USA > Michigan > St Joseph County > History of St. Joseph County, Michigan; Volume I > Part 17
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The first roads laid out by the town authorities were as follows: On March 23, 1839, the commissioners of Fawn River and Bronson (Branch county) jointly laid out the first one on the county line, running north half a mile from the southeast corner of section 1. The second, laid out by the commissioners of Fawn River alone, on March 26th, commenced at the northwest corner of the southwest corner of section 8, and ran eastwardly and northwardly through sections 8 and 4 to intersect the Chicago road. They also laid out a third, on the same day, commencing at the southwest corner of section 33, Burr Oak, and running south to the center of section 4, thence west and south to the Chicago road. The fourth was laid out May 27th, commencing at the southeast corner of section 2 and running west two miles to in- tersect the road running north and south at the southeast corner of section 4, Sherman township. The road leading north from Fawn River Mills to the Chicago road, at Freedom, was laid out in 1839.
PROPERTY AND POPULATION.
In 1840 there were assessed in Fawn River township, eleven thousand eight hundred and seventy-seven acres of land, with improvements of $30,239. The best buildings were those of F. A. Tisdel, valued at $750; Isaac D. Toll's, at $500; L. L. Graham's, at $400, and Richard Hopkin's, at $200. The sixty-seven horses in the township were valued at $1,895; seventy-four oxen and steers, at $1,184; sixty-seven cows and heifers, at $522; twenty- nine carriages and wagons, at $703. The total valuation of per- sonal property was $4,634; total assessment, $34,873, and taxes
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for the year, $257.19. There were forty-seven resident tax payers in the town, and one distillery and two taverns were rated for special taxes.
In the same year there were forty-six votes cast at the annual town meeting, indicating about two hundred and fifty inhabitants.
EX-VILLAGE OF FREEDOM.
Brief references have been made to Freedom, the village of great expectations, in the thirties and forties. It was located on the Chicago road, in section 3, about half a mile from the northern township line, and was the first village in St. Joseph county on that great overland highway of travel for southern Michigan, one hundred and thirty miles from the Detroit terminus. Free- dom was platted by D. M. Cook, civil engineer, in September, 1836, and F. A. Tisdel, who was the proprietor of the site, built a large frame tavern about the same time which did much to make the place a convenient resort for travelers and give it standing as a town of great promise.
The site of the village was on high, rolling land, sprinkled with burr oak, white oak and hickory groves, and its streets well carried out the idea of its projectors, which was to attach to it an air of nature, as well as of history and romance. According to the village plat, the chief thoroughfares of Freedom were Maple, Pine, Hickory, Chestnut, Pearl, Branch, Minerva, Van Buren, Jefferson and Madison.
The first postoffice for the accommodation of Fawn River people was also located at Freedom soon after it was platted, and Mr. Tisdel, who "kept the office," handled the mails with increasing frequency, dependent on the improvement of stage service-first once a week, then twice, then three times, and finally six times each way between Detroit and Chicago.
Postmaster Tisdel carried a stock of goods for a time, being succeeded, as a merchant, by Hewitt & Randall, and as a land- lord by the Mr. Latta who fled the country, in 1857, to escape the penitentiary as a counterfeiter, thereby leaving his property to the county for a poor farm. Both under the Tisdel and the Latta administrations the tavern at Freedom was one of the most popu- lar stopping places in the county, sharing the public favor in Fawn River township with Sweet's hotel further to the west on the southern shores of the lake.
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Early in the life of Freedom a school house was erected, which not only accommodated the scholars of the neighborhood, but was used for religious gatherings. Here preached Rev. Mr. Farley, a Christian minister, and Rev. J. H. Hard, a Baptist, al- though no church was ever organized within the village limits.
WARFARE AND MURDER.
It was at Freedom, in the triangle formed by the intersection of the highways, that, in March, 1847, the gallant Colonel I. D. Toll, of Fawn River village (afterward one of the most prominent citizens of the county), drilled his recruits for the Mexican war.
