USA > Michigan > Oakland County > History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests Volume I > Part 12
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Wheat was wholly cut with the cradle, which was a great advance upon the sickle that preceded it, and the hand scythe was the only means of reducing the grass. All grain was sown broadcast, and those who were boys fifty years ago, and retain a vivid recollection of the horrors of riding a horse to plow corn, will appreciate the advantages of the cultivator. Most farmers raised more or less flax and hemp. The flax culture was simply a relic of that domestic industry, which, in for- mer years, expressed itself through the distaff and the manufacture of linen for family use, but which, like many similar arts, has become obso- lete through the operation of machinery. The music of the spinning wheel is now unknown, and the doubting maiden today is not permitted
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to know whether she will have a handsome husband or not as the well deserved reward of her efforts to build the yarn systematically upon the spindle; nor is the boy now required to break his arms and his back by making a reel of himself for granny to wind her yarn from.
In the lesser affairs of life we find striking contrasts. The boy of fifty years ago was happy to possess a pair of indifferent skates that he could strap to his stogy shoes and skim over the crystal surface of some of our lakes or over the mill pond, which looked a great deal larger then than it does now, and many of the older boys will remember the vexation of trying to make the heel corks stay in place. Now they have patent fastenings and they go on of themselves, and they skate in rinks, and go on wheels as well as runners, and where we used to slide down hill on a board, we now have the toboggan. In the matter of music, too, pianos are almost as plenty now as jewsharps used to be, while gingerbread as the classic feed on training days is wholly unknown, as are training days, too, for that matter.
India rubber was first coming into use fifty years ago. It was then made into a coarse overshoe, wrought into webbing for suspenders, and also relieved from embarrassment the modest young lady who blushed to speak of her garters, which thereafter became "elastics."
And then the average boy was happy if he could get a bit of rubber as a foundation to build his ball upon. Now it would require many folios to indicate the infinite variety of uses to which it is put. Next to rubber, perhaps, if not before it, in the variety of its modern uses, is paper. Fifty years ago it was used only for writing and printing, and in a very coarse form for wrapping. Now it is found in all grades of service, from the collar of the dude to the coffin of the sage.
There are other contrasts between the long ago and now. Then, if we wished to communicate with a friend at a distance it could be done only by letter with a mail once a week and postage two shillings. The letter must be folded and sealed by its own fold, as no envelopes were in use. If the letter comprised more than one piece of paper, even if not overweight, the postage was two shillings on each piece. As quarters were distressingly scarce in those days, it may well be con- ceived that friendly letters were comparatively few. Visits of a few miles were made on foot. Persons frequently passed a period of sick- ness and were dead and buried before friends at a short distance even were apprised of their condition. Now we are in instant communica- tion with friends far away, by telegraph or telephone, while the railway places us by their side in a few hours even though hundreds of miles distant.
I have sometimes queried whether affection is as strong now as in the olden days, and whether the sentiments of love were not more deep and abiding when the distance was greater between us and the objects of our regard. Human emotions are drawn out by trials, and it seems as though the yearning for communion with friends that can be gratified only at rare intervals, if at all, serves to tone and intensify the affec- tions and attachments. The lady who is the possessor of a pair of singing birds knows that the music can be got out of them only by their separation. We are mixed up with so many more people in modern
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life, that the divine love within us seems spread out so thin that it is sometimes difficult to find it at all. The old song so remarkable for its doleful pathos, "When shall we three meet again?" could hardly have been written in an age of railways, as the three would scarcely care whether they met again or not, as they would meet some other three the next day or the next hour. Nor do I think that the highly drawn character of Jennie Deans, in her lonely pilgrimage on foot from Edin- burgh to London in behalf of her sister, who was in extremity, as por- trayed in Sir Walter Scott's charming romance "The Heart of Mid- Lothian," could have been given us in an age like this. Think of the devoted Jennie taking her seat in a railway car with her bundle in her lap, surrounded by the rush and clatter of moving humanity at the present day, and being whirled over the distance in three or four hours' time. All the poetry and adventure would be lost, and poor Jennie's heart could hardly have been attuned to the pitch necessary to the suc- cessful prosecution of her mission.
