USA > Michigan > St Joseph County > History of St. Joseph County, Michigan; Volume I > Part 20
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In the fall of 1831 the central part of the township received an accession of settlers in James and Robert Cowen, from Penn- sylvania, and Isaac G. Bailey, from Connecticut. All were single men, but married afterward and brought their wives to the settlement; Mr. Bailey in the fall of 1834, Robert Cowen in 1835 and James later. They were the founders of the numerous in- dustries which were subsequently established along Nottawa and Bear creeks.
THE COWEN MILLS.
It appears that Mr. Bailey was the first of the party to pros- pect Leonidas for a mill site, and, finding what he wanted, re- turned to the land office at White Pigeon to make his entries. While on this errand he met James Cowen, to whom he gave a description of his "find," with the general locality. Mr. Cowen carefully marked Mr. Bailey's entries on his map and then set out for himself. Arriving on the ground, he found that Bailey had been careless and failed to enter the "eighty" which really contained the water power and the most favorable mill site; so he quietly returned to White Pigeon and entered it himself. Afterward meeting Bailey, he told him that he had found a good mill-site himself and should proceed to utilize it. When Mr. Bailey found that, by his own negligence, the cream of his location had been skimmed by Mr. Cowen his chagrin was great; but he was obliged to swallow his bitter pill and, though he bought a large tract of land around the Cowen mill-site, or pond, he finally built a saw-mill on Bear creek.
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The saw-mill erected by James and Robert Cowen, on Not- tawa creek, was completed in 1832 and put in operation in the winter of that and the succeeding year. In 1836 they built their first flour mill; but the dam proving to be inadequate, as well as unsafe, in 1840 they abandoned it, constructed another, and also built a new saw-mill.
James Cowen and Isaac G. Bailey were both educated for physicians and the former was an excellent surveyor. He moved to Indiana in 1846. When a postoffice was established at Cowen's mills in 1834, Mr. Bailey was appointed postmaster, and in 1835 he was influential in establishing a postal route from Jackson to White Pigeon. He was elected to the state legislature in 1838, and died in Detroit the following March, still retaining the post- mastership of Leonidas.
CAPTAIN LEVI WATKINS.
In the fall of 1832 Captain Levi Watkins built a cabin on the banks of Nottawa creek, stocked it with provisions, and went to work on the Cowen mill which was then in course of con- struction. He was joined by his family in the following Feb- ruary. Both he and his sons, Orrin M. and Martin C., were lead- ing citizens as long as they lived, being especially prominent in the encouragement of schools and churches. Although the captain was a Presbyterian, his house was always open to all who desired accommodations for religious meetings, and it was at his home that the first religious meeting of the township was held in May, 1833-a gathering of Methodists under Rev. Mr. Dickin- son, a missionary from the Ohio conference. Meetings continued to be held at Captain Watkins' house until the school house was built in 1836, when the first religious meeting therein was held in the unroofed structure.
Captain Watkins was also active in opening up the country to the outside world. He acted as one of the commissioners who laid out the first township road in 1836, from the settlement (which afterward became the village of Leonidas) in section 12, westwardly to the township line. He also ran the stage line for a time, which was established in 1838 from White Pigeon to Jacksonburg, via Leonidas. In 1835 he had thrown the first bridge over the St. Joseph river in the township, known as the Mathews bridge.
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Captain Watkins, who was of fine Revolutionary stock on both sides of the family, was born in Partridgefield, Berkshire county, Massachusetts, August 5, 1785, and when eight years of age moved with his parents to a royal grant, near Little Falls, Herkimer county, New York, where they lived until Levi was sixteen years old, when the family removed to Naples, Ontario county, in the same state. He was the youngest of three sons and his father was a farmer. Levi had no opportunity to attend school except for a single month, but gained his education in the hard school of ex- perience. He always occupied the same farm with his father, but dwelt in a separate house, having everything produced on the farm in common. The young man followed farming and cattle-driving for a business, driving large herds to Philadelphia and Buffalo. In 1812 he entered the American army and was stationed on picket be- tween Lewis and Buffalo in command of a company, which gave him his rank and title of captain. In 1820 he took contracts on the Erie canal, then in process of construction, which business he followed until 1824, but by the defalcation of the canal commissioner and the fraudulent practices of a party for whom he was surety, he lost heavily and was stripped of nearly all his property.
