USA > Michigan > Oakland County > History of Oakland County, Michigan, with illustrations descriptive of its scenery, palatial residences, public buildings, fine blocks, and important manufactories > Part 78
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On his father's side his ancestors were from Rhode Island. Mr. Carpenter's grandfather and great-grandfather both bore the name of Benedict. They were descendants of William Carpenter, who emigrated from Amesbury, England, and settled in Rhode Island.
Charles K. Carpenter spent his boyhood, until he was eleven years of age, in Steuben county, and the last winter of this time he was employed with an ox-team hauling pine saw-logs to McBurney's mill. Each morning saw him in the woods by daylight ready for his daily work.
In 1837 he came with his parents to Orion, Oakland County, Michigan, and for the succeeding three years he lived where Rudd's mill now is, working hard clearing land and hauling saw-logs, and, as may be imagined, with very limited opportunity for schooling ; six months' attendance at the district school being the sum total after he was ten years old.
In 1840 his parents removed to the place where Mr. Carpenter now resides. From that date until he was twenty-one years of age his summers were occupied in working on the new farm, and his winters in chopping mill-logs and thrashing grain with a flail.
On the 27th of November, 1847, he married Jennett Coryell, who was born in Mount Morris, Livingston county, New York, March 9, 1831. She -was the daughter of George and Eliza Sherwood Coryell. George Coryell was from Ovid, Seneca county, New York, and his wife from Herkimer county. - She was a de- scendant of the Hendersons on her mother's side, and came with her parents to Michigan in 1846, and settled in Orion township, where she has ever since resided.
Mr. and Mrs. C. K. Carpenter are the parents of eight children, seven of whom are living. Their oldest son, Clinton, died when twenty months old. The names of those living are as follows : Rolla C. Carpenter, professor of mathematics and civil engineering in the Michigan State Agricultural College, at Lansing, was born June 26, 1852; W. L. Carpenter, now a law student in the University of Michi- gan, was born November 9, 1855; Emma Blanche Carpenter was born March 19, 1857 ; Louis G. Carpenter was born March 28, 1861 ; Mary Carpenter was born August 25, 1866; George Carpenter was born November 27, 1869; and Jennett Carpenter was born January 27, 1875.
Mr. Carpenter has always followed the occupation of farming. He has been . an active and efficient member of the Oakland County Agricultural Society since its organization ; was one of the original incorporators, and a director for twenty years. He was also president of the society for two years. He has from time to . time furnished many valuable papers to the agricultural press of the State, and has for the past few years been prominent in the ranks of the new agricultural order familiarly known as " grangers."
In his younger days Mr. Carpenter was politically a Democrat; but at the time of the division upon the " Kansas-Nebraska" bill between Mr. Buchanan and Mr. Douglas, he cast his fortunes with the doctrine of " popular sovereignty," and was elected as a Douglas Democrat to the State legislature from the Pontiac district, in 1859.
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
On the breaking out of the great Rebellion in 1861, he followed the dying advice of Douglas, and became a " War Democrat," taking a very active part in shaping public sentiment and sustaining the administration of Mr. Lincoln in its efforts to preserve the Union. During the war the duties of superintending en- listments and paying bounties for his township devolved almost wholly upon him.
Mr. Carpenter was one of the incorporators of the Detroit and Bay City rail- way; was one of the first directors, and very active in securing local subscriptions and right of way ; and to his efforts is largely due the location of the road through Orion and Oxford, instead of Romeo and Fish Lake, he having devoted two years of incessant labor to the accomplishment of this end. He is still one of the directors, himself and Mr. James F. Joy being the only ones residing in the State.
Politically, Mr. Carpenter has not acted with the Democratic party since 1861. When the " Prohibition party" was formed in Michigan, he became at once an active member, and was a presidential elector on that ticket in 1870. In 1872 his friends procured his nomination for the office of auditor-general on the same ticket, and in 1874 he was put in nomination for governor. In 1876 he was presidential elector at large. In the latter year the " Greenback" party nom- inated Mr. Carpenter for governor, but he having never acted with that organ- ization declined the nomination.
During the past few years Mr. Carpenter has devoted much time to the devel- opment of Island Park, in Orion (or Canandaigua) lake, as a pleasure resort; and the success of the association and the popularity of the locality is largely due to his organizing ability. Under his liberal and judicious management it has be- come a famous resort for church and Sabbath-school excursions, and one of the most popular places of recreation in Michigan.