We might pursue indefinitely the array of contrasts between the things of long ago and the now, with reflections upon the changed state of affairs, but in addressing a local society of pioneers there seems a propriety in discoursing of things more local in their character.
There needs no apology on my part for a reference to my own fam- ily. Personal history forms the very essence of our pioneer annals, and this personal history can only be supplied (in most cases at least), by the relatives of the subjects themselves.
"GRANNY" MCCRACKEN
There are many still living in the county who will remember my grandmother, who was familiarly known as Granny McCracken. Al- though she died when I was less than six years old, I .remember her very well, and many incidents associated with her. I have always had her in mind as a little old Scotch woman, short, but of sturdy frame. Her lineage, however, so far as I am able to trace it, gives but a small percent of direct Scottish blood. Her family name was Hutchinson, one of the regicide judges who condemned King Charles to the block. The family were, at that time, of quality and some antiquity in England. Although Colonel Hutchinson was included in the act of amnesty after the restoration, he afterwards fell under suspicion, was arrested and died in prison. Some of his descendants, either from political or other causes, went to Ireland, and it is from thence that this branch of the family is immediately derived, through Thomas Hutchinson, my great grandfather, who came to this country prior to 1740, and settled and married in Philadelphia, where my grandmother was born.
The old residents who remember Granny McCracken will be im- pressed the more especially by her bright, quick mind, and her strong physical powers. To go back a little as illustrative of these traits, it may be remarked that during the War of the Revolution, being a resi- dent of Pennsylvania, she was an active patriot, being on confidential terms with General Washington and other leading officers of the army, and not infrequently acting as a bearer of important intelligence. She
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came to Michigan with my father's family in 1824 or '25. She built a little log house for herself a few rods from my father's cabin, cutting the logs for it herself, and at the "raising" she carried up her corner, in pioneer phrase, equal to the next man, and she was equal to the average man for a day's work in the field.
Though somewhat blunt in her ways the old lady was peculiarly tender in her disposition, and with her naturally strong mind, of marked intelligence considering the limited opportunities which the country then afforded for education and instruction. A few books that had been her companions found their way into our pioneer abode. Among them I remember Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress," a work entitled "The Holy War," and a polemical work, "An Antidote to Deism." Passing over all questions of ethics or of tenets as represented by these works, their titles show the indifference in the class of reading that was deemed the most valuable at that day as compared with the present. I remember also a romance, "Charlotte Temple," and a copy of Scott's "Lay of the Last Minstrel," as forming a part of our limited library. The latter work I had at my tongue's end, and could repeat the most of it from memory before I had ever seen the inside of a schoolhouse. Elsewhere I may advert to the manner in which myself and brothers acquired what little of early education we enjoyed.
You will pardon a further brief reference to the dear old lady whom I remember with tender affection. It was a favorite way with her to reply to inquiries and salutations in rhyme, and to carry on a conversa- tion and relate incidents in the same way. My excellent friend, the Hon. B. O. Williams, of Owosso, relates this of her: "An occupation in which she was expert was making straw bee hives. Being thus em- ployed on one occasion, working in the barn at the residence of Mr. William's father, one of his brothers, in her absence, tried his hand at the business. Not succeeding very well, in deep disgust he threw his piece of botch work over the bay in the barn. When Granny returned to her work she discovered it, and gathering the boys about her as an audience, told the story in rhyme, ridiculing the lad's efforts to steal Granny's trade, and closing with the couplet,
"'And if you're inclined to have some fun, Just look in the bay and see what he's done.'"
