USA > Michigan > Hillsdale County > History of Hillsdale county. Michigan, with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers > Part 10
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Thus it was that Hillsdale County failed to be twenty- eight miles long instead of twenty-five and a half; and thus, too, it happened that the southern boundary of the county is not an east and west line, but a line bearing north of east, diverging from a true east line about half a mile in the width of the county.
Notwithstanding the little unpleasantness just referred to, emigration was flowing into Hillsdale County and the rest of Southern Michigan, during 1835 and 1836, with greater rapidity than ever before. Reading and Camden both re- ceived their first settlers during the former year. These were the celebrated "flush times" throughout the West, and in fact throughout the United States. Every State granted almost unlimited indulgence to everybody that wanted to issue bank-notes ; but Michigan was the most liberal of all. There the " Wild Cat" and the " Red Dog," as the two principal species of currency were called, flourished with a vigor and ferocity never known before nor since in financial zoology .*
Strangely enough, none of these were established in Hills- dale County, but there were plenty on every side, and money was almost as free as water and hardly as valuable. The fever for cheap money, land speculation, and all kinds of money-making without work, was raging pretty strongly in 1835; it reached fever heat in 1836, and the bubble burst in 1837.
In 1835 the first church edifice was built in the county, the location being at Jonesville. It was erected by the Presbyterian denomination, and was a small frame building,
* A " Wild-Cat" bill was one issued by a bank with no sufficient, foundation, but which had means enough to have bills engraved for its own use with its own name on them. The " Red-Dog" bills were engraved with the name of the bank in blank, and each impecunious institution had its own name printed on them in red ink ; hence the name.
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HISTORY OF HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
which is still standing there, being now used as a marble- shop. It was also used as a court-house, as the people did not consider themselves able to build one. A jail, however, would be less expensive and even more necessary. A rude but substantial structure was accordingly erected at Jones- ville in 1835, which served for the detention of criminals while the county-seat remained at that point.
Among other enterprises of this fertile period was one which resulted more successfully than most of them did. A single settler had located on the site of Hillsdale City, in 1834; another came in 1835, and built a tavern. During the latter year several gentlemen of Jonesville and elsewhere purchased land there, and in 1836 they built a mill and made other improvements. The details are given in the history of the city of Hillsdale. Suffice it to say here, that this offspring of the flush times did not collapse when the financial bubble broke, but continued to progress with steady pace until it is now one of the most pleasant and thriving cities of Southern Michigan.
In 1837, as before stated, came the great crash, the be- ginning of the celebrated " hard times." There have been several other periods known by that disconsolate name, but that extending from 1837 to 1840, or a little later, was the " hard times" par excellence, in comparison with which all other times have been years of luxurious ease.
In the spring of 1837 money was plenty, and all the pro- ductions of this region were exhausted by the heavy emi- gration of that year and the year before. Provisions and other necessaries were brought in from Ohio, and brought a very high price. Flour was worth nine dollars a barrel, oats seventy-five cents a bushel, and other farm products in proportion. The next fall, after harvest, and after the finan- cial collapse, everything had fallen to half the previous price, and ere long a still lower depth was reached. Wheat was only thirty-five cents a bushel. Pork and beef brought two dollars and a half a barrel, in " store pay." Farm products could hardly be sold for money at any price. Salt was con- sidered a cash article, and was not included in the general designation of " store pay." A man could hardly exchange a barrel of beef for enough salt to cure another with.
When the crash came the State suspended work on the Southern Railroad before it reached Hillsdale County. An- other road, which was projected from Adrian to Marshall, and surveyed through Hillsdale, was also abandoned.