In the early part of the autumn of 1832, Captain Watkins came to Leonidas-then known as Flowerfield-and selected a location on the Nottawa creek, near Dunkin's (now Climie's) mill, and built a log-house and put in nine acres of wheat. He brought a horse with him, which he exchanged for a yoke of oxen; purchased some wheat and corn and had it ground for supplies for his family when they should arrive; and went to work for the Cowen brothers, who were building their mill. He had purchased another yoke of oxen of Judge Meek, of Constantine, and engaged to work two months for the Cowens for sixty dollars, just the price he had agreed to pay for his last yoke of cattle. When his time was up, he took the Cowens' note for the amount due and exchanged it for his own note, which he had given for his team, and so "squared" the account.
On the 20th day of February, 1833, the family arrived, bringing with them a span of horses and a wagon, which was an important addition to the pioneer's outfit. The location of Captain Watkins proving to be seminary lands, he relinquished it, and in 1836 bought lands contiguous thereto on what was afterwards known as the Ter- ritorial road, and built another house thereon. This location he transferred to his son, William M., with whom he continued to re- side until his death.
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After a life of untiring activity, Captain Watkins passed to his final rest, October 12, 1851. His second wife survived him a little more than ten years, when she fell asleep and was laid beside him, February 19, 1862. By both marriages he had seven children. And thus passed from the sight of men one of the most active and energetic citizens of his day. His executive ability was remarkable, and the enterprises in which he was engaged while a resident of New York were monuments to his energy and determination, and had the state fulfilled its obligations, and its servants faithfully discharged their trusts, Captain Watkins would have been, nothwithstanding his generosity, a wealthy man, living at his ease long before his death. As it was, death found him with the harness on, every trace taut, and muscles strained for effective work, and he laid down "like a strong man taking his rest."
The second Mrs. Watkins was a pioneer of Ontario county, and set out the first apple-tree in Naples, which is still known as Mother Watkins' apple-tree.
William M. Watkins, the son mentioned, was long one of the foremost men of Leonidas township. He held the supervisorship for a number of years and was sheriff of the county from 1866 to 1870, inclusive.
FIRST HOTELS.
In the spring of 1833 there was an accession to the substan- tial citizenship of Leonidas in the person of Arnold Hayward, who also brought his family. He built a log house just above Captain Watkin's, and the next summer added a frame "lean-to," which he opened as the first hotel. In 1836 Captain Watkins built a new frame house on the Washtenaw trail, running from the east township line to the Leonidas settlement, and there kept the "Farmers' Home."
HORTICULTURAL SPROUTINGS.
The first fruit trees in the township were found by the first white settlers on the banks of the Nottawa, just below the present site of the Mathews bridge at the village of Leonidas. They were apple trees and the Indians then living in the locality had only a dim tradition of their planting by white missionaries. The trees were transplanted, but died.
Captain Watkins planted apple seeds and peach and plum pits, in the spring of 1833, and by the fall of 1834 had quite a
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nursery under way. In the spring of 1835 George Mathews set out an orchard of quite mature trees and raised the first apples in the township. Peaches were first produced in Leonidas in 1837 and plums artificially raised in 1845.
SETTLERS OF 1834-40.
In the spring of 1834 Jarius Peirce, a Massachusetts man who had resided for some time in New York, came to Leonidas to work at his trade as a carpenter and was first employed on the Cowen flour mill. In 1836, after he had assisted in the building of many of the first Leonidas structures, he brought his family from On- tario county, New York, to permanently reside.
In 1834-5 Augustus, Charles and Erastus Tyler located in the western part of the township, and were for years among its larg- est farmers. In 1835 Ezra Roberts, Abraham Rhynearson and N. V. Truesdell settled in the Indian reservation, same locality, and in the same year George Benedict became a resident of the eastern part of the prairie. Edward K. Wilcox was a settler of 1836, as well as Justus L. Vough (who brought the first stock of goods into the township) ; William Bishop, with his sons, Lyman, Jr., and James, in 1837, and William Minor, James B. Dunkin and Stephen Van Rensselaer York, in 1840.
FIRST TOWN MEETING.