Grandmother died March 5, 1830. A notice of her death, probably written by Elder Ruggles, was published soon after in the Detroit Gazette. The notice is preserved in a valuable collection of clippings by Capt. J. W. Hall, of Detroit, to whom I am indebted for a copy. I reproduce it as bearing out the estimate which I have myself placed upon my be- loved ancestor. The reference to her descent confirms my early im- pressions, and varies somewhat from the pedigree before outlined, but it is hardly worth while to try to reconcile the variance at this time. The notice is as follows : "In Pontiac, March 5, Mrs. Mary Mc- Cracken, aged eighty-two. Mrs. McCracken was born in the United States, of Scotch parents. She was endowed by nature with a healthy constitution, and uncommon powers of intellect. She educated herself, and through life discovered a great fondness for reading. At the age of thirty, she united herself with a church in Pennsylvania, and about Vol. 1-5
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four and a half years since connected herself with the church in Pontiac. Her life was a life of prayer, and evinced that she had much at heart the glory of God and the salvation of souls."
Of my father's ancestry I know but little. The family were, I be- lieve, from the north of Ireland, and were probably emigrants from Scotland under the severe policy of the British government after the establishment of the Orange dynasty. The name is unmistakably Gaelic, and has the same root as Craig, Craik, Cregg, Cragen, etc., meaning literally, son of the crags, or son of the rocks. My father's parentage on both sides was of the rigid Scotch or Irish Presbyterian stock, that became a distinguishing element in the emigration to portions of Penn- sylvania, Virginia and the Carolinas during the first half of the eighteenth century. My father's father died from camp fever contracted in the patriotic army in the War of the Revolution.
FATHER AND MOTHER MCCRACKEN
My father represented in a marked degree the mental and physical characteristics of his mother. Like her, he was self-educated. Prob- ably to his relation to this mother in her widowhood, is due to the fact that he married late in life, about the age of forty-three, I think. He came to Michigan in 1824 or '25, and located on a piece of land on section 23, in the now town of Waterford. During the first few years he chopped and cleared, as I now survey the area by the mind's eye, some twenty or thirty acres. He planted an orchard, and I remember very well that he had a small nursery of young apple trees. An increas- ing family and an invalid wife made the struggle to subdue the forests and at the same time make it yield a subsistence, a hard one. He found more immediate returns in working for others, and this gradually be- came his preference, to which possibly a naturally convivial tempera- ment contributed, especially when his work lay in the village. A sec- ond marriage, on the death of my mother, in 1835, proving anything but satisfactory, he sold his place and removed to Pontiac in the fall of 1837, relying upon the income of a laborer for his support. But with a man past his sixtieth year, and with a constitution, however strong, impaired by hardship, the situation was one in which the best of men would find themselves in the descending rather than in the ascending scale. It is in this situation that a recollection of my father dwells more in the memory of those now living than as a pioneer seeking to hew a home out of the forest after having started upon the down grade of life's journey. It was from this situation in his life that the compilers of the Oakland county history derived the information that led them to speak of him as "a queer genius, whose time was spent more or less in writing rhymes," etc. His rhyming was come honestly by, was incidental, merely, and was a pastime and amusement. Two editions of the rhymes in small pamphlet, were published by him. His dedication, in one or both of these editions, should be a sufficient apology, if apology were needed, for the matter of his poetical effort:
"And as you read, don't judge too hard Of your unlearned and simple bard,"
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covers the whole ground. Some person or persons, for purely mercenary purposes, some years ago made a republication which was wholly without the knowledge or consent of those who had at least a moral right to be consulted in the matter.
I remember my mother as a meek, suffering woman, who withered and died at a comparatively early age under the labors and cares inci- dent to a large family, and to the hardships and privations of pioneer life. She was of more than average education for the time and the con- dition of the country, and of exceptional refinement and delicacy. Her family name was Bromley. She was, I believe, a native of Connecti- cut, but removed from there to western New York. She died in the fall of 1835.