Among other enterprises of the day, we find an act passed in March, 1837, incorporating the Adrian and Cold- water Turnpike Company, to build a turnpike between those two places, through Hillsdale County. Addison J. Comstock, E. C. Winter, Henry Wood, George Crane, Samuel Comstock, Rockwell Manning, and Hiram Cowles were appointed commissioners to take stock. There were to be nine directors, and the above gentlemen, with Hiram Alden and L. B. Crippin, of Coldwater, were made the first board of directors. Six toll-gates were provided for ; but if the proposed road should intersect the Chicago road before reaching Coldwater, there were to be no gates on that road, which was under the control of the United States. The toll was fixed at six cents for twenty hogs or sheep ; twenty cents for the same number of cattle; ten cents for a two-horse wagon and team, and three cents for each ad-
ditional horse; fifteen cents for each two-horse coach or pleasure-wagon, and five cents for each additional horse ; five cents for a two-ox cart, and five cents for each addi- tional yoke, etc., etc. Sleighs and sleds half-price. The line was located through Jonesville, leaving Hillsdale at one side. But the whole scheme fell through, as did nearly all similar ones in this county. Before the turnpikes could be built the railroads came, and then people thought they could get along without the more humble kind of im- provements.
It was in the forepart of 1837, just as the "hard times" were about to come down upon the country with crushing force, that the Legislature of the young State of Michigan embarked in a grand scheme of internal im- provements. A loan of five million dollars was authorized, and a board of commissioners of internal improvement or- ganized, who in March, 1837, were directed to survey and build three railroads across the State. Of these, the southern road was to run from near Monroe, through the southern tier of counties to New Buffalo, on Lake Michigan.
Almost as a matter of course there were various routes proposed, and much heated discussion regarding their re- spective advantages. The two routes which were surveyed by the examining engineers, ran,-one of them through Tecumseh, in Lenawee County, Jonesville, Coldwater, and thence westward to New Buffalo ; the other through Adrian, Hillsdale village, Branch (then the seat of justice of Branch County), and thence westward to the same destination. The latter route was adopted, though the line was afterwards deflected so as to run from Hillsdale through Jonesville and Coldwater, and thence through Branch.
New townships were rapidly being formed. In 1836 Adams was created from Moscow, leaving the latter town- ship with its present boundaries, and itself embracing not only the present town of Adams, but Jefferson, Ransom, and the east half of Amboy. The same year Pittsford was formed from Wheatland, embracing the present Pittsford and Wright, and leaving to the former town the present Wheatland and Somerset. Scipio was also formed from Fayette in 1836, embracing the whole of township 5, south, range 3, east.
In 1837 the new town of Adams was subdivided by the creation of another called Florida, the name of which was afterwards changed to Jefferson, and which, on its formation, embraced Jefferson, Ransom, and the east half of Amboy. Adams was thus left to its present boundaries. The same year both Litchfield and Reading were formed from Allen. The former, as now, embraced survey-township No. 5, in range 4; Allen, after the two towns were taken off, con- tained only survey-township No. 6, in the same range ; while Reading embraced survey-townships 7, 8, and fractional 9, in the same range, now comprising the townships of Read- ing and Camden. In 1837, also, the township of Somerset was formed from Wheatland, both, after the division, having their present boundaries.
Thus at the end of 1837 there were no less than eleven organized townships in Hillsdale County,-indicative of at least some scattered settlements in all except the ex- treme southern portion. The hard times did not stop
43
HISTORY OF HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
emigration, although they may have decreased it. People, it is true, did not come West with the same enthusiastic expectation of becoming rich in a year and a half which animated them during the flush times, but there were a great many who were glad to emigrate to escape the conse- quences of the financial troubles in the East.
As will be remembered, the treaty of 1833, by which the reservation of Nottawa-Seepe was sold to the United States, provided that all the bands of Southern Michigan, in- cluding the one led by Baw Beese, should be transported beyond the Mississippi at the end of two years. But when the time came none of the bands wanted to go. They had numerous excuses : that they had been cheated in the sale of the land; that the bones of their fathers were buried here, and they could not leave them; that if they went West the large and powerful tribe of the Sioux, who inhabited these regions, would fall upon them and destroy them.
Whenever any commissioners or other officials came around to require them to leave, they scattered into the forest, or made elusive promises which no one could induce them to carry out. So far as Baw Beese and his band were concerned, they seem to have always been on first-rate terms with the settlers, and the latter did not generally ob- ject to their remaining.
Often, in a cold winter night, a pioneer would hear a knock at his door or window, and on opening the former would be confronted by two or three brawny Indians, or perhaps a single warrior with his squaw and pappooses. " How, how !" was the invariable salutation with which they-greeted their white friends. Then would follow the demand for shelter :
" Indian cold ; squaw cold ; pappoose cold ; want fire."