A locality near Freedom was also the scene of the murder of Constable Fanning in November, 1840, by a Mississippi desperado, who was being pursued by an Indiana sheriff for horse-thieving, and Latta's hotel was headquarters for the organized pursuit. The following account of the tragedy which caused so much stir in St. Joseph county is taken from a La Grange paper: "Last Saturday a horse-thief, with two valuable bay horses, having stopped at Latta's hotel on the Chicago turnpike in Fawn River, killed Gamaliel Fanning, a constable, who, with three others, was attempting to arrest him. Half an hour afterward he was cap- tured in the woods, half a mile north of the tavern, through the intrepidity of Colonel I. D. Toll, who was a mile distant when Fanning was killed, and Sheriff Knox has him in jail. Toll has the knife now (an ugly looking weapon) with which the bloody deed was done. The murderer proved to be a Mississippi des- perado named Ward, who was convicted and sentenced to the state penitentiary at Jackson, and died there six years after- ward. His body was nearly covered with scars, from knife wounds principally. Had the sheriff, who pursued the thief from Indiana, been possessed of the courage of a man fit for the position, the murderer would have been arrested without harm to anyone; but he had not, and the pursuit being organized from the hotel in three parties (Fanning's being the largest), he came up un- supported, closed in upon the thief, and lost his life by several desperate thrusts of the knife."
With the greater growth of Sherman, Ivanhoe and Sturgis (all one), the village of Freedom declined into virtual nothing- ness, the building of the Michigan Southern in 1851 giving the place its quietus; for the railroad passed several miles north of
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Freedom, and accommodated Ivanhoe (or Sturgis, as it was christened), in 1857.
CAPTAIN TOLL AND FAWN RIVER VILLAGE.
Captain Philip R. Toll, father of Colonel I. D., whose coming to Fawn River township has already been noted, in 1836 built a house on the north side of the river, in which he first boarded the workmen who were constructing his dam, race, saw-mill and flour mill. The captain was what would be called a "hustler," even in these days, for he completed his industrial plant in 1836-7, and in April of the latter year laid out the village plat of Fawn River, on the south side of that stream, in portions of sections 10 and 15.
There were six full and two fractional blocks included in the original plat of the village, which was not acknowledged or re- corded until May 1, 1852.
Soon after he commenced to build his flour mill, in 1837, Captain Toll erected and equipped a blacksmith shop, which he operated for a time as a private aid to building operations. The first regular smith who worked in it was George G. Gilbert, of Burr Oak, who also ran a shop on his farm in that township. Captain Toll also had a cooper shop, and, in the early years of Fawn River village was its most prominent citizen. This state- ment applies in more ways than in a business and worldly sense ; for his house was always the home of the clergymen who came that way to preach in the school houses at Fawn River and Free- dom : Rev. Gershom B. Day, the Baptist divine, Rev. John Skelly, the Presbyterian, and others. Though Captain Toll's wife was a member of the Dutch Reform church, he was liberal toward all religious denominations, and was so desirous that there should be preaching of some kind in the new community, that he is said to have paid the expenses of the first minister out of his own pocket.
John P. Van Patten and William Schermerhorn were the first carpenters employed by Captain Toll, and they were the first to build a house on the village site, occupying it themselves as pioneer residents.
The school district, which included the village in its bound- aries, was first organized as No. 7, of Sherman township, June 7, 1837. At the meeting, which was held on that day at Captain Toll's house, Benjamin D. Goodrich was chosen moderator, John
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P. Van Patten director, and Nicholas Goodrich assessor. Captain Toll gave the site for a building at the southwest end of the vil- lage, and in May, 1839, the school authorities accepted it from Carpenter Van Patten, provided he would lath the same. They retained ten dollars from the contract price ($400) to secure such provision. Without attempting to decide the merits of the com- plication, it is sufficient to state that Mr. Van Patten was released from his contract and the school was finished by someone else. Another hundred dollars were spent on it for paint and a stove, and in the early portion of 1840 it was opened under the rule and rod wielded by Miss Harriet Starr.
No lawyer ever settled within the precincts of Fawn River village, and few doctors. In 1838 Captain Toll laid off a ceme- tery of three acres, a beautiful tract of oak land, sloping toward Fawn river and adjoining the school house site. The first burial, in August, 1839, was the body of Mrs. Amos Wright, her husband being the millwright of Fawn River mills. At the north end of the cemetery is the space devoted to those who have died as the indigent poor of the county, but whose graves are neatly marked through the kindliness of the able son of the village founder.
FAWN RIVER MILLS.