CHARLES A. CARPENTER.
The Carpenter family was originally from England, and settled in Rhode Island. Stephen Carpenter, father of the subject of this sketch, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1778. Charles A., third son of Stephen, was born February 11, 1813, in Barre, Washington county, Vermont. His grandfather had removed from Rhode Island, when the father of Charles A. was a boy, to Uxbridge, Mas- sachusetts, and about 1808, soon after his marriage, Stephen Carpenter had re- moved thence to Vermont.
When Charles A. was about two years of age his father removed from Ver- mont to Compton, Lower Canada (now province of Quebec). The family remained in Canada about eight years, when they returned to Uxbridge, Massa- chusetts, where they remained until October, 1836, when they emigrated to Michigan.
,On the 14th of September, 1835, Mr. Carpenter married Miss Percis Eames, of Worcester, Massachusetts. In the spring of 1836 he visited Michigan, and purchased two hundred and forty acres of government land near the present town of Lapeer, for himself and his older brother. After making this purchase he returned to Massachusetts, and in the fall of the same year, accompanied by his wife and child, his father and his older brother and family, he came out with the intention of settling on the lands purchased the previous spring. They hired a team in Detroit and came via Pontiac. They only succeeded in reaching Bir- mingham the first day. The road between Detroit and the latter place was terrible ; the weather had been wet, and for the first twelve miles it was mostly under water from four to six inches. The team could barely haul the wagon and baggage and the small children, while the men and women were obliged to make their way on foot. Mr. Carpenter says his brother was so disgusted with Michigan that it was with difficulty he could persuade him to keep on through the swamp.
They reached Orion township the second day, and rested for the night about six miles from Pontiac, with a man named Goodwin, who had a very good farm of one hundred and twenty acres, with about thirty acres broken and in a state of cultiva- tion, and a comfortable log dwelling and barn. The owner was desirous of selling, and, after thinking the matter over, and knowing it would take several years to get as good improvements on their wild lands in Lapeer, they concluded to purchase the place, which they did jointly, paying a part of the price down, and went no farther.
They lived on this place until it was all paid for, when they made a new arrange- ment, his brother taking eighty acres of the Lapeer land, and the two purchasing
also another eighty acres to go with it. In consideration of this the older brother gave up his interest in the Orion property. This was in 1841. C. A. Carpenter remained on the latter place (his father living with him) until the spring of 1845, when he sold out and purchased four hundred and fifty-nine acres of wild land, where he now lives, on sections 18, 28, and 29, Orion township. He and his sons afterwards purchased additional lands on sections 27 and 33, in the same town- ship. The total number of acres now owned by the family is seven hundred and forty-nine, all in good condition, with a large area under cultivation. The prop- erty is finely situated, a portion of it bordering upon a beautiful sheet of water called Lake Judah, and also touching a smaller body of water, known as Grass lake, to the northwest of the larger one.
Mr. Carpenter has seen quite an eventful life. Coming into Michigan when it was comparatively a new country, he has lived to see the wilderness transformed into a fruitful and beautiful land, covered with thrifty farms, neat villages, and enterprising cities ; has seen the bridle-paths and Indian trails superseded by fine turnpikes and railways, and witnessed, in short, the complete transformation of a wild and forbidden region into the abode of an advanced civilization, the peer of many of the older communities along the Atlantic, and behind none in the race for supremacy. For several years after his arrival in Oakland County, Mr. Car- penter worked at the business of a carpenter and joiner, and remembers well the time when he labored on a new dwelling thirteen days for a barrel of flour. In the winter of 1837-38 he and his brother visited some pine lands which they owned in Lapeer county, for the purpose of making shingles. On this occasion they loaded their tools, cooking utensils, and provisions on a hand-sled, to the amount of three hundred pounds, and drew it on foot to the place, a distance of thirty miles, in one day.
Mr. Carpenter has had five children,-four sons and one daughter,-of whom the two older sons and the daughter are now living. His father removed his family to Michigan in 1839, and made his home with him until his death, in 1854. His mother died about 1857.
