USA > Michigan > Calhoun County > History of Calhoun county, Michigan, With Illustrations descriptive of its scenery > Part 2
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In prosecuting our enterprise we shall essay, first, somewhat of the history of the State in its early settlement, with a brief sketch of the title to the fee of the millions of acres of prolific soil within its splendid domain, and which the national government confers upon the settler who makes his home thereon. Then will follow an account of the county, from its earliest settlement, up to and including the just completed centennial year; showing its surprising development in agricul- ture, trade, manufactures, political influence, population and wealth-not forgetting to do honor to the brave men, of all political faiths, who rallied to the common de- fense of the country when armed treason raised its bloody hand against the national life, and who bore the banner of the Peninsular State through the carnage of many hard-fought fields, onward to ultimate triumph. Brief histories of the several townships and villages composing the county will follow, wherein will appear the names of the early settlers, public officials, professional men, trades- men ; with accounts of schools, churches, and societies ; together with comparative statements of the business of those early days and of the present, interspersed with incidents, humorous and sad, which invariably attach to border life, but which, however graphically they may be told, cannot give to us of the present day, who have come into our pleasant places through the toils and privations of the pioneers, any realizing sense of the rugged, thorny paths those heroes and heroines patiently and hopefully trod for many long and weary years.
It cannot, then, be unimportant or uninteresting to trace the progress of Cal- houn's gratifying development, from her crude beginnings to her present proud position among her sister-counties ; and therefore we seek to gather the scattered and loosening threads of the past into a compact web of the present, ere they become hopelessly broken and lost, and with a trust that the harmony of our work may speak with no uncertain sound to the future.
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87
HISTORY
OF
CALHOUN COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
BY H. B. PIERCE.
CHAPTER I.
CIVILIZATION ; ITS PROGRESS-FIRST INTRODUCTION INTO MICHIGAN-FIRST PERMANENT SETTLEMENT-ORDINANCE OF 1787-ORGANIZATION OF TER- RITORY-COUNTIES AND TOWNSHIPS-ADOPTION OF CONSTITUTION -- DE- VELOPMENT OF STATE.
IN the early ages, amid the hordes of the east, civilization was born, and began its march of progress. Westward, over Assyria, India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, as those nations successively rose and fell, its waves rolled, and lapped the shores of Spain, France, and Britain. Checked for a time at this ultima thule of the Greek and barbarian, by the repressive spirit of the Middle Ages, at length it over- leaped the barriers interposed to its progress, and bore upon its topmost crest, over the Atlantic, a Columbus, a Cabot, and a Cartier as its avant couriers to the New World, whose shores were bathed by the waters of two oceans. Rolling inland, over mountain, lake, and river, across the ancient domain of the Mound-Builders, then the realm of the Iroquois and Algonquin, the first ripple of the incoming tide broke upon the shores of Michigan in the year of grace 1641, at which time* Father Charles Raymbault and his companion, Isaac Jogues (Jesuit missionaries, and envoys of the king of France), unfurled the Bourbon lilies at the Sault St. Marie, and proclaimed to an assemblage of two thousand of the red men of the northwest the news of salvation.
These missionaries were followed by Rene Mesnard in 1660, and Claude Allouez in 1665, in the Lake Superior region ; and by Pere Marquette and Claude Dablon in 1668, who founded the mission at Sault St. Marie, which was the first settle- ment by Europeans in Michigan.
In 1671, Pere Marquette founded the mission of St. Ignace, on the north shore of the straits of Mackinac ; and in 1673, after his discovery of the Mississippi,- the great event of his life,-he discovered and named the river St. Joseph, and explored it for some distance from its mouth.
In 1679, La Salle traversed the great lakes in the " Griffin," the first vessel ever launched thereon, and while awaiting her return, built a trading-post at the mouth of the St. Joseph, and carefully sounded the stream and buoyed its chan- nel; and, finally, went to Illinois with Hennepin and Tonti, making the portage to the Kankakee, near the present site of South Bend, Indiana. The real settle- ment of Michigan, however, may be said to have commenced at Detroit in 1701, when De la Motte Cadillac, with the inseparable Jesuit and one hundred French- men, took possession of that point in the name of the king of France, and which was the first permanent colony settled in Michigan. Thus, this Commonwealth, which began to be colonized even before Georgia, is the oldest of all the inland States of the Union, excepting Illinois, which had a colony at Kaskaskia previous to 1700.
