USA > Michigan > Oakland County > History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests Volume I > Part 11
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57
"Our food was healthy, highly relished, and never gave us dyspepsia. Our breakfast was eaten before daylight, from October to June, that we might reach our work before sunrise, traveling three or four miles in prairie or open country. This meal consisted of a strong tea, fried or cold boiled pork, and shortcake, yellow with saleratus and rich with pork drippings. Our lunch, finished by 10 or II o'clock, and eaten while walking, for we never stopped in winter, consisted of a bite of cold pork and a piece of bread-the latter often frozen too hard for use, until the axe was used to cut it into small pieces. We worked un- til near dark, and, arriving late in camp, the hot bean soup with bread and tea was eaten with great relish.
"Before leaving the subject I would like to record the names of some of the men who assisted me in this work. They were the follow- ing : Samuel F. Byran, Oliver Torry, Lucius Hunt, David Wilcox, Calvin and Chester Ball, Moses Peck and brother, John Powell, C. P. Webster, Wm. Phillips, M. B. Smith, Pliny Skinner, Geo. Case, Jed Van Wagoner, Samuel Steinbrook, Marvin Tyler, I. Welch, Davis, George Galloway, C. Killicut, Hannibal, Sawtelles, Pike, Gould, Phipps, Hart, Meacham, Dixon, Walter Ostrander, Allen, Michael Van Buren, E. J. White, and others I do not remember.
"I will mention the name of Clark P. Risden, United States sur- veyor, who published the first map of the surveyed part of Michigan territory and had several contracts. I hear he is still living, and must be near my own age, eighty-six in April next. We are probably all that are left of the pioneers employed by government in surveying the lands of Michigan."
This narrative of Captain Parke is quoted quite generously not only because much of it relates to Oakland county and vicinity, as well as * Written in 1876.
55
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
to a character well known in the days when the country was a wilder- ness and for many years after it had become developed into prosperous communities, but because it furnishes pen pictures of the trials and hardships endured by the men of the compass and tripod who run those lines through forest and swamp which must always precede the pur- chase of lands and the guarantee of permanent homesteads.
RECOLLECTIONS OF BENJAMIN O. WILLIAMS
Major Oliver Williams was one of the first half a dozen settlers to make Oakland county his home (he located on Silver lake) and, as noted by his son, Benjamin O., in an address at one of the pioneer re- unions he himself "thought himself the first settler in the county." The bulk of the address is given, as follows:
"Having never considered it a fortunate circumstance to have been reared in a new country, deprived of most of the advantages enjoyed by those brought up in well educated communities and surrounded by highly cultivated people and works of art, I have never felt any especial pride in having been raised a pioneer in the backwoods of even old Oakland county. I would have greatly preferred that fortune should have permitted my parents to have remained where nearly all of their children were born, and, although not quite among those who, accord- ing to John G. Saxe's facetious remark of those born in Boston, 'need no other birth,' yet would gladly have been sufficiently near to have received a good education-the greatest blessing to mankind, except it be that 'second birth.' But fate would not have it so, and most of us, at least while young, had to submit to her sway. And fully believing that 'there is a divinity that shapes our ends,' I have ever felt that my honored parents, did all in their power, under the circumstances, to make their children happy, while aiding somewhat to develop the re- sources of Michigan while a territory.
"With her eight children my dear mother arrived in Detroit six- teen days before the county of Wayne was, by the proclamation of Governor Cass, organized and named. She, with my father, had selected their farm while it was still in the county of Wayne, and moved their family into a large, well-built house in less than two months after the governor, by proclamation, organized and named Oakland county, as your county history shows.
"Presuming that it is well known that I have contributed to the history of this county in the State Pioneer and Historical Society's Col- lections, and fully believing that my father was the first to break through the almost impassible woods and swamps back of Detroit, by clearing and opening a road from the end of the Leavenworth road to this place, and to his farm in the fall of 1818, before the county was named, the Pontiac company formed, or their land selected; and, no doubt, in en- tire ignorance of the fact that the Grahams, Mr. Hersey, Mr. Hart- sough, and possibly the Hoxies, had followed up the Huron river from Mt. Clemens and formed a settlement, as did my father from another direction, before the boundaries of the county were fixed or its name given, he very naturally thought himself the first settler in the county.