Then the settler would pile the logs up in the big old- fashioned fireplace, and the Indians would lie down upon the stone hearth or the puncheon floor, as close as they could get to the blaze without burning their blankets, and there rest contentedly until morning.
Sometimes they would ask not only for shelter but food, and even this was generally given them. No one seems to have feared them, or to have remembered that their ancestors had engaged in indiscriminate destruction of the Americans during the Revolutionary and other wars, or even that some of these very men might have followed Tecumseh to battle in the war of 1812, and have taken part in the dreadful scenes on the banks of the river Raisin.
As for the pioneers themselves, their hardships and trials are depicted at more or less length in the sketches of indi- viduals in the various township histories. Hard, indeed, were their struggles, for not only were the most of them obliged to clear away the dense forest with their own hands, before they could raise a single bushel of grain ; not only were they obliged to construct their own rude cabins, often without boards for a floor or glass for a window ; but, worse than all, sickness dogged their steps with pitiless tenacity for many a weary year. The rich, fresh soil, unconquered by cultivation, was saturated with malaria, and when up- turned by the plow of the pioneer the air became loaded with the fever-breeding exhalations. Large tracts, too, in some localities, were of a swampy nature, and in many
places a man could stamp on the thin crust which covered a miry basin, and shake it for a dozen rods around.
True, the prevailing disease was "only ague," and at- tracted but little sympathy for the sufferers. But when the unlucky pioneer, or his still more unfortunate wife, had been in the grasp of this trembling yet powerful foe for several months, shaking every alternate day, and perhaps every day, even though able to get up and out between the attacks, they were little inclined to jest regarding its powers. More- over, fever and ague frequently ran into malarial fevers of various kinds, which often resulted fatally. Sickness was the great enemy of the pioneers of Michigan through all the early days.
To add to the difficulties of the situation, quinine, which was the sole specific relied on against ague, was, like salt, a cash article, and it was frequently almost or quite impossible for physicians or patients to obtain a sufficient quantity of the desired article.
The very hardest of all hard times for the people of Hillsdale County was between 1837 and 1840, and those who went through the hardships of that period, whether men or women, may as truly consider themselves veterans as those who have dared and survived the dangers of a dozen well-fought battles.
Yet, with steady cultivation, the malaria was to a great extent eliminated from the soil, and even the soil itself became more solid in those localities where, as before men- tioned, the semi-fluid marsh below was covered with a thin surface of earth. Year after year witnessed a steady im- provement, and at the present time, although we cannot say that ague is entirely unknown in the county (for it is not in mortal fortune to be entirely free from some form of disease), yet this is none the less one of the healthiest coun- ties in the West ; the salubrity of its atmosphere rivaling the sparkling beauty of its myriad lakes and verdure-clad hills.
Among other troubles which the settlers had to encounter were wolves and bears, and an occasional panther. The last-named animal was too uncommon to be much feared, and the bears were too clumsy to do much damage, except by carrying off an occasional pig; but the wolves were a real pest to every one who wanted to keep sheep. At night their howling was heard far and wide through the forest, and woe to the unfortunate wool-bearer caught outside of a well-built fold.
As an evidence of injury apprehended from these savage animals, we may note that in 1838 a law was passed giving eight dollars for the scalp of every wolf, and four dollars for that of every whelp.
Four new towns were organized between the end of 1837 and that of 1840: Canaan in 1838, Camden in 1839, and Rowland (now Ransom) and Woodbridge in 1840. The first named, afterwards called Wright, was taken from Pittsford, leaving to the latter only survey-township No. 7 in range 1 (of which it is still composed), and itself com- prising, as now, township 8 and fractional township 9 in the same range. Camden was formed from Reading, which it left of its present size, and embraced survey-township 8 and fractional 9 in range 4. Rowland was erected from Jefferson, and included the present township of that name, and the east half of Amboy, the whole comprising survey-
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HISTORY OF HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
township No. 8 and fractional No. 9 in the second range .* Jefferson was thus restricted to the limits of township 7 in that range, which are still its bounds. Down to 1840, the township of Fayette extended from Scipio south to the Indiana line, six miles wide and nearly twenty-one miles long. The creation of Woodbridge in that year brought Fayette down to the present dimensions of Fayette, Hills- dale, and Hillsdale City, and gave the new township officials authority over survey-townships 7, 8, and fractional 9 in range 3, now known as Cambria, Woodbridge, and the west half of Amboy.