The French authority over Michigan, which lasted till 1760, and the English domination which succeeded, and ended nominally in 1783, but really not until 1796, brought but little progress to the country. In 1787 the northwest terri- tory was organized under the ordinance of 1787, Michigan coming under its gov- ernment and laws at the departure of the British garrison in 1796, from Detroit. The first American settler in Michigan located at Frenchtown, on the river Raisin, in 1793. In January, 1798, the northwest territory assumed the second grade of territorial government, as provided by the ordinance of 1787, and the territory
of Michigan, as afterwards established, constituted a single county-Wayne-in that territory, and sent one representative to the General Assembly of the north- west territory, held at Chillicothe; and the election at which this representative was chosen was the first election held in Michigan under the American government.
In 1802 the Lower Peninsula was annexed to Indiana Territory by the act of Congress creating the State of Ohio. January 11, 1805, Michigan was erected into a separate territory, and General William Hull appointed governor. From that time to the glorious victory of Commodore Perry on Lake Erie, in 1813, the country was subject to the terrors and atrocities of Indian warfare, the western tribes being confederated under Tecumseh, with the British, against the United States.
After the recapture of Detroit in 1813, General Cass began a most successful administration as governor of the territory, which lasted until 1831, during which, as a historian of Michigan says, he did " more for the prosperity of Michigan than any other man, living or dead."
From 1805 to 1824, the legislative powers were vested in the governor and judges who formed the territorial government; but in the latter year Congress provided for a legislative council, to which those powers were given. The mem- bers were appointed by the president from eighteen nominees elected by the people, nine of whom constituted the council for four years. The first legislative council was held in Detroit on June 7, 1824. Immigration now began to flow into the country, and population being scattered, Congress authorized the governor, in 1825, to divide the territory into counties and townships, and to provide for the election of township officers. In 1826, the counties of Mackinaw, Saginaw, La- peer, Shiawassee, St. Clair, Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, Wayne, Lenawee, and Monroe were organized, and the territory west of the principal meridian to Lake Michigan-which had not been surveyed-was attached to Monroe and Oakland counties for judicial purposes. On April 23, 1827, the lands ceded by the treaty of Chicago in 1821 were formed into a township, and named St. Joseph, and attached to Lenawee county for similar purposes. The same year, Congress gave the people the right to elect the representatives to the legislative council, and the representation was apportioned among the districts and counties according to popu- lation.
In 1833, the people of Michigan memorialized Congress for an enabling act to form a State constitution, preparatory to the admission of the State into the Union ; but that body refused their prayer. Thereupon Governor Stevens convened the legislative council, which ordered a census of the territory to be taken, and called a convention to frame a constitution, that "the State might demand as a right what had previously been asked as a favor." In 1834 the census was taken, showing a population of 87,273 ; an excess of 27,273 over the requisite number provided for in the organic law of the northwest territory. In May, 1835, the convention framed a constitution and sent it to Congress for acceptance ; but owing to the southern boundary trouble, which had been vexing the people of Ohio and Michigan for thirty years, and the political agitation of the times, the State was not finally admitted until January, 1837; the boundaries being adjusted as at present, and so accepted by the people finally. From this time Michigan dates her marvelous progress in manufactures, agriculture, commerce, and education, which has placed her in the very fore front of the grand galaxy of American com- monwealths. Amid her unrivaled natural beauties and inexhaustible resources, her commercial and educational development, this proud State may well and justly say to all comers within her borders, in the language of her appropriate motto, Si queris peninsulam amonam, circumspice, " If you seek a beautiful peninsula, look around you."
* This date was five years before Elliott preached to the Indians within six miles of Boston Harbor.
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10
HISTORY OF CALHOUN COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
CHAPTER II.
