and liked it so well, that in 1834 he purchased 640 acres from Ton-dog-a-ne, for 25 bushels of potatoes and corn each year for 10 years. So great was the confidence of these Indians in McCormick that his mere word sufficed to bind the bargain.

The family was moved to the new location in Indian canoes, and for several nights their only shelter was their blankets. Half a century afterward these pioneers recalled how cruel it seemed to them then, to be left alone and without a roof over them, in the great, dark forest; especially cruel did it seem to the parents and older chil- dren who remembered their cozy home on the distant Hudson. A log house was built in the course of a few weeks, and in this the family lived until they came finally to Lower Saginaw, as Bay County was then called. The clearing was fenced in with rails cut from some walnut trees which grew in that section,-a

HISTORY OF BAY COUNTY

rather extravagant waste of valuable timber, as measured by 1905 timber values, for now wal- nut lumber is imported from Cuba and Central America and resawed at the J. J. Flood mill on the West Side of Greater Bay City, which mill is especially equipped for that work.

In 1835, McCormick sold 1,000 bushels of corn from this clearing to the American Fur Company, which carried it in boats to the In- dians of the Lake Superior region, in exchange for beaver skins. An Indian trail through the woods, and even that impassable part of the year, was the only means they had of communi- cating with the few settlers north of them, unless they came by boat on the river in sum- mer, or over the ice in winter.

A grist mill was sorely needed by these pio- neers, and in 1835 McCormick went to New York, requiring II days to reach Albany, which was fast time in the days before the iron horse conquered space. He brought back with him a little grist mill, run by hand, with a handle on each side, which would hold a peck of corn, and would grind a bushel of corn in an hour! Other settlers had come to this end of Michigan in the meantime, and they would come many weary miles with their corn to use this primitive grist mill. That little mill was worth its weight in gold to the pioneers, and is worthy of a place in Michigan's pioneer collec- tion.

This section of Michigan was overrun with land speculators during 1835 and 1836, and many of them tarried at the cabin on the Indian field. A field bed, holding 10 to 15 persons, was made for their accommodation before the fireplace, and was seldom empty. The water along the valley was much higher in those years than now, and after every rain the river- bottom trails would be lost to view. Several of these land lookers disappeared as mysteriously as some traders had done before them, and the

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History of Bay County, Michigan, and representative citizens, Part 6

Author: Gansser, Augustus H., 1872- Publication date: 1905 Publisher: Chicago : Richmond & Arnold Number of Pages: 738

Author: Gansser, Augustus H., 1872-
Publication date: 1905
Publisher: Chicago : Richmond & Arnold
Number of Pages: 738