Thus the number of civil townships was increased to fifteen ; the total population, by the census of 1840, being seven thousand two hundred and forty.
Down to the beginning of 1840, Baw Beese and his band had continued to wander over the territory which had so long been the hunting-ground of their ancestors, evading, as did their brethren in Branch and St. Joseph Counties, every attempt to enforce their removal in accord- ance with the provisions of the treaty of 1833. They seemed to have retained the good-will of the settlers of Hillsdale County to the last.
An incident is recounted, however, where the chief be- came rather too friendly to suit the taste of his white ac- quaintances. Meeting one of the judges of the county and a physician of Hillsdale in that village, he proposed that they should drink with him. As the noble red man usually expected some one else to " stand treat," the judicial and medical functionaries promptly accepted the unwonted invitation. Baw Beese called for liquor and a single tumb- ler, filled the latter full, drank off half of it, and proffered the remainder to one of his friends. The latter and his comrade both declined it, but proposed to drink from their own glasses.
" No, no; that no friendship," said the chief; "if you my friend you drink with me,-same tumbler."
In vain the two gentlemen professed their undying love for all the Pottawattamies in America, and especially for their great chieftain, the noble Baw Beese; the latter be- came decidedly angry at their persistent refusal to accept his generous offer. He had condescended to honor two of the leading professions of the pale-faces by asking the gen- tlemen to drink with him; they had accepted, and now they insulted him by asking for separate glasses. The ghosts of his ancestors, the heroes of Braddock's field and the siege of Detroit, were ready to leap from their long- closed graves, brandishing their shadowy tomahawks and scalping-knives at this degrading proposition. It was only after many protestations and the interposition of the land- lord, Adam Howder, that the chieftain consented that his own tumbler might be refilled and that his two friends might use their separate glasses.
Meanwhile, the people of St. Joseph and Branch Coun- ties hardly felt secure in the possession of the reservation lands as long as the Pottawattamies remained in the vicinity, and were exceedingly anxious for their removal,
and in 1840 the government positively determined to com- pel the whole tribe to move West. Various efforts to compass the desired result were made during the summer, but still the Indians evaded the official demands. Baw Beese was particularly averse to the step.
"Sioux kill me; Sioux kill us all," he said. "Sioux bad Indians, tomahawk squaw, scalp papoose ; ugh !"
At length, in November, when the government found the year drawing to a close, and the Indians still in Michigan, they sent not only civil commissioners, but a detachment of soldiers to enforce their immediate removal. Even then the task was a difficult one. The commissioners formed a camp and sent the soldiers to bring the Indians in. They made no resistance, but the young men would break away every chance they saw, and the squaws would hide so adroitly that it required the utmost skill to find them.
At length nearly all of them were assembled under a strict guard, and the officials declared themselves ready to start. Poor, good-natured old Baw Beese wept bitterly when he found that the dreaded removal was inevitable.
" Sioux kill me ; Sioux kill us all," was his reply to every attempt at consolation.
Mr. Holloway has furnished us a description of the mournful cortege as it passed through Jonesville, the next day after leaving camp. At the head of the column rode the aged chieftain in an open buggy, drawn by an Indian pony, alone, with his gun standing between his knees. A single infantry soldier, with musket on shoulder, preceded the buggy, while another marched on each flank. The chief had ceased to complain, but his countenance was de- jected to the last degree as he drove in mournful silence away from the land of his forefathers.
His wife, a woman of sixty, followed next, mounted on a pony, a single soldier being considered sufficient for her guard. After her came Baw Bee, a sub-chief, and half- brother of Baw Beese, with about a dozen more middle-aged and youngerly Indians and squaws, some on ponies and some on foot, and some of the squaws with pappooses on their backs. These were probably the children and grand- children of Baw Beese, and a special escort of half a dozen soldiers was assigned to them.
