USA > Michigan > St Joseph County > History of St. Joseph county, Michigan, with illustrations descriptive of its scenery, palatial residences, public buildings, fine blocks, and important manufactories > Part 13
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Notwithstanding the havoc made by death's artillery and the smaller arms of the courts, there are notable instances of long years of marital felicity that place the county of St. Joseph well towards the front rank in that respect. Eight venerable couples were living in St. Joseph county at the annual meeting of the pioneer society in June, 1876, who had celebrated their golden wedding, but three of them were broken before the year closed.
Ezra Cole and wife were married before they were nineteen years old, in January, 1818, and have lived together fifty-nine years. They have reared a family of seven children, are seventy-seven years old, and have never had any severe illness. They came to Three Rivers in 1839, and have lived there ever since.
Samuel Van Dorston and his wife, seventy-seven and seventy-eight years old respectively, have lived together as man and wife over fifty-six years. They lived in Three Rivers, and have reared a large family of sons and daughters.
Isaac Major and wife, of Lockport township, were married in Montgomery county, N. Y., February 22, 1821, and at the time of Mrs. Major's death in October, 1876, they had lived together by the family hearthstone nearly fifty-six years. Mr. Major is eighty-four years old. His brother, William Major, of the same town, who died in December, 1876, aged eighty years, was married to the wife who survives him, in the last-named county, February 19, 1824, their wedded life covering nearly fifty-three years.
Zerah Benjamin and Asenath Adams started out together on life's jour- ney in Durham, Greene county, N. Y., on January 17, 1824, and have not yet parted company, though fifty-three years of the lights and shades insep- arable from human existence have passed over their heads. They came to Florence in 1835, and located on the farm where they have ever since re- sided. In 1874 they celebrated their golden wedding, having present with them five of their six children and twelve of their fourteen grandchildren. Forty-one relatives in all were present, among them a brother and sister who had witnessed the wedding fifty years before. There were five others living at the time, who also were witnesses of the old-time wedding.
Isaac F. Ulrich and his wife were married December 16, 1824, and at the end of fifty-two years are serenely passing down life's western declivity to- gether, till the " gates shall stand ajar " for them by and by. Their golden wedding was a notable occasion, made so by the assembling of twenty-nine of their thirty-six descendants, spanning three generations, the aged couple making the fourth. M. J. Ulrich, a son, and the first child born in Park township, delivered an eloquent address, and presented the patriarch with a gold-headed cane, and the venerable mother with an easy-chair. Cyrus Ulrich, another son, read an original poem. Mr. Ulrich is seventy-six years old and lives on his original location in Park, whither he came in 1834.
George Keech, Sr., and Mary M. Hunt were married in New York city on the 10th day of September, 1826. They are aged seventy-eight and seventy-three years respectively, and have lived together for half a century, and are now hale and hearty, kind and hospitable as old pioneers are usually. Mr. Keech has died since the above was written. In this family are three Georges: George I., George II. and George III .; and though their blood may not be as " blue" as that which was accorded to the Brunswick Georges of
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old colony and Revolutionary times, it is better, if there is any truth in the history of the titled Georges, Rex dei gratia. Mr. and Mrs. Keech lived in St. Joseph thirty years.
Hon. Edward S. Moore, of Three Rivers, had lived with the wife of his youth for fifty years, when she was called to go before him to that haven of rest where, when he shall follow, old friendships shall be renewed never more to be broken. Inman Arnold and Narcissa Morey, of Constantine, married in Oxford, Chenango county, N. Y., January 19, 1815, and that union, de- clared when the treaty of peace between the United States and Great Britain was signed, was for sixty years undissolved, and then only death was power- ful enough to loose the bands thereof. Mr. and Mrs. Charles Macomber, of Park, and latterly of Three Rivers, had passed fifty-two years of wedded life together, when the husband was called hence in 1875.
The ten couples here named have spent in the aggregate over five hundred and forty years of wedded life together, and their aggregate ages span four- teen hundred years! The survivors can sing with " the spirit, and with the understanding also," Burns' touching lines :
"John Anderson, my jo, John, we clamb the hill thegither ; And mony a canty day, John, we've had wi' ane anither. Now we maun totter down, John, but hand in hand we'll go, And sleep thegither at the foot, John Anderson, my jo !"
There were registered in the county, in 1876, two hundred and seventy- five marriages, four hundred and forty-two births, and one hundred and sixty-three deaths.
CEMETERIES.
The first permanent cemetery was laid out in White Pigeon, in or about the year 1831, where it is still located, in the northwestern part of the vil- lage. There was a burial-place laid off by J. W. Coffinberry, on a tract of land named by him "Carlton," but which existed as a village only in the airy castles of Mr. Coffinberry's fancy. One Chidester, a carpenter, and a man named Day, died in the year 1831, and were buried in this plat, and so, also, were several persons who died about the same time, one of them a son-in-law of Colonel Selden Martin.