The first town meeting after Leonidas became an independ- ent township was held at the house of Martin C. Watkins, April 4, 1836, James Cowen being moderator and Aaron B. Watkins clerk. Isaac G. Bailey and Captain Watkins were both candi- dates for the office of supervisor; as they were also good friends, each worked hard for the other's election. The captain elected his man by a narrow margin; Bailey receiving twelve votes and Watkins, ten. Others elected at the meeting : Martin C. Watkins, town clerk; Joseph Gilbert, George Mathews, I. G. Bailey and Aaron B. Watkins, justices of the peace; James Cowen, Levi Watkins and George Mathews, assessors; Charles Starke, Am- brose Nichols and Levi Watkins, commissioners of highways; James Cowen, George Mathews and M. C. Watkins, school com- missioners; Arnold Hayward and Moses W. Whiting, overseers of the poor; and Orrin W. Watkins, constable and collector. At
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this meeting it was also voted to pay two dollars bounty for wolf scalps and fifty cents for foxes, and to raise twenty dollars for contingent expenses.
FACTORYVILLE.
In 1840 James B. Dunkin built a saw-mill on the Nottawa, above the Cowen's, owning and operating it until 1862.
Theodore Robinson and James Bishop erected a saw-mill on Nottawa creek, on section, one, and operated it for several years, or until the Branch county mill owners enjoined the proprietors against raising their own dam.
In 1842-3 William, Charles and Nathan Schofield built at the same place a woolen factory, but in 1845 the machinery was taken into Park township by Leonard Shellhouse.
The little hamlet that gathered around these mills was called Factoryville.
LEONIDAS VILLAGE.
The original plat of the village of Leonidas was laid off by E. G. Terry on the 30th of December, 1846, on the northeast quarter of section 12, at the intersection of the territorial road (Washtenaw trail), which passed through the plat from northeast to southwest, and the Mendon and Colon roads, which ran through the village from north to south and from east to west.
MENDON TOWNSHIP.
When St. Joseph county was organized in 1829, what are now its four northernmost townships were included in the township of Flowerfield. The territory included in the present Leonidas was detached in 1833 and attached to Colon, and in the same year what is known as Mendon township became a part of Nottawa. In 1843 the present Mendon was organized as Wakeman township, in honor of Hiram Wakeman, one of its largest land owners.
But this name proved unsatisfactory to the majority of peo- ple in the township, and in 1844 a meeting was called at the cooper shop of L. Salisbury to select one which would meet the popular taste. Among those present and most active in the discussion were Peter House and Moses Taft, the former from the town of Mendon, New York, and the latter, from Mendon, Massachusetts.
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Combining forces finally, the one moved, and the other seconded, that the township be called Mendon; the motion was carried unan- imously, the usual petition presented to the legislature and the change of name officially made before the end of the year.
FRANCOIS MOUTAN, FIRST SETTLER.
The first white settler in the present territory of Mendon township was Francois Moutan who, in 1831, brought his family to live at the trading post of Peter and J. J. Godfroi, located near the Indian village on the southern banks of the St. Joseph opposite the present city of Mendon. Mr. Moutan had been ap- pointed manager of the post, which he conducted for about two years. When the reservation came into the market he bought lands of the government and became well-to-do and influential, his descendants making good records for themselves and the family.
The buildings of the Godfroi trading post, erected in 1831, were the first of the township; they consisted of two log houses- one for a store and the other for a blacksmith shop. To these Mr. Moutan added a log cabin for his family, consisting of his wife and several children.
MARANTETTE SUCCEEDS MOUTAN.
In August, 1833, Patrick Marantette arrived on the ground as Mr. Moutan's successor in charge of the trading post. He came from Detroit, where his father was widely known as an Indian trader, and reached the reservation as an able and ener- getic young bachelor of about twenty-four. In 1835 he aban- doned single life by marrying one of Mr. Moutan's daughters. He also reserved a section of land in the Nottawa-seepe reserva- tion, which eventually formed the basis of a considerable family estate. Mr. Marantette's character and his invaluable labors in the legal acquirement of the soil of Mendon township and ad- joining sections from the Indians are more fully set forth in the general history of the county, as is most appropriate.
Messrs. Moutan and Marantette were naturally the first farm- ers and fruit raisers of Mendon township, as they had the ground to themselves for some time. In 1832-3 Mr. Moutan raised a crop of corn, and Mr. Marantette gathered the first wheat harvest
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from the two bushels which he sowed in the spring of 1835. When Mr. Moutan reached the Indian village in 1831 he found some apple trees bearing therein, which were said to have been origi- nally planted by missionaries; but he was the first white man to start an orchard of his own, beyond the shadow of a doubt. Mr. Marantette planted the first peach orchard in 1834 and gathered fruit from it in 1838.