After these came the main body of the band, in groups of five, ten, or twenty each, stretching along for half a mile or more. A few were on ponies but most of them on foot ; stalwart warriors, with rifles on their shoulders, but with mournful faces; women, still more dejected, with their blankets drawn over their heads ; boys and girls, careless of the future, and full of mischievous tricks; and, slung on their mothers' backs, the black-haired, bright-eyed, brown- faced pappooses, the cutest-looking creatures in the world, gazing with infant wonder on the curious scene. On each side of the road marched the soldiers, scattered along, a con- siderable distance apart, as if guarding a wagon-train.
The Indians were acquainted with almost every one, and as they recognized one and another of those who had been their friends, they called to them by name :
" Good-by, good-by."
" Good-by, good-by," responded the whites; and thus with friendly salutations the last of the Pottawattamies left for- ever the home of their ancestors.
* This township has had a curious record in regard to names, hav- ing been first Rowland, then Ransom, then Bird, and finally Ransom again. See township history.
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HISTORY OF HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
After Baw Beese and his band joined the rest of the tribe the women and children and some others were put in wagons. All were then taken to Peoria, Ill., and embarked upon steamboats. Thence they were carried down the Illinois and Mississippi Rivers to the mouth of the Missouri, and up the latter stream to Council Bluffs, Ia., nearly due west of their former home, where the government had al- lotted them a large reservation.
They disliked the location, however, partly on account of the scarcity of timber, which made the country so differ- ent from the densely-wooded hills and dales of their ancient hunting-grounds, and partly on account of the nearness of the dreaded Sioux, who ranged at will over the broad plains less than a hundred miles to the northward and westward. They continuously besought the government to remove them to some other locality, and at last gained their point. About 1850 they were transferred to a tract about thirty miles square on the Kansas River, some seventy-five miles west of its junction with the Missouri, in what was then a part of the Indian Territory. On the formation of Kansas Territory, embracing this tract, the Pottawattamies were left there on a reservation, and there they still reside. A report has gained some credence in this county that, while the tribe resided near Council Bluffs, Baw Beese was actu- ally slain by the Sioux whom he so much dreaded. This, however, is incorrect; the chieftain died a natural death in extreme old age.
Those who have been interested in the changeful history of these children of the wilderness may, perhaps, be grati- fied to learn that, according to official reports, the two thousand Pottawattamies in Kansas have much improved in their new home, and that their moral and intellectual standing is higher than that of almost any other tribe in that State.
Their removal in 1840 terminated their connection with Hillsdale County ; for, although a very few of those who were sent West escaped from the guard and returned to Michigan, we cannot learn that a single one of them took up his residence in this county.
With the end of 1840 we close our chapter on what we have designated as " The Pioneer Era," meaning to indicate roughly the period of the hardest struggles in the settle- ment of Hillsdale County. There was a good deal of pioneering done after that, yet with the lightening of the financial pressure of 1840, the rapid emigration soon swept away many of the difficulties incident to a new country, constant cultivation removed many of the causes of sickness, and the county soon entered on a course of rapid and prosperous development.
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Before leaving the year 1840, however, we must mention a curious result of the contest which had been going on for several years between Hillsdale and Jonesville for the county-seat. As is the case in many political contests, both of the chief rivals came very near losing the prize for which they were striving, in favor of a "dark horse." Finding that they were in growing danger of losing the county- seat, on account of Hillsdale's nearness to the centre of the county, the Jonesville people joined with those in the eastern part of the county and procured the passage of an act on the 31st of March, 1840, by which a majority of
the county commissioners were directed to fix the site of the county buildings in Osseo. The new city was so small that the Legislature was obliged to describe it as being in sec- tions 4 and 9, township 7, range 2, where a lot of not less than three acres was to be deeded for the use of the county. But the courts and offices were to be kept at Jonesville until the county commissioners should certify that suitable buildings had been erected at Osseo for their accommodation. As no such buildings were ever erected, the county-seat was never removed to Osseo, but remained at Jonesville until it was finally located at Hillsdale.
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