56
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
But, Mr. President, I have already occupied too much time on this un- important subject, and should not have alluded to it but for the fact that you sent me, last year, a list of the first entries of land made in the county, taken by yourself from the books of the United States land office; and why my father's or brother's entries of land did not appear under their proper dates, is to me, a mystery. For I do know that, quite early in the fall of 1818, the lands were selected, and that improvements were commenced and the house built, and do not believe it was left subject to entry by others at the land office, until the time, by your list, it ap- pears to have been purchased.
"Instead of the above I might have described to you the sickness, privation and hunger endured; the killing by the tyrant chief, Kish- korko and his band, of one of Mr. Austin Durfey's valuable oxen in front of the house on Drayton plains, and of the fight or the breaking of Capt. Archibald Phipps' leg, near Allen Durfey's house, a little south of Drayton Plains station, and of the surgical skill of our family phy- sician, who, upon arriving at the house, decided that it was not neces- sary to set the limb before the inflammation subsided and the muscles relaxed, for which about one week's time would be necessary; of the hopeless look of the captain when he heard it; of our sending for Doctor Richardson and carrying Phipps home on a litter, and, the same day or the next, myself extending the limb while the doctor ad- justed it to the great relief of all present. Of the great number of rattlesnakes ; while mowing a marsh one day, we killed twelve before noon and none of us wore boots; Mr. Harvey Durfey was barefoot and wound a twisted rope of marsh hay around both feet and legs and worked in safety. One massasauga the same day stuck its fangs into brother Ephraim's tow pants and was dragged several rods before discovered and shook off. Of the wolves we killed without thought of bounty, and of their depredations on our sheep and swine; of the pigeons by the million, and their digging acorns out of the deep snow; of the ducks and geese that blackened the surface of the lakes; of the bee-trees from which we took hundreds of pounds of honey from a single tree; of the pine trees and logs we borrowed from 'Uncle Sam,' and how we rafted the lumber down the Huron river to Ann Arbor from the Wal- rod place; of my father, Doctor Thompson, and Judge LeRoy, at a very early day, going in our large canoe with an Indian guide down the Clinton river to Orchard lake, and borrowing from the island a boat- load of apple trees in the spring of the year-most of these died from having their roots in the water too long-and of Captain Hotchkiss' first drill of militia by platoons, saying he wanted them to wheel to right or left just as his big barn door swung around; or of the lynch- ing of a tramp who robbed his benefactor, Acker Toule, of about $800, all the money he had, and that he had just returned from the east with. (You may be sure that the thief gave up the money.) And of three Indians one day after concluding the sale of skins, furs and beeswax, exhibiting seven skins, stretched nearly round, with the remark, as the oldest man drew from his medicine bag, that 'he didn't suppose my father would care to buy them'; they were once worth five dollars a piece.
57
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
INDIAN NEAR DEATH
"Mrs. Hodges first pronounced them scalps. My father's face was terrible to look upon as he first took in the situation and the insult, and I have ever thought that Indian was as near death that moment as he had ever been. My mother, who stood in the door laid her hand on father's shoulder and bade him come into the house at once. I will give you my reasons for that belief. Having often heard my father relate that on the second day after General Winchester's defeat and the massa- cre, while walking on Jefferson avenue in company with one French gentleman and an English officer, meeting a band of painted Indians all carrying scalps on sticks or at the end of war clubs or tomahawks, one of the tallest and heaviest looking struck my father in the face with the fresh scalps, torn from those unfortunate Kentuckians, and he al- ways turned pale and had the same look of horror and rage as he related it that I then saw on his face. The Indian quickly replaced the scalps, but not before we had all seen to whom they must have belonged- two men, one woman, a girl, two boys and a fair-haired child or babe, as we judged by the length and cut of the hair. Those Indians belonged to the Grand river bands, and were probably Ottawas. I never saw them afterwards.