Fawn River faded from the county map as a "promising village" under the same blight which fell upon Freedom, when it lost all hopes of railroad communication in 1851. The mills of Captain Toll, however, long remained to do good work for the settlers, and mark the industrial center of the village. The saw- mill first fell into ruins. The flour mill, after a busy life of nearly forty years, was burned January 1, 1873, and rebuilt by Daniel Himebaugh & Sons in 1874. They conducted it for some years afterward.
Francis Flanders rented the saw-mill of Captain Toll in the winter of 1841-2, and out of the lumber and timber made that season the old fulling mill and carding factory was built the fol- lowing summer. A new woolen mill was built in 1851, also by Mr. Flanders, and this concern turned out all kinds of woolen goods except broadcloths. It was in operation for many years, and materially helped to fix the name Fawn River Mills upon the locality.
When Captain Toll moved to Monroe, in 1852, besides his large milling interests he held about thirteen hundred acres of Vol. 1-13
da .. .
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land, all in a body, adjoining his mills and much of it improved. He was also the owner of large tracts in other parts of the state. He built a fine residence and laid out elegant grounds in Monroe, Michigan, where he died August 17, 1862.
FRANCIS FLANDERS, FATHER AND SON.
Francis Flanders was a son of the Green Mountain state, a soldier of the war of 1812, and a New Hampshire woolen manu- facturer before he moved to Canandaigua, New York. He did not settle in Fawn River until October, 1841, but lost no time in establishing his carding and dressing factory, which developed into a regular woolen mill, conducted for years by Flanders & Sons. As stated, he was the prime justice of the peace of the township, both in point of business and popularity. One of his sons was Francis Flanders, Jr., who started life as a school teacher and a medical student, but found professional work so distasteful that he finally managed to serve in the Florida (Semi- nole war), as a regular soldier of the United States army, and throughout the Mexican war, as chief musician of a regiment. This gave him the title of major, by which he was generally known, and for more than a quarter of a century after the Mexi- can war he was an adventurer in California, Mexico and other sections of the southwestern country. He returned to Sturgis in 1876, where he died.
TINY TOWNSHIP.
Fawn river (known in early days as Crooked creek) drains the southern sections of the township, entering from Branch county in sections 12 and 13, and, making a bold bend westward and southwestward, makes its exit, via section 19, into Indiana. A connected chain of small lakes-Williams, Cade and Sweet- stretches in a generally northward direction to the center of the line between Fawn River and Burr Oak townships, draining a large area of the central sections of the town. They are all named after old settlers.
The area of Fawn River township is about twenty-one square miles, being little more than half a government township. Its "tiny" size, combined with a specially delicate beauty of land- scape, made the name proposed for it peculiarly appropriate, to
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the minds of the state legislators who first assigned its bounds at the session of 1838. The surface of the township is diversified by hill and dale and gently rising slopes, dotted all over with com- fortable farm houses and barns, fields, orchards and meadows. With the exception of a portion of the northwestern sections, which include the eastern end of Sturgis prairie, the land was originally covered with timber-the usual oak openings, which were so great an inducement to many of the early comers to the region.
STURGIS, LAST TOWNSHIP.
Sturgis did not "break away" from old Sherman township until 1845, when it was the last of the sixteen townships of the county to become organized civilly and to acquire its present area of 13,397 acres, or a little more than half a government township. Within these limits, George Buck was the first to locate perma- nently.
FIRST SETTLER.
Mr. Buck was a New Yorker, who had lived in Canada for years before he came to Michigan. In the summer of 1828 he brought his family to the site of the present village of Sturgis, by way of Detroit and Brownsville, making the journey from the lat- ter point by ox-team. While he was building his log hut north of the Chicago road, on what would now be the east side of Nottawa street, the family lived in a tent in the woods along Hog creek.
The next settlers also came in 1828, before either Sherman township or St. Joseph county was organized, and when their land was included in old St. Joseph township. These pioneers-John B. Clark, Truman Bearss and Jacob Hopkins-also indicated their determination to keep out of the undesirable class of "floaters" by bringing their families with them.
SETTLED ON SITE OF STURGIS.
The first entries of land in the township were made in 1828. On the 14th of June, Ezekiel Metcalf, of Cattaraugus county, New York, entered the east half of the northwest quarter of section 1, township 8 south, range 10 west, and on the 28th of November George Buck entered his land, which was west half of the southeast quarter of the same section. Ruth A. Clark entered the southeast
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quarter of the southwest quarter, and Hart L. Stewart, the west half of the same quarter, on the 18th of December. The Buck, Stewart and Clark entries formed portions of the site of the village of Sturgis, which was originally platted in 1832.