FIRST MARRIAGE AND BIRTH.
The marriage ceremony of Patrick Marantette and Miss Frances Moutan was performed according to the civil code by J. W. Coffinberry, justice of the peace, on the 23rd of November, 1835, and as the contracting parties were strict Catholics it was afterward ratified by the bishop of Detroit at Bertrand's on the St. Joseph river. The child of this union, born in 1836, was the first native white of Mendon township.
FIRST RELIGIOUS SERVICES.
The first religious services in the township were held by Roman Catholic missionaries at the Godfroi trading post in 1831, although the first mass was not celebrated until 1839, when Father Boss, of Detroit, stopped at Marantette's on his way to Grand Rapids.
VILLAGE OF MENDON FOUNDED.
Besides Mr. Marantette, two Frenchmen, Peter Neddeaux and Leander Metha, came to the Nottawa-seepe reservation in 1833. The former located near the trading post, while Mr. Metha settled on the other side of the river, on the present site of Mendon. Mr. Neddeaux died in 1845.
Mr. Metha came directly from Monroe and threw up a rough log cabin in short order. This was later replaced by a more com- modious and comfortable structure of hewn logs, the old one being then used for school purposes.
The water power at Mendon village was created by damming the Little Portage on the southwest corner of the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of section 21, and cutting a race one-half mile south to a series of marshes, and thence by a short flume to the bank of the St. Joseph, securing a head of sixteen feet of water.
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In 1844 Messrs. Bronson and Doan who had created this water power built a saw-mill, and it was undoubtedly their enterprise which induced Leander Metha to plat the original village of Men- don, on the east half of section 27, in 1845.
The proprietors of this first saw-mill, also added grist facilities, a carding machine and a turning lathe, and in 1848 sold their buildings and water power to Melvin & Brown, of Centerville. Thus was the village of Mendon firmly founded.
SETTLERS FROM 1833 TO 1837.
In November, 1833, Samuel E. Johnson and his six sons (after- ward well known citizens of the township) migrated from Living- ston county, New York, and located in section 1, of Nottawa town- ship, just south of the reservation line. He died in 1839.
Fordyce Johnson and Stephen Barnabee located in section 34, south of the Indian village, about 1834, and Oliver H. Foote and Moses Taft were arrivals of 1835.
Mr. Taft was highly honored during the forty years of his resi- dence in Mendon township. He and his family were from Mendon, Massachusetts, and it was largely through his insistence and his popularity that the township dropped its old name of Wakeman. He resided in Leonidas township a year before coming to Mendon, and was a traveler in the upper Mississippi valley when that region was almost an unknown land to whites. Among citizens of promi- nence who married daughters of Moses Taft were William Harring- ton, Abram H. Voorhees, A. Wesley Maring and James S. Bar- nabee.
Adams Wakeman located on Nottawa prairie in 1833, Hiram in 1834 and Mark, in 1836; N. Chapman was a settler of 1834; Timothy Kimball about 1835; Harvey White, 1836, and B. B. Bacon, Ephraim K. Atkinson, James Van Buren, Ira and William Pellett and Joseph Woodward, 1837. The Wakeman brothers introduced the first improved live-stock (Durham cattle) into the township.
OLD-TIME OFFICIALS.
Joseph Jewett was the first supervisor of Mendon township and was succeeded in 1845 by Joseph Woodward, and the first town clerk, E. Kellogg, also gave place to Mr. Jewett. Patrick Maran- tette, Moses Taft, Norman Hill, Benjamin Osgood, Cyrus Dutton,
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Ira Pellett and Abram H. Voorhees, all figure as supervisors pre- vious to 1860, and William Pellett, B. P. Doan, Edwin Stewart and A. Crandall, as clerks.
GENERAL PHYSICAL FEATURES.
The northern portions of Mendon township were originally covered with a heavy growth of oak, walnut, white-wood, ash, sycamore, elm and maple, a feature of its southern sections being the two thousand acres of Nottawa prairie which extended up from the south. It has a square mile of water surface, being well drained by the St. Joseph, Big and Little Portage rivers and Bear creek. The only lake of considerable size in the township is Portage, which occupies several hundred acres in sections 7 and 8.