ABSTRACT OF TITLE-FRENCH, ENGLISH, COLONIAL, AND INDIAN TITLES TO LANDS IN THE NORTHWEST-FIRST LEGAL CONVEYANCE IN MICHIGAN- LAND SURVEYS AND SALES-MILITARY REPORT ON AMOUNT OF GOOD LAND.
NOTWITHSTANDING the claims made by England and France to American soil, based upon the right of discovery under the law of nations, and which claims were maintained for two hundred years at a most frightful expenditure of blood and treasure, and although the thirteen colonies, after a bloody and expensive war of seven years, succeeded to the rights of those nations in the soil of the northwest, yet there was an adverse and prior claim to be extinguished before a free and unin- cumbered title in fee simple could be given to lands northwest of the Ohio river. The aboriginal inhabitants-the Indians-were the real lords proprietary of the soil of North America, and most energetic and tenacious were they in defending their title thereto; and so successful were they in that defense, that the American people, notwithstanding their rights acquired so bloodily and expensively, were under the imperative necessity of perfecting their fee in their conquests by purchase from these same proprietors, from first to last. All of the terrible Indian wars which have deluged the territory of the United States with the blood of white inen, to say nothing of the extermination of whole nations of the red race, which these same wars have occasioned, have been caused and waged on account of the trespass of the pale-faces upon the Indians' land, as alleged by the latter.
In 1753 the French, by the treaty of peace following the fall of Quebec, ceded their rights in Canada and the northwest to the English crown, and it in turn, by the treaty of peace at Versailles, after the Revolution in 1783, ceded its rights in the northwest to the United States. Several of the colonies had obtained, previous to the Revolution, certain vested rights in the territory northwest of the Ohio by charters from the British crown, and hence these lands were known by the name of " Crown Lands." These vested rights were ceded by the several States of New York, Virginia, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and South Carolina, to whom they belonged, to the general government of the Union, from the year 1781 to 1787, and yet it was claimed by the Indians-and the claim made valid-that the United States had acquired by these several cessions the right of pre-emption only to the soil whenever the Indians chose to alienate their title thereto.
After the great confederate council of the eastern and western Indians, at the Huron village, on the Detroit river, in December, 1786, the Congress of the United States accepted the construction placed by them upon the treaty with England in 1783-that they (the Indians) were no party thereto, nor included in the provisions thereof-and the government at once began measures looking to the quieting and extinguishment of the Indian title to the lands in the north- west. A treaty was made with the Wyandot, Ottawa, Delaware, and Chippewa tribes, at Fort McIntosh, in 1785, by which lands at Detroit and Mackinaw were ceded to the United States. This treaty was subsequently confirmed in 1787 by another one at Fort Harmer, and in 1795 by Wayne's treaty at Greenville. This last treaty also ceded other tracts of land at Miami Rapids, and the islands of Mackinaw and Bois Blanc.
In 1807 Governor Hull, of Michigan, made a very important treaty with the Ot- tawa, Chippewa, Pottawatomie, and Wyandot tribes, whereby the Indians ceded to the United States all the lands lying east of the present west lines of the coun- ties of Saginaw, Shiawasse, Washtenaw, and Lenawee. In 1817 Governor Cass made a treaty with certain of the tribes, whereby the greater part of Ohio and a portion of Indiana and Michigan were ceded; and in 1819 the governor effected another treaty at Saginaw with the Chippewas, by which the United States quieted the Indian title to six millions of acres in Michigan. In 1821, by the treaty of Chicago with the Ottawas, Chippewas, and Pottawatomies, all of the country west of the principal meridian, south of the Grand river to the Indiana State line, and west to Lake Michigan, with the exception of a few reservations, was ceded and confirmed to the general government. Subsequent treaties in 1823, 1825, 1826, and 1827, at Niles, Prairie du Chien, Green Bay, and St. Joseph, extin- guished the Indian title throughout the then territory of Michigan, with the exception of such reservations as were made for special bands or tribes-most of the Indians in the southern portion of the territory removing west of the Missis- sippi.