Mr. Carpenter retired from active farming in 1862, giving the business entirely into the hands of his sons. Having abundant means outside and independent of his real estate, he has sat down quietly to enjoy the accumulations of many busy years. Since 1862 he has given considerable attention to the cultivation of bees, of which his average stock is from twenty to fifty colonies of the common or black variety. He has been very successful in this pursuit, of which he makes a sort of specialty, and takes great delight in the employment. Mr. Carpenter has never been a politician, in the strict interpretation of the term, but has always had an opinion, and has filled various offices in the gift of his fellow-citizens, and has been nominated on the Republican ticket for the representative branch of the State legislature, though the hopeless minority of the party in the district rendered success impossible.
L. B. HEMINGWAY.
The subject of this sketch, L. B. Hemingway, one of the thrifty farmers of Orion township, was born in the town of Dryden, Tompkins county, State of New York, September 8, 1827. His father, Joseph R. Hemingway, was a native of Orange county, New York, and his mother, Lydia Bartholomew, was born in Con- necticut, both of whom are now living. L. B. Hemingway came to Michigan in the spring of 1855, and located in Orion township, purchasing a tract of one hundred and sixty acres on section 10, whereon he still resides, and which he has brought from an almost wholly uncultivated tract to a finely-tilled and productive farm. He received a common-school education, attending the district schools of his native town winters, and working on his father's farm the rest of the time. In the winter of 1848 he was married to Sylvia Stone, a native of the same town- ship as himself, where she was born May 9, 1828. She was the daughter of Cheney and Betsey (Prosser) Stone; the former a native of Vermont, and the latter of one of the other New England States. They are now residing at Ovid, Michigan. The only child of Mr. and Mrs. Hemingway, a son, Orra L., resides on the homestead with his parents. Mr. Hemingway is, and has been from its organization, a member of the Republican party, and was formerly a Whig. Mrs. Hemingway is a member of the Congregational church.
We present to our readers, on another page of our work, a view of the home- stead of Mr. Hemingway, together with portraits of himself and his estimable companion.
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RUDD'S MILLS
VALLEY MILLS . PROPERTY OF R . G. RUDD AND SON . ORION TP., OAKLAND COUNTY, MICH.
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RESIDENCE OF JOHN HOWARTH, (SEC. 36) ORION TP, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
ROSE TOWNSHIP.
THE act of the legislature creating the township of Rose was approved March 11, 1837, and appears in the session laws as follows : " All that portion of the county of Oakland designated in the United States survey as township 4 north, of range 7 east, be, and the same is hereby set off and organized into a separate township by the name of Rose; and the first township-meeting therein shall be held at the house of David Gage, in said township."
The territory now in Rose formerly belonged to Pontiac township, and originally to Oakland. The surface is much diversified ; portions of the township are rough and broken by considerable hills, while others are level or slightly rolling. The soil is generally a sandy loam, although in places heavy clay is found. The various grains common to this region yield prolific returns, and fruit is usually plenty. Wheat is the staple grain raised in Rose as well as in other portions of the county. Most of the township is well adapted to stock-raising, and principal among the possessions of the farmer in this line are his flocks of sheep.
The water area of the township covers about nine hundred acres, and is included in some forty-five lakes and ponds. Around most of them are found belts of marsh, with occasional tamarack swamps. The drainage of the greater part of the township is through the various branches of the Shiawassee river, here an insig- nificant stream which can almost be crossed by a single step.
The principal sheet of water is Long lake, lying mostly on section 30. Its shores on nearly all sides are high and bold, and indented to a sufficient degree to make them exceedingly picturesque and beautiful. The lake measures nearly a mile and a half the longest way, and covers about three hundred acres. Its waters are clear and fresh, and abound in numerous varieties of fine fish, rendering it a pleasant place of resort for the angler. The other lakes vary in size from three to eighty acres, and the only ones named on the map (beside Long lake) are the Buckhorn lakes, on sections 22 and 27.
The southern and southeastern portions of the township contain beautiful plains, the one in the southeast being an extension of the " White lake plain." These were originally covered with a scattered growth of oak, and to-day have a greater acreage of timber than when the town was first settled.