THE SCHOOLS OF FIFTY YEARS AGO
I promised to say something about the educational methods of fifty years ago, and especially how my brothers and myself came to our first knowledge of the rudiments of book learning. There was a little school- house on the corner where the road leading south from the old Car- man place strikes the Elizabeth lake road. It was a modest little frame building, that I remember to have passed many times, though I was never inside of it. It was a mile (more or less) from our dwelling, and as the school was usually open only during the winter season, we could not attend. I have often thought, however, that the instruction received at the hands of my father and mother was of greater value than that which we would have been likely to receive at the school. The four older boys formed a little class, and in some cases the older taught the younger. A boy belonging to a neighboring family also formed a part of our little school for a time. Our text-books were Webster's elementary spelling book, the old English reader, and the New Testament. A work called the American Selection, printed on dingy brown paper, was also among the household treasures. Con- fined at home, and largely to the house, during winter, with these few books only for companions, their contents became as household words, much of which I could repeat from memory. And here we may fairly raise a question as to whether the multiplicity of books and printed matter at the present day affords as good a mental discipline as the more thorough study of a few carefully selected books would do. It is fairly a question whether so much literature, and of such a varied character, does not affect the mind in a way analogous to that in which food in too great quantity and in great variety affects the stomach, and whether we do not suffer from a mental dyspepsia. It is also a ques- tion whether, under the modern development of our schools, education, as it is called, has not become too cheap a commodity to be adequately valued.
MORMON VISITATION OF 1832
There is one episode in the local history of the county that I am not aware has been placed on record. I refer to the Mormon visitation about the year 1832, the successful proselyting, and the exodus from the county of people who cast their lot with the Mormon church. My
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father became possessed with a copy of the Book of Mormon, and was deeply interested in it. Two Mormon missionaries came into the neigh- borhood to expound the doctrines. The spread of the new faith seemed to be a contagion; neighborhood meetings were held every day, and new converts announced. Some of the converts claimed to have received a new inspiration and to speak in unknown tongues. My father be- came an early convert and was received into the church. My mother, either from a feeling of sympathy with my father's action, or yielding to the importunity of the preachers who visited us, was also baptized. I remember the occasion very well. As my mother sat in the chimney corner arranging a change of habit that she could use after her im- mersion, by the light that shone down the chimney, the Mormon elder was the chief spokesman, as if eager to add mother to the sacrifice, and impatient at the necessary delay, repeated the question several times, "Are you going to join this Gospel?" The preparations being at length completed, the procession, including my father and mother and the two Mormon elders, started for Watkins lake, about a mile distant. It was a cold day in winter. About a quarter of the distance on the route to the lake was a small pond or cathole. Upon reaching this, the shepherds of souls concluded that it was as good a place to make a new saint as the lake would be, and accordingly a hole was cut in the ice and the sacrifice made there. I was of course too young to realize the shocking inhumanity of the act, or to feel the just sense of indignation that I have since felt in reflecting upon it. It may be asked why my father permitted or stood sponsor at such an outrage. The answer can only be found when we discover the mystery that underlies and inspires fanaticism, those phenomenal epochs in the moral world when the best of men do unwise things. Neither my father or mother maintained a connection with this movement for any considerable time, but quietly withdrew from it by leaving it out of their thoughts and actions.
It may be wondered why new ideas and new theories sometimes seem to take root and flourish in isolated neighborhoods, affording a moral analogy to the phenomena of wild shrubs that occupy given areas. Probably at the time of which I am speaking, people thought more deeply and intensely on religious subjects than now. The people of the county were directly descended from localities and times in which religious thought was paramount. Isolated in their cabins in the forests, their religious feeling was rather elemental and one of sentiment, than syste- matic. It was not crystalized in church connections, but was ready to be moulded into form, and to center around the light that first appeared, even though the light might be a false one. Living substantially in the woods, each family by itself, seldom seeing any other persons except their immediate neighbors, every new voice was to them a charm, and every new face a revelation. These Mormon emissaries coming among and mingling with these people, pretending to bring a religion not op- posed to, but in fulfillment of what they already believed; coming in this guise and under these circumstances, it is not strange that they found ready credence and willing proselytes. And it should be noted also that the Mormon agitation was then but just begun, and had given
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no intimation of embodying the one feature which has within the past thirty years placed it under the bane of both social and legal outlawry.