DEAR OLD OAKLAND, THE BEST OF ALL
"Since then it had been my lot to traverse the valleys, hills and mountain ranges of California; to see those valleys covered with beau- tiful flowers in all their pristine loveliness; to climb the basalt capped and snow covered mountains; have ridden over the grass covered wide savannahs; clambered up and down and viewed the wild savagery of the Andes; crossed and recrossed the awe-inspiring Cordilleras of Cen- tral America, whose forests are filled with the progenitors of Darwin; witnessed on its plains on the night of April 12, 1850, the birth of a volcano, standing at a safe distance; watched through a long, tropical night the grand display of nature's fire-works, and upon the land felt the throbbing of its mother earth. And of all these grand and beautiful scenes none have left more lasting, vivid and pleasant remembrances than did the grand old forest, shining lakes, hills, valleys, flowered covered plains, musical with the hum of bees and the song of birds, of old Oakland as we found and lived among them. Nor will the others ever make as happy homes, or sustain as dense populations. And I now look back and endeavor to recall the often suffering faces of the many respected pioneers by whose kindness, example, friendship, instruction and admonition I was enabled to profit I find of their num- ber nearly all have crossed the river that we, too, must soon be ferried over. That we shall meet again, retaining full consciousness of our lives and friendships here, it seems to me that no intelligent persons should doubt if they have studied well the past and present history of the world and the life and death of the King of mankind-He who spoke and is still speaking to us as never man did before or ever will
58
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
again, when He bade us love one another. Let us all try to keep that precept."
A PICTURE OF MEMORY
The following address was delivered by John M. Norton at the so- called "supervisors' picnic" (a misleading term, as he says), held August 24, 1892; also at the meeting of the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society, June 7, 1893 :
"Mr. President, citizens of Oakland county: Once more under bright skies, in health, in prosperity and in peace, we exchange greetings at our annual county reunion. It is termed the 'Supervisors' picnic,' but its meaning and its nature are broader than its name. This yearly assemblage imports something more than a mere summer's day outing for a set of township and ward officers. It signifies something nobler than the atmosphere of office; its dignity is higher and deeper.
"This annual picnic is the yearly refreshment of a great people's heart. Its issues are the brightening of thought, the rekindling of health- ful emotion, the rejuvenation of life. Cords of union and affection which else might ravel and break, are here strengthened and renewed. For the hour, each individual is transfigured-all utterance is true, every pur- pose is unselfish.
"Two pictures are hung before the eyes of this multitude today. One is traced by the pencil of hope, and it hangs against the sunrise of the future; the other is painted by the brush of the memory, and it leans against the purpling sunset of the past. Not one of us sees them both. Upon the former look all the young, as upon an opening vision of prophecy ; upon the latter look all the old, as upon the closing of the gate called Beautiful. Each picture is circled with a glowing frame- the one new and fair, unscathed by the flame and sword of life's battle ; the other is bruised and scarred, but is of gold tried in the fire.
"I am one of the old. Providence has bounteously granted me the full three score and ten years, with two years grace. Come now, my companions in the 'silver gray,' and look with me for a moment upon our picture-the picture painted by memory, and which leans against the sunset in the frame of gold. To your eyes and mine the figures in this picture are clearly drawn, and of life size. The coloring is faultless and the perspective is so perfect that it seems to speak to us like a living voice. All this is partly owing to the skill' and integrity of the artist. but chiefly to the fact that the picture was painted from life.
"The background of this painting includes, in a general way, all of the southeastern portion of the lower peninsula of Michigan north of Detroit; but all of its special detail and development are confined to Oakland county, as lines and limits were established by Governor Lewis Cass. in his executive proclamation of the date of March 28, 1820, and as the same now are. In the misty distance this beautiful county appears as a land of forest and stream, of hill and vale, fresh and wild as it came from nature's hand, in the possession of savage beasts and more savage men. The Jesuit priest and the French voyager push through the great lakes and up the Clinton river, and open communication with the imperial Pontiac and the rude nations subject to his vast survey.
-
59
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
One lifts the holy cross and the sound of the mission bell echoes across the quiet waters of the lakes along whose borders we encamp today. The other opens his store of trinkets and traffics with the Indians for his furs and peltry.
ADVENT OF THE PIONEER
"But nothing is accomplished towards the settlement and genuine improvement of the country until the advent of the man who came with the axe and the plow-the enlightened pioneer who came to subdue the forest and to make a home-the man who came to stay.
"The first man who built a house within what is now Oakland county, and cut an opening through which the sun might shine upon it, was Alexander Graham. That was within what are now the corporate limits of Rochester, in the township of Avon, and the house he built stood about twenty rods southeasterly from the present 'stone store,' and east of the present Main street. He brought with him his son, and with them came Christopher Hartsough. They all 'came to stay.' That was in 1817.
"Then in the next year, 1818, came Col. Stephen Mack, Maj. Joseph Todd, Deacon Orison Allen and William Lester, settling at and found- ing the town of Pontiac. The Grahams were also encouraged by the settling in Avon, in 1818, of Ira Roberts, George Postal, Daniel Bronson and William Bronson.