Under the French domination in Michigan, grants of land could be made by the French governors of Canada and Louisiana, which were to be confirmed by the king of France to make them legally pass the title. The French commandants of the post were also allowed to grant permissions of occupancy to settlers, and these latter sometimes occupied lands without permission from any one, thus gaining a color of possessory title, under which they subsequently claimed the full right of ownership.
On the accession of the English power, the British king restricted the extin-
guishment of the Indian title, prohibiting the English governors from issuing grants of lands, except within certain prescribed limits, and the English subjects from making purchases of the Indians or settlements without those prescribed bounds. Grants, purchases, and settlements, however, were made, the king's proclamation to the contrary notwithstanding; and these prohibited possessions formed an important part of the ancient land claims afterwards adjudicated by the land board of Michigan.
In the " American State Papers," vol. i., " Public Lands," it is stated by the report of a commission on land claims in Michigan, that there were but eight legal titles passed to lands during the French and English occupancy of the country. However, there was a land-office established at Detroit in 1804, and the evidence in support of the various land claims arising in Michigan was gathered and submitted to Congress, which body, by subsequent acts of relief, vested the right to their lands in all actual settlers who could show a reasonable color of title thereto.
The first legal grant of land in Michigan was made in 1707, by " Antoine de la Motte Cadillac, Esq., Lord of Bouaquet Mont Desert, and Commandant for the King, at Detroit, Pont Chartrain," to " François Fafard Delorme;" and it was charged with a great many conditions of the old feudal tenure of Europe. The rents and quit-rents were to be paid in peltries until a currency should be established, when the peltries were to be exchanged for and succeeded by the cash of the country.
The system now in vogue in conducting the surveys of the public lands, by which the territory is surveyed into townships of six miles square, and the town- ships subdivided into thirty-six sections, one mile square each, is the suggestion and plan of General Harrison, which was adopted by the general government.
In Michigan, the principal meridian of the surveys was located on the west line of Lenawee county, where the same intersects the Ohio State line; and was run due north through the State to the Sault St. Marie. A base line was established, commencing on Lake St. Clair, on the line between Macomb and Wayne counties, and running due west to Lake Michigan, on the division lines of the counties in- tervening. Three auxiliary lines for the correction of the surveys were run : the first, beginning at the meridian, on the centre line of Gratiot county, and running due west to Lake Michigan ; the second, beginning at Lake Huron, on the line between Iosco and Bay counties, and running due west to the lake; and the third, beginning at Thunder bay, just south of the centre line of Alpena county, and running due west to the same general termination. There are in the survey eighteen ranges of townships west, and sixteen east of the principal meridian, in the widest part of the State. The townships number eight south, and thirty-seven north of the base line on the meridian in the lower peninsula, and run as high as fifty-eight in the upper peninsula, on Keweenaw point.
The first survey of public lands in the State was made in 1816, in the eastern part thereof, on Detroit river and vicinity, and a portion only of that surveyed brought into market in 1818, all within the Detroit land district.
In 1823, the Detroit land district was divided, and a land-office established at Monroe, at which all entries west of the principal meridian, up to 1831, had to be made. The lands were first offered at public sale, and after all competition seemed to be over the applications and bids would be opened and examined, pending which action the office was closed, thereby causing much delay and expense to bona-fide settlers, and also affording a fine opportunity for the "land sharks"-speculators-to reap a rich harvest from the real settlers who came to buy their own locations.
The public sales were finally abolished, which act, together with the adoption of the cash system, rendered the swindling tricks of the speculators less easy of performance, and as a consequence, their occupation was soon gone.
After the applications and bids at the public sales were disposed of, the land was subject to private entry at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, cash in hand. Previous to 1820 the price of the public lands was fixed at two dollars per acre, and the terms at one-quarter down, the balance in three equal annual payments. This system proved a delusion and a snare to the people as well as the government, for many would buy larger tracts than they could pay for, not con- sidering sufficiently the drawbacks they were liable to, and did experience, in the settlement of a new country. The result was that the government could not, and would not, take the improvements of the settlers, but extended their time of pay- ment and gave them liberal discounts and concessions ; and finally abolished the credit system altogether, and, at the same time, reduced the price of the public lands to one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, and made it subject to private entry at that price.