The population of Rose township in 1874, according to the State census com- piled that year, was one thousand and eighty-four, and is substantially the same at present. From the census-tables we extract the following statistics, in order to give a relative idea of the agricultural wealth of the township :
The total number of acres of wheat raised in 1874 was 3275, against 3322 in 1873. In the latter year there were also raised 906 acres of corn. The total yield of wheat for 1873 was 39,477 bushels ; of corn, 26,178; and of all other grains, 29,144; potatoes, 6796 bushels; hay cut, 2144 tons; wool sheared, 18,468 pounds ; pork marketed, 43,793 pounds; butter made, 46,205 pounds ; fruit dried for market, 2694 pounds ; cider made, 350 barrels.
In live-stock, the total number of horses owned in the township in 1874 was 506; work-oxen, 22; milch-cows, 537; neat cattle, one year old and over, other than oxen and cows, 503; swine over six months old, 524; sheep over six months old, 5421 ; sheep sheared in 1873, 4415.
The total number of acres of improved land in the township in 1874 was 11,920 ; total number of farms, 231, with an area of 22,357 acres, and an average area of 96.78 acres.
The Detroit and Milwaukee railway crosses the northeast corner of the town- ship, having within its limits a length of about three and one-third miles. The Flint and Pere Marquette railway crosses the township from north to south, having a length of about seven miles. Money has lately been subscribed and preparations made to establish a station near " Buckhorn tavern," which will give the inhabitants of the township convenient railway facilities and a home shipping point, instead of obliging them to transport their produce to Holly or Clyde, as heretofore.
The township is strictly agricultural, having no village within its boundaries, although small settlements have sprung up at Rose Corners and " Buckhorn Tavern," neither of which is probably destined to become a metropolis.
FIRST ENTRIES OF LAND-PIONEER SETTLERS-INCIDENTS, ETC.
The first entry of land in Rose township was made by I. N. Voorheis and Daniel Hammond, June 8, 1835. It included a mill-site on section 11. No mill was ever built, however, and neither Voorheis nor Hammond ever settled on
the place. The first improvements were made by John C. Garner, who now lives upon it. The first actual settlement in the township was made by Daniel Daniel- son, who located eighty acres on section 35 in 1835, and upon it built the first house in the township. His land was then covered with timber, and his log house stood on the west side of the Indian trail (now the " White Lake road"), upon land now owned by William P. Hicks. Mr. Danielson afterwards removed to Holly, where he died.
The next settler succeeding Danielson was Benjamin Hicks, who emigrated from Livonia, Livingston county, New York, with his wife, one son (Benjamin C. Hicks), and two daughters, early in the spring of 1836. Mr. Hicks and his son had been out the previous October (1835), and located land on section 35, and built a log house and a log stable. The house was the second one built in the township, and while erecting it Mr. Hicks and his son boarded with Daniel Danielson. The old Hicks place is the one where Mrs. Benjamin C. Hicks now lives. Mr. Hicks, Sr., stayed on his place during the winter of 1835-36, while his son returned to New York, and in the spring brought back the family.
Benjamin C. Hicks was afterwards married to Elizabeth P. Wendell, who had come with her father to the township in 1836. He died March 22, 1853, and had he lived until the 26th of the same month he would have been forty-five years of age. His father died August 16, 1850, aged nearly seventy-seven, and his mother in January, 1851.
As an example of the general experience of settlers in Rose township, or, in fact, the entire country, a portion of the following, from an address delivered by H. C. Judd before the pioneer meeting in Pontiac, in 1875, will apply. He says :
" I was born in Genesee county, New York, and was the youngest of thirteen children, left an orphan at a week old, raised by foster-parents, brought up a bound boy, and received one hundred dollars at the age of twenty-one years; emigrated to the State of Michigan in 1836, and bought land in Oakland County, town of Rose; cleared and fenced a small improvement without owning a team, giving hand-labor for team-labor, but eventually owned a team, and broke up four hundred acres of new land for other people, besides two farms for myself. The country was full of wild game, but as hunting was never my forte I killed but little, viz., three bears, two wolves, and two deer. But the marshes were full of massasaugers, which were my dread, having seen a child three years old bitten by one, just as its mother was returning from church, from the effects of which it died in seven hours. During the same summer, while mowing upon the marshes, I killed nineteen full-grown massasaugers in one day. That night I would have taken four shillings on a dollar for all I owned in Michigan, but on the following morning I arose determined to carve me a home in the ' Peninsular State,' and have succeeded in so doing."
Among the old settlers of the county, although not of the township, is Frank- lin Gardner, who, in 1832, strode westward with the "course of empire," and took up his abode in the township of Lyon, Oakland County, Michigan. . He was accompanied by his wife and her mother, and lived in Lyon until 1852, when he removed to Milford, and afterwards to Rose, where he is now living on section 3. He was among the first settlers in the township of Lyon, although the first entry of land in that town was made in 1830, two years previous to the time Mr. Gardner settled. Within three months after he came he says there were as many as thirty families in it. Mr. Gardner is the father of nine chil- dren, of whom five are now living,-two sons and three daughters. His mother- in-law, Mrs. Mary G. More, was a widow when she came with Mr. Gardner, and quite old at the time. She died October 22, 1845, having survived her daughter (Mrs. Gardner) ; the latter died July 10, 1842. On the 20th of February, 1843, Mr. Gardner was married to Catharine Dunlap, whose father, Alexander Dunlap, emigrated from Seneca county, New York, and settled in Lyon township in 1833. He was accompanied by his wife and nine children, and one son was born afterwards. Nine of the children are now living.
Herman Van Campen, a later arrival, is from the neighborhood of Seneca lake, New York, from whence he came with his father, John Van Campen, about 1845, and settled first in Waterford township, where he lived until the spring of 1852, when he removed to his present location in Rose. His wife accompanied her father, Owen Soper, to Michigan in 1836. They were from the town of Greece, Monroe county, New York, and settled in Pontiac. Mr. Soper brought his wife and four children with him. He died about 1858.
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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
Peter W. Sutton, a native of the town of Mansfield, Warren county, New Jer- sey, left that place when about fifteen years of age, and removed with his father, John Sutton, to Genesee county, New York. Most of the time for the succeeding decade they lived across the line in Orleans county. In 1843, P. W. Sutton emigrated to Michigan, and lived in and around Pontiac until March 9, 1847, when he located on the farm he now owns on section 14, where his old house is yet standing, opposite the fine frame dwelling he now occupies. He purchased eighty acres on section 14 from William Crawford, and forty acres just north of it, on section 11, from Governor John Davis, of Massachusetts. He has since be- come the owner of additional land, and is now living on section 11. He made the first improvements on his place, and says that when he settled he " came to stay." He was accompanied to Michigan by his wife and four children, and all the family except himself were very sea-sick during the rough passage up Lake Erie.
George Garner, a native of the town of Hardiston, Sussex county, New Jersey, and later a resident of the town of Pultney, Steuben county, New York, settled in Rose in 1836, arriving at his present farm on the third day of October in that year. His father, Thomas Garner, had located in June, 1833, in White Lake township, as had also his brothers John, Robert, and Thomas.
Henry Thomas, from the State of Connecticut, was one of the early settlers of the township, and now has a son, Ezekiel, living on section 9.
Phineas Baits, a native of Madison county, New York, and afterwards a resi- dent of the town of Parma, Monroe county, settled on section 6, Milford town- ship, Oakland County, Michigan, in 1834, with his wife and one daughter and his wife's father, Jesse Stowell. They arrived in the county in November, and located between them three hundred acres of government land. Five children were born in Mr. Baits' family after he settled, and three of his children are now living. His present wife has six living. Mr. Baits lived in Milford township until the spring of 1835, when he removed to his present location in Rose. He has resided forty-three years in Oakland County, and witnessed its growth from what was, when he came, almost a wilderness to its present rank in the State.
John A. Wendell immigrated to Michigan from the town of Charlton, Saratoga county, New York, in 1836, arriving in Detroit in the summer, and staying till some time in the fall of that year in the city with his family. He afterwards became a prominent man in Rose township. His son, Joseph C. Wendell, arrived in Michigan in July, 1836, and settled immediately in Rose township, where he purchased the west half of the northeast quarter of section 22, and located upon it with his family, then consisting of his wife and one child, a son. Six children have been born to him since, and of the seven there are five now living.
Mr. Wendell (Joseph C.) built a log shanty on his place, and lived in it about six years. He had during this time purchased the east half of the northwest quarter of section 22, and built a log house upon it, to which he removed. This latter building finally gave place to the frame dwelling Mr. Wendell now occupies. When he first came to the township the White lake road was completed to about the location of the present " Buckhorn tavern," and the old Indian trail which it followed extended westward towards Shiawassee.
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