"In 1819 the Pontiac colony was enlarged by the coming of Calvin Hotchkiss; and Major Oliver Williams bought and settled upon land near Silver lake, Waterford, and built thereon the first barn properly such, in the county. Avon was also gladdened in 1819 by the immigra- tion of Judge Daniel LeRoy, Dr. William Thompson (the widely famed and eccentric 'Dr. Bill'), John Miller, Nathaniel Baldwin, John Meyers and Amozi C. Trowbridge.
"In 1820 and 1821 the tide increased. Such well known settlers as Judah Church, Abner Davis, Alex. Galloway, Joshua Terry, Judge Steven Reeves, Capt. Hervey Parke, Enoch Hotchkiss, and Rufus Clark, came to Pontiac and its vicinity, while Linus Cone, Daniel Fowler, Cyrus A. Chipman, and Walter Sprague made Avon their home, and Troy was settled in 1821 by Johnson Niles. 1822 found Almon Mack, Joseph Morris, Asa Murray, Capt. Joseph Bancroft, Schuyler Hodges, and Geo. W. Galloway residents of Pontiac, and S. V. R. Trowbridge, Ebene- zer Belding, George Abbey, Joshua Davis, P. J. and Jesse Perrin, Aaron Webster, William and A. W. Wellman, Ira Jennings, and Silas Sprague had followed Joshua Niles to Troy. Champlin Green, Gad Norton, Wil- liam Burbank and Smith Weeks came into Avon, and more than half the townships in the county had by this time one or more families.
"From this date population increased rapidly. In 1824 Nathan and John Power, David Smith, Geo. W. Collins and other representatives of the denomination of Friends, or 'Quakers,' most excellent and highly intelligent people, made important and substantial beginnings in Farm- ington.
"Your present speaker (John M. Norton) came with his parents to
60
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
Avon in the spring of 1824, aged then only four years, and has ever since resided in the county. My mother died the next year, and my father in June, 1832, when I was but twelve years old. My own health and strength were my only resources. These I used as best I could, and with such degree of success as has enabled me comfortably to pro- vide for and educate my family, with a sufficiency remaining for the declining years of myself and of her who has been through all so faith- ful an helpmate. The latch-string of our home is out today, as it was in the early days, and we shall always take pleasure, not only in enter- taining those of our friends of both this and the former generation, but also in showing them the evidence that industry, integrity, and 'pluck' are sufficient for success in this free and fertile country. As I review the long list of my acquaintance, my observation teaches me that an inherited fortune is more often a curse than a blessing, and leads more frequently to ruin than to the substantial success and happiness-not to mention the usefulness-of its possessor.
"More and more rapidly the incoming settlers followed each other into the country, until, by 1830, Oakland county was practically redeemed to civilization. Pontiac was by this time a center of trade for all the region lying north and northwest of it as far as the Saginaws, and dur- ing the close of navigation even to the mouth of the Saginaw river. Oakland county had five thousand inhabitants in 1830, and Pontiac was known commercially throughout the eastern states.
"Until about this period the roads between Detroit and Pontiac, and especially between Detroit and Royal Oak ('Mother Handsome's'), were indescribably bad, often absolutely impassible for anything except ox sleds, mud carts, and similar conveyances. For this reason the settlers of Avon and Troy made their journeys to and from Detroit quite as often as otherwise via Mt. Clemens, that is, by team to Mt. Clemens, and thence by boat down Clinton river to Lake St. Clair, thence through that lake and Detroit river to Detroit.
RAILROAD AS A FUN MAKER
"As an evidence of the growing commercial importance of the cap- ital, the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad was chartered by the legislature of 1830, and, although this immediate enterprise failed, it was followed in 1834 by the incorporation of the company which actually built and oper- ated the road. As a fun-maker, the old Detroit and Pontiac Railroad Company probably surpassed any comic minstrels ever organized. Its directors were inveterate practical jokers and fun lovers, and if Mark Twain would write the true antics of these 'innocents at home,' stating only facts, the work would eclipse all the fiction of his 'Innocents Abroad.'
"Improvements, in all the meaning of the term, characterized the county henceforward; splendid farms, fine residences, improved high- ways, enterprising towns, multiplied upon all hands, until it has now become 'Old Oakland' and ranks as one of the finest counties in the nation.