In 1831 a land-office was established at White Pigeon, for lands subject to entry west of the principal meridian, but in 1834 it was removed to Bronson, now Kalamazoo.
A military board of survey, or commission, was sent out by Congress to report
11
HISTORY OF CALHOUN COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
on the quality and quantity of lands in Michigan, for the purpose of locating on such lands the bounty land-warrants of the Revolutionary soldiers and officers, covering, in Michigan, two millions of acres. General Brown stated in the report of this commission, that there were not enough of good lands in the State to locate that amount of warrants, and therefore the Act of Congress, passed May 6, 1812, ordering the survey to be made, was repealed, and a survey of a similar quantity of lands directed to be made, in lieu thereof, in Arkansas and Illinois. This report gave a bad reputation to Michigan lands, and it was not until after 1830 that the effect was removed by the representations of actual settlers, when immi- gration, which had mostly "passed by on the other side" to Illinois and Iowa, received a remarkable impetus, literally surging by waves into the territory. But the cloud had its " silver lining," nevertheless, for though the inaccurate and unjust report of the military board kept away the immigrants for a time, it also left them free of the bane of new countries-the land speculator, whose " tricks of trade" were so happily suppressed by the government in after-years.
CHAPTER III.
ANCIENT FORTIFICATIONS-MYSTERIOUS PEOPLE-THE INDIANS OF CALHOUN ; THEIR POSITION IN THE BLACK HAWK WAR-A BIG INJUN-TRAILS.
ALONG the valleys of the Kalamazoo and St. Joseph rivers are found the remains of an ancient and long since departed people, whom modern science, for want of a better name, has yclept the Mound-Builders. The works of these unknown peo- ple are found throughout the entire United States, from the great copper regions of Lake Superior, where they once wrought and mined the mass copper, to the Everglades of Florida, where their shell-mounds attest their presence; and from Maine southwesterly to the plains of Mexico, their fortifications erected with mathematical skill, and an apparent knowledge of engineering, are wonders yet unexplained by modern research and investigation. The works of the Ohio and Mississippi valleys appear to be the earlier stages of the mechanical skill of a people who, emigrating voluntarily or involuntarily to the plains of Mexico and Yucatan and the highlands of Peru, carried on their arts to grand achievements, as the magnificent cities and temples of the former places and the architectural wonders of the latter country fully and grandly attest. The question of who they were, whence they came, and whither and how they went, is still as mysterious as when the Europeans first gazed upon their mounds, and persistent questioning of the Indians, who had been lords of the country for hundreds of years, could gain no answering tradition of the builders thereof. But, undaunted and undis- mayed, the research goes on, and here and there evidence slowly accumulates that will in the future give the dead back again to the living, and the now undeciphered riddle will be read by the works this same race has left behind. We have full faith that the Rosetta Stone will yet be found by some Champollion, who shall be able to open the seals and read the hitherto closed book. Calhoun County is not uninterested in this research, for she has within her borders the monuments of this race, that give her a history reaching back before the first crusade. When Richard Cœur de Lion and Saladin were fighting for the possession of Jerusalem, Calhoun was an old country, from whose borders a people, numerous and peaceful, had passed away, leaving their memorials, indeed, for the pioneer of 1830 to wonder over; but nothing else to tell of their history, now buried beneath the débris of ages. Along the Kalamazoo, in Bedford township, there are two or more fortifications ancient, but still visible, showing the peculiar circumvallation of triple breastworks, either circular or rectangular, with sally-ports, and roads and garden-plats, and access to the rear to the water-supply. Into Goguac lake an ancient mound, or tumulus, projects, bearing the characteristics of the tumuli of the Ohio and Mississippi. Along the St. Joseph, in the southern part of the county, these remains are also found, some of which have been excavated, and relics of the builders found ; but no bones of the men who raised the works, the soil being so porous that the material composing the human frame-work perished quickly and completely. Flints, celts, copper utensils and implements are found scattered about the fortifications and mounds and buried therein, on which trees, similar in variety and size to those of the surrounding forest, were growing when the first settlers came to the country, which fully attest the age of the works to be all that is claimed for it.
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