The surface of the country is generally level, becoming some- what rolling as it approaches the St. Joseph river, which drains the southern portions of the township. The Big Portage river flows through Portage lake in its course to the southwest and Three Rivers, while the Little Portage flows through the north- eastern, central and western sections of the township, and joins the larger stream in section 24, Park township. Bear creek also empties into Portage lake, coming in from the northeast.
PARK TOWNSHIP.
This township was created and assumed its present area in 1838, and of its thirty-six square miles, three hundred and thirteen acres only are covered by water. Its drainage is effected by the Portage river and Fisher's lake, the latter lying in section 34 in the southern part of the township. When the first settlers came to the country the township was a lovely succession of dense oak groves and green and level openings in the forest, resembling more than all else a series of well-kept parks; hence the name which the township so appropriately received.
FIRST SETTLERS ALONG FISHER'S LAKE.
The first settlers of Park township located on the east shores of Fisher's lake in 1834. In that locality Harvey Kinney com- menced the building of a small log cabin, and was assisted in his
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work by Jonas and Leonard Fisher and George Leland. In the preceding fall the Indians of the Nottawa-seepe reservation, which extended into the eastern sections of Park township, had agreed to finally relinquish their lands in 1836. Soon after the Chicago treaty of 1833, squatters commenced to locate claims in the eastern portion of the reservation, but Kinney's was the first occupancy of their lands in the western part, or within the area now included in the two eastern sections of Park township. He completed his cabin, with the able assistance of his three com- panions, but did not occupy it until the spring of 1835.
About the same time I. S. Ulrich and wife were journeying from Pennsylvania with a double team and all their household goods. After a trying experience of seventy-two days they reached what is now the site of Three Rivers and not long after- ward joined the squatters east of Fisher's lake.
Besides the Ulriches, Kinney, the Fishers and Mr. Leland, the colony soon included Samuel Moore, who located in section 19 near the village of Moore Park and George Wilson, who located on section 25 in the eastern part of the township.
Michael Hower and John Boudeman also arrived in 1835, the latter joining the Fisher lake settlement, and in the following year Isaac Mowrey and John Hutchinson located claims further to the north, Mr. Hutchinson on section 27.
About the same time John Lomison entered large tracts of land in sections 26, 27 and 36, both north and east of the lake, and in 1837 a good Scotchman, McDonald Campbell, settled in section 35. Alexander Frazier, Jacob Bannon and Andrew Reed were added to the pioneer populace of Park township within the succeeding two years.
The settlers came in to such good purpose, despite the fever- and-ague epidemic of 1835, that they were successful. as has been seen, in inducing the state legislature to give them separate town- ship organization.
FIRST TOWN MEETING.
The first town meeting was held at the house of Mr. Hutchin- son in section 27, during the month of April, 1838, and the fol- lowing were elected as the principal officials: Edward S. Moore, supervisor; Juba E. Day, clerk, and Isaac F. Ulrich, justice of the peace. The first assessment for taxation, made during that year, returned $55,823; taxes, $1,340.02.
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FIRST OTHER THINGS.
Mr. Ulrich sowed the first wheat in the township, in the spring of 1835, but the harvest is said to have resulted in "a wonder- fully smutty lot."
The first orchard was set out by Isaac Mowrey on his home- stead in section 35; year, 1836.
Madison J. Ulrich, who was born December 6, 1835, was the first native white child of Park township, being one of the twelve born to that good couple, Mr. and Mrs. I. S. Ulrich.
'Squire Ulrich, who was authority on marriages, claimed that the first couple married within the township limits was legally tied by him in 1835. He only knew that the bridegroom's name was Fairchild, and that he brought his bride twenty miles in order to be "jined." The first of actual residents to be married were Amos Reed and Ann Hower, who were made man and wife in 1837.
The first school house erected within the limits of the town- ship was in the fall of 1838, and was built by contributions of labor and material from the settlers. Isaac S. Ulrich opened it, as a teacher, in the spring of 1839. This old log building an- swered the necessary requirements of the southeastern part of the township until 1848, when a frame structure was erected about half a mile north. The township was divided into five school districts in 1839.
PARKVILLE AND MOORE PARK.
In 1851 James Hutchinson surveyed the village of Parkville on a piece of land in section 24 which had been purchased of N. H. Taylor by Luther Carlton. It was never more than a fair-sized settlement.
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