The old cemetery of Sturgis was laid off for burial purposes in 1833, and about that time the one on section sixteen in Nottawa was laid off. There are at Sturgis and Three Rivers most eligibly situated grounds, now being beautified and adorned by art and affection, nature having been especially lavish in her never-to-be-excelled work in the Riverside cemetery of the latter city. Descriptions of these grounds in detail appear in the respective histories of the townships.
CHAPTER XIII.
FIRST RELIGIOUS SERVICES-MISSIONARIES-FIRST CHURCHES ORGANIZED- SUNDAY-SCHOOLS-PRESENT STATISTICS-EDUCATION-EARLY SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-HOUSES-WHITE PIGEON ACADEMY-BRANCH OF UNIVER- SITY-PRESENT SCHOOL STATISTICS.
The first religious services held by Europeans in the territory once in- cluded in the boundaries of St. Joseph township, as a part of Lenawee county, and whose principal and only magistrate was John Winchell, of White Pigeon prairie, was the service held by the Jesuit missionary, Claude Allouez, on the St. Joseph river, near its mouth, where he had, in 1675, fol- lowed the footsteps of Pere Marquette, and gathered around him a little village of the Pottawatomies, organized a school, and taught his wild pupils the tenets of salvation through the merits of a risen Saviour, as he under- stood them. One hundred and fifty-four years later, Lyman B. Gurley and Erastus Felton, missionaries from the field of the Methodist Episcopal church, proclaimed to the pioneer settlers, the successors of Allouez' pupils in the St. Joseph valley, the news of salvation as they understood it. A few years later, Cory and Jones, missionaries of the Presbyterian faith, Ger- shom B. Day and William Brown, of the Baptist persuasion, and Isaac Ketchum, of the Dutch Reformed views, proclaimed the " very same Jesus " to the same people, as they understood it. Thus the followers of Loyola and those of Wesley, Knox, Roger Williams and others, but all disciples of the lowly Nazarene, proclaimed his doctrines of peace and good will to man, from their different stand-points, but with good intent to better the condition of their fellows.
The early missionaries endured hardships that would appal the stoutest hearts to-day ; not only the Jesuits, who literally went through fire and blood to fulfill their self-appointed missions, but those who followed them, when the white men were their hearers. The itinerants of Wesley penetrated forests,
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
waded marshes, swam rivers, crossed prairies, sleeping wherever night over- took them, frequently canopied only by the blue vault over their heads, with the stars for watchers. They braved storms of rain and snow, and the pitiless pelting of the sleet and hail, and ate with thankfulness the meagre fare set before them by the pioneer, knowing that, though scanty, it was of the best, and oftentimes, the last the hospitable host had to give. One of these brave souls, named Walker, had a circuit of twelve hundred miles to ride, into Ohio, Indiana and Michigan ; and he traveled it on horseback every six weeks, fording all the streams, and swimming the Miamee twice every trip.
Gershom B. Day, the pioneer Baptist, was a useful man in his time. He not only preached to the people, but he sang to them in church meetings, and at home in their houses; and at their celebrations on the 4th of July he was their chorister.
He left this country and went to California, where he gained some consider- able more of this world's goods than he was likely to do by following his clerical calling here, but he lost his life thereby, being killed and scalped by the Indians on his return.
John Armstrong, a presiding elder of the Methodist conference having jurisdiction over the churches of that creed in St. Joseph valley, was a mus- cular Christian, and, when need demanded, led the Michigan volunteers against Black Hawk, as a scout, and was with General Atkinson at the cap- ture of that redoubtable chieftain. His knowledge of the country, gained in the years of his itineracy, proved of inestimable value to the commander of the United States troops.
He conducted the first camp-meeting ever held in western Michigan, on Prairie Rinde, in 1834.
Reverends William Jones and Christopher Cory were the earliest Presby- terian ministers, and preached in southern Michigan and northern Indiana in 1829, and later, and organized all of the earlier churches of that denomi- nation in that region of the country. P. W. Warrimer succeeded them, and was for years a noted man among the people.
Among the other missionaries and. early proclaimers of the gospel were Benoni Harris, whose appointment as an elder in the Methodist Episcopal church was granted by Bishop Mckendrie, July 24, 1810, at Lyons, New York. Sprague received his appointment from Bishop Hedding in 1831. Thomas Odell was an early Methodist minister, and so, also, was Erastus Kellogg. Reverend George B. Brown appears to be the first liberal minis- ter who came into the county, and was here in 1835.
METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH.
The whole territory of Michigan was included in the Detroit district of the Ohio conference of the Methodist Episcopal church until 1832, at which time the southwestern part of the territory was set off into the Indiana con- ference, under which jurisdiction it remained until 1840. In 1833 southwest Michigan was included in the northwest district, but in 1834 it was changed to the Laporte district, and Newell E. Smith was in charge. The new con- ference was designated " Wood's Raft." In 1840 the State line was made the southern boundary of the Michigan conference, which body was organ- ized in 1835 or 1836. In 1834 the St. Joseph mission, as the charge in St. Joseph valley had been previously designated, was changed to the St. Joseph circuit of the Laporte district, and in 1837 the circuit was divided, and that part of it included in Michigan named the White Pigeon circuit, and em- braced White Pigeon, Constantine, Centreville, Nottawa, Sturgis, Edwards- burg, Three Rivers, Florence, Prairie Ronde and other small societies. It was a four weeks' circuit, with two preachers. In 1839 the circuit was again divided into the White Pigeon and Centreville circuits, with a single preacher in each ; John Erchanbrack was the presiding elder of the district. In 1847 the circuit was changed to the Constantine circuit, and the preacher " lived in a hired house" in the village of Constantine, on the corner of Washington and Centreville streets.
The following presiding elders have held authority in the St. Joseph dis- trict : John Armstrong, previous to 1840 ; John Erchenbrack, 1840; J. F. Davidson, 1841-4; William Sprague, 1845-8; Francis D. Bangs, 1849-51-56; John K. Gillett, 1852-5; David Burns, 1856-9; Thomas H. Jacokes, 1860-3; Riley C. Crawford, 1864-7; Resin Sapp, 1868-71 ; Andrew J. Eldred, 1872-5 ; J. W. Robinson, 1876-9.
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The first Methodist society organized (which was also the first church or- ganization of any kind in the county) was a class formed at Newville, about two miles east of White Pigeon, in the fall of 1829, of which David Crawford was the leader. This class was the first results of the preaching of Mr. Felton. In February following a class was organized in White Pigeon village, with Captain Alvin Calhoun as leader. Among the mem-
bers of this last class were Alanson C. Stewart and wife, John Bowers and wife, Mr. and Mrs. John Coates and David Rollins. The first church edifice in the county was erected by this society in the village of White . Pigeon in the year 1832, and which was a small frame building. Mr. Stewart was a local preacher, and went to Chicago in after-years, where he and his wife died.
In the spring of 1830 Messrs. Felton and Gurley organized a class on Nottawa prairie, at the house of William. Hazzard, Sr., the first members of the same being Mr. Hazzard and his wife Cassandra, and William Fletcher and Hannah his wife, with the preacher in charge as leader. Amos Howe was the first regularly appointed leader. Services were held fortnightly, at first at private houses, and afterwards, when school-houses were built, the meet- ings were held in them, and for some time after 1833 in the county court- house in Centreville. The only surviving member of the Nottawa class is William Hazzard, Sr., in whose house the same was formed. He is now about eighty years old.
PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH.
The first Presbyterian church organized was of White Pigeon, on the 8th day of August, 1830. The organization was effected by Rev. William Jones. Benjamin Blair, David Clarke, Neal McGaffey, James Mathews and James Blair were appointed and ordained ruling elders, and beside them the fol- lowing were the first members of the church : Mrs. Elizabeth Blair, Mrs. David Clarke, Mrs. McKibbon, Martha Waterman, Mrs. Sarah Mathews, Mr. and Mrs. Abijah C. Seeley, Alexander McMillan and his wife Susanna, John and Rebecca Gardner, Mrs. Hannah McGaffey, Mrs. Mahala Gale, Mrs. Hannah Stewart, Mrs. Benjamin Blair, James Anderson, Patience Mc- Neil, Francis Jones and Sarah Bronson. These came from all parts of the country roundabout, as far north as Prairie Ronde, and as far east, west and south, and many of them entered into the organization of the early churches, in after-years, in Elkhart, Constantine, Prairie Ronde and other places. The first preachers to this congregration were not local pastors, but the mis- sionaries before named, Jones and Cory, the first regularly installed pastor being Rev. P. W. Warriner, in 1834. The first church of that denomination was built by this society in 1834. It cost about one thousand nine hun- dred dollars, and had the first steeple and church-bell west of Ann Arbor. The same building, though remodeled and enlarged somewhat, remains still in use by this society.
THE FIRST BAPTIST SOCIETY
was organized in Constantine in October, 1832, and the first Dutch Re- formed-now known as the Reformed church of North America- in Cen- treville, in April, 1839, though Rev. Isaac L. Ketchum