61
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
THE LIFE BEQUEATHED BY THE PIONEERS
"As we look about us today, where are the men whose names I have mentioned as pioneers of Oakland? Here is their magnificent work, but where are they? The institutions they have founded are the admiration and pride of their successors, but they themselves are gone.
"An association of the pioneers who settled in Oakland county in or prior to the year 1830, is proposed. Alas, how few would be the names upon the roll !
"Watch the pictures again. The forms and faces there, all but a few are stark and still. They breathe not, speak not, move not. Men call them dead. They are not dead; they live in all that we behold about us-their glorious work. They live in the only true life-the only life that is deathless-and they will live thus until civilization shall cease from among men. As we read their names upon the tomb, we call that the shadow in the picture. In the true sense, there is no shadow there. This living work of theirs that is all about us is their truest life. It is the true light of the pictures, and no shadow of death is there. All is light immortal, and its framework is of pure gold, tried in the fire.
"Even so may the other picture become when it shall hang at last in the sunset !"
FIFTY YEARS AGO AND NOW
(Written by S. B. McCracken for the Oakland County Pioneer Society, 1887)
Those of us who have passed middle age seem to stand on the divide between two worlds. On the one hand we can view, in memory, what has been ; we can live anew in recollection the scenes of fifty years ago; on the other hand, we can realize as a present certainty the things that are. We can appreciate something of the contrast between the life of fifty years ago and now. I select fifty years ago as the point of com- parison for manifest reasons.
First, it is convenient as a round number. Second, it is a period within the clear recollection of those who still linger among us as pioneers. Third, while it does not comprehend the earliest period of pioneer life in Michigan, it is its representative epoch. Fourth, fifty years ago marks, comparatively, the beginning of that era of marvelous develop- ment and discovery in mechanism and in science that has planted this generation so greatly in advance of any in the world's history.
To have pictured to the youth of fifty years ago the methods of life that attain today, would have seemed like a fairy tale. To relate to the youth of today the methods of life of fifty years ago would seem like exaggeration, and, but for the confidence that youth happily reposes in the lessons of age, would scarcely obtain credence.
CONTRASTS OF LIFE
Let us glance briefly at some of the contrasts of life afforded by the two periods, because they will be not only to our edification but to the
62
HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY
instruction of the rising generation and those that will come after. Fifty years ago the children of the pioneers studied their few books either by the firelight from the open fireplace, or by an open lamp made by placing some grease and a cloth wick in a broken saucer, or at best, the light of a tallow candle. Now, we have the kerosene lamp, the gas jet, and the electric light. Then, friction matches were unknown; fire was produced by the flint and steel, and when the fire went out on the hearth, those who were without this device had to send to the neighbors for a coal or a brand. The present generation knowing nothing of the pleasure of watching the burning logs in the fireplace and noting the shifting panorama of warriors, winged chariots, camels, and rampant lions. Nickle plated stoves, or the furnace in the basement, supply the warmth without the pictures. The modern youth, who treads on carpets or on marble tiles, hardly realizes that his grandfather's floor was very likely made of basswood logs split through the center. Our cooking utensils then consisted of a frying pan, bake kettle, dish kettle and din- ner pot, and the teakettle, that no longer sings the song that it used to sing. Those who were the better able, sometimes had a brick fireplace, and a crane on which their cooking utensils were hung over the fire. Generally, however, the "lug-pole," with some hooks attached, served the purpose. The bread was baked in a round iron kettle (shaped very much like a large cheese) with a cover, the kettle being placed on coals drawn out on the hearth, with live coals on top, and good bread they made, too. Our spare-ribs and turkeys were suspended by a tow string before the fire for roasting, and there are those who will say that no such roasts ever came from an oven. And then, the act of making a tow string; every well regulated family kept a hutch of tow, which was indispensable not only to good housekeeping, but to good husbandry. I don't believe there is a young man of twenty today, with all the learn- ing of our modern schools, who knows how to make a tow string. We had neither silver nor cut glass goblets in those days, and not always tin cups or dippers, the "noggen" or gourd supplying their place. Our carriages were ox sleds. Fifty years ago there was probably not a threshing machine in Oakland county, all grain being threshed with the flail, or trodden out by horses on the barn floor, where they had horses and barns. Of course there were no reapers, mowers, wheat drills, or cultivators. There were few fanning mills. Grain was separated from the chaff by holding up a shovel full in a stiff breeze and sifting it off by shaking the shovel.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.