In 1829 David Petty, the Stewarts and Ephraim Bearss settled on Sturgis prairie; in 1830, Oliver Raymond, Major Isaac J. Ul- mann and Rev. J. E. Parker and his father John (with family).
SAD COMING OF A PIONEER.
John Parker came to Sturgis prairie in deep grief, three of his children having been killed in a steamboat accident before he reached Detroit. Upon arriving at his destination, the bereaved family was admitted into the house of Ephraim Bearss, who, with his own wife and children, cheerfully shared the one-room hut with the new comers.
Mr. Parker was a Pennsylvanian, but in 1825 moved with his wife and family of small children to Livingston county, New York. They lived there for about five years and in the spring of 1830 took steamer at Buffalo for Sturgis prairie, southern Michigan. When their boat (the "Peacock") was about three miles out, one of its steampipes burst and fifteen of the passengers were terribly scalded-fourteen fatally. Among the latter were John Parker's children, Margaret, Lovina and Samuel. This catastrophe cast a deep gloom over the family, the casualty being regarded as an ill omen fraught with misfortune; but, as the future of the family proved, such apprehensions were groundless.
Mr. Parker was the pioneer of quite a delegation, which, dur- ing the early thirties migrated from Livingston county, New York; its members included, Jacob Pearsoll, Hiram Jacobs, Nathaniel Rathbun, Aaron Gilham; Parker, Washington and Edward Osborn; Phillip Aurer, Michael Welliver, the Newhalls and Ransom and Henry Mumford.
The first farms in the township were begun by George Buck and Ephraim Bearss, who in 1829 broke up and fenced a tract of seventy-five acres in the eastern part of the town. John S. Newhall was also one of the leading farmers of this early day, his four yoke of oxen, with his wooden mould board four feet long, being in con- stant use.
George Buck's log cabin, north of the Chicago road, was the first house erected in Sturgis township. In the spring of 1830 his
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son, Phillip H., improved upon the father's work by erecting a house double the capacity of the first and equipping it with win- dows. The younger man platted the original village in 1832, and the upper part of his house was used for some years for religious and school purposes.
GEORGE BUCK'S DEATH.
The first death in Sturgis township, was that of the pioneer, George Buck. On the 9th of August, 1829, about a year after locat- ing, he was digging a well, in company with Levi Watermann, and both were killed by a sudden caving-in of the sides. The alarm was quickly given, but the would-be rescuers, including men from White Pigeon, reached the bodies too late.
FIRST HOTELS AND LANDLORDS.
John B. Clark built the third house on Sturgis prairie, and a daughter, born in it during May, 1830, was the first native child of the township. His house was also thrown open as a hotel-the first in the locality ; but his business was crippled when Oliver Ray- mond erected the first frame house, in 1831, and also threw it open as a place of public entertainment.
Mr. Clark was succeeded as landlord by Major Isaac J. Ull- mann, a fiery Democrat and a typical German, who left the village in the fall of 1833.
Luther Douglass took the hotel in the winter of 1833, but left it largely to his capable wife and children. He was himself drowned in a snow-storm in Lake Erie, May 14, 1833. In 1835 a Mr. Backus succeeded the Douglasses, the Douglass family moving to their farm in White Pigeon township. The mother of the family left behind her a reputation other than that of a capable and popu- lar landlady, her ministrations to the sick and suffering in "mind, body or estate" gaining her widespread affection and love.
PURELY PIONEER ITEMS.
In the fall of 1830 the first school in Sturgis township was established in the upper room of Phillip Buck's house, Dr. Henry, the first physician, acting as its first teacher. In 1833, the first school house built by the township was erected south of the
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Chicago road (then, in the village, known as Chicago street). The log house was replaced by a frame building, in 1838, both located in District No. 3, as now organized.
The first cemetery in the township was laid out soon after the platting of the village, being in the rear of the old Lutheran church and west of the railroad. The ground was given to the town by Hiram Jacobs, and the first burial in it was that of a stranger who died suddenly in the summer of 1833.
The first religious services were held in the "upper cham- ber" of the house built by Phillip Buck in 1830, and the first preacher to visit this part of Sturgis prairie was Rev. Erastus Felton, a Methodist missionary from Ohio.