I believe, however, that one of the earliest developed fancies or pur- poses of the Mormons was the massing together of the faithful and the building of a new Zion; that idea of unity and oneness of purpose that has been the touchstone of the wonderful growth and power of the Mor- mon church. As showing the firm hold that the new gospel, as it was called, acquired upon its devotees, a good many families, numbering more than fifty persons in all, in and around Pontiac, abandoned their homes and committed their fortunes to the guidance of the fatal star that hovered first over Nauvoo and subsequently over Salt Lake City. Thad- deus Alvord, an uncle of mine by marriage, his first wife having been a sister of my mother, with his family, were among the converts. I remem- ber hearing Mrs. Alvord (his second wife) repeat what seemed to be a prophecy among them, namely, that they were to acquire their new Canaan either by purchase or by blood, and if by purchase, they were to be persecuted from synagogue to synagogue and from city to city. This prophecy has not been wholly unfulfilled. The Mormons were certainly not left in peaceful occupancy of their first location at Nauvoo, and they will claim that they are now being persecuted in Utah and the western territories. Whether the other portion of the prophecy, that an acquisi- tion by blood shall ensure them immunity from persecution thereafter, implies a struggle of arms on their part in the future, we will have to refer to those who receive inspiration and direct the counsels of the church.
Among those who cast their lot with the Mormons at that time within my own knowledge, were Thaddeus Alvord and his family, includ- ing two or three sons-in-law and families. Mrs. M. A. Hodges, in a recent letter, kindly supplies me with the names of a number of others, as follows: Ezekiel Kellogg, Seville Harris, Jeremiah Curtis, Nahum Curtis, Joseph Bent, all with their families, and the Stevenson family, one of the latter, Edward Stevenson, being now an elder in the church of Latter Day Saints; also the widow and one or two daughters of Col. Stephen Mack, one of the members of the original Pontiac company, the founders of Pontiac. The Bents, Mrs. Hodges informs me, subse- quently left the Mormons and settled in St. Louis. Of those going away, she says, all were members of churches, some Baptists, some Presbyterians and others Methodists, and all except the Bents continuing in the faith. We dismiss this topic, trusting that the attention given it will not be deemed an unprofitable expenditure of time viewed in the light of local history.
AUBURN AND THE YOUNG PIONEERS
In glancing at the excellent history of Oakland county published some years ago, I was struck with the account there given of the village of Auburn in the earlier days of the county, of its commercial enter- prise and its business men, and I reflected somewhat wonderingly upon the number and character of the young men who in the early days cast their lot in the little hamlets that sprung up in the woods. They were men
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of keen business faculties, quick, intelligent, and as it seemed to me more generous, of broader views and higher principles than the average of the young men of the present day. I say it so seemed to me, although with- out disparaging the young men of the present, we can find a solution of the seemingly discrepancy in the thought that the young mind is more susceptible to favorable impressions, and is less critical than the more mature mind. But with what buoyant hopes and ambitions the young men of the former time have left their eastern homes for the untried west. The young men of the two periods certainly differ in so far as this, that the young men of the present, accustomed to the attraction of city life, and to follow the modern channels of commerce, would hardly delve into the forests with the same courage and pluck as did those of the former generation. Alas! how many blasted hopes have left their trace upon the pages of our western local history, either written or un- written. How many wrecks strew the pathway of time in its march of fifty years. It is after all but the repetition of the processes of all human progress. Life is but an experiment. Its failures count as a thousand to one of its fruitions. The young men who laid the foundations of our civilization did not in all cases judge adequately of the work that they were undertaking. The land of promise did not in all things develop equal to their sanguine hopes and anticipations. The place where in imagination they had builded cities shriveled and withered under the necessary reaction upon an abnormal growth and the exacting laws of commerce. Many of the actors succumbed to the diseases incident to a new country. Others yielded to financial disaster. Others sought new fields. Some rusted out, while others weathered the storm, and have left their visible impress upon the things with which they had to do. In the great aggregate of life, in the final balancing of accounts, let us not say that one shall have more honor than another. The comforts and the blessings that we enjoy today are the consensus of their lives and their sacrifices. So let us hold in pleasant and in grateful memory the young men of fifty years ago. The history of Auburn is that of many a western village. In the early days the rival of Pontiac, we need not rehearse the causes that have made it simply a quiet little hamlet, the abode of a num- ber of worthy citizens.
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