A regular church society was not established in Sturgis prairie until 1832, when Rev. Mr. Robinson, of the Indiana con- ference, organized a class composed of one man, David Knox, and seven women, including Mrs. David Knox, Mrs. Rachel Knox (David's mother), Mrs. Betsey Buck (widow of George), Har- riet Brooks and Mrs. Thomas Cade.
The territorial road, which was surveyed and laid out in 1833, passed through Sturgis township toward Grand Rapids, and in 1834 the old Chicago road was made a real highway in the township through the work of Contractor James Johnson. Mr. Johnson afterward became a leading business man of the village and city.
Oliver Raymond was the first postmaster in the village and township of Sturgis and was appointed about the time the former was platted in 1832. He kept the mail of the entire settlement in one pigeon hole holding one candle box. Sturgis was on the route from White Pigeon to Cold Water, and the mails increased in frequency from an irregular weekly mail to a regular daily one.
A number of the leading farmers of the very early times con- tinued to live in the township and prosper for many years. Judge John Sturgis owned at the time of his death, which oc- curred in 1874, some 1,400 acres lying in a body in Sturgis and Sherman. His sons, Amos, Thomas and David, succeeded to the greater portion of the estate. The widow survived her husband for several years and died on the old homestead.
For half a century David Knox, who located in 1832, was a leading farmer of the township, as well as John S. Newhall, who came during the same year.
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Hiram Jacobs, Rice Pearsoll, John Lanrick and Isaac Runyan were also settlers of the thirties who built their characters and fortunes by forty or fifty years of farming in Sturgis township.
NOTTAWA TOWNSHIP AND "SEEPE."
The most striking natural features of St. Joseph county are the valleys of the St. Joseph and White Pigeon, and White Pigeon of Nottawa prairie. The prairies lay on either side of these beautiful streams, occupying a broad expanse and stretching diagonally through the county from southwest to northeast, or vice versa. About the center, or say at Centerville, they merged, Nottawa prairie including substantially the townships of Nottawa, Mendon, Leonidas and Colon.
Nottawa-seepe, "a prairie by the river," so called by the Pottawatomies, is well named; it describes the general topog- raphy of the country, and the fanciful may hear in the "seepe" the rustle of the tall prairie grass as it is stirred by the fresh breezes of the St. Joseph valley. The prairie, in its prime, was of irregular shape, points of oak land jutting out into it, at places, and even meeting to form the "openings" for which the county is famous. Again, the forest would retreat on either side and the waving grass would sweep away in unchecked billowy waves miles in extent.
Such was the picture drawn by nature and presented to the admiring eyes of John W. Fletcher, Captain Moses Allen and George Hubbard, who, in 1826, followed the old Indian trail into southwestern Michigan and the preliminary survey of the gov- ernment engineers for the "military road" between Detroit and Chicago.
JUDGE CONNOR, FIRST SETTLER.
Judge William Connor, for more than half a century an honored resident of the township, came to the prairie as a young man, in May, 1829, and despite the objections of the Indians who claimed that he was encroaching on their reservation, located his claim on the west half of the northwest quarter of section 15, north of Prairie river. The judge returned to Monroe and en- tered his land, but decided to wait until the next year be- fore he settled permanently upon it. He therefore remained in Ypsilanti for several months teaching school, and did not re-
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appear as a permanent settler of Nottawa prairie until September 1, 1829.
JUDGE STURGIS COMES.
A few days before his arrival, Judge John Sturgis had come from Sturgis prairie and ventured still nearer the southern line of the Nottawa-seepe reservation by fixing his location on the northeast quarter of section 4, the northern boundary of his land being the township line as now established. The Indians protested louder than ever, insisting that what he and Judge Connor assumed were the southern bounds of their reservation ran, in reality, through its center. But the Nottawa-seepe In- dians had a friend at Lima (Mon-go-qui-nong prairie) in whom they had unshaken confidence, and they agreed to abide by his decision in the matter. Their head men repaired at once to the referee, who showed them that, by the terms of the government treaty, the southern line of the reservation had been correctly surveyed; so, although there were frequent mutterings afterward, the white settlers of Nottawa prairie were not disturbed by the Nottawa-seepe Indians; and in 1833 the red men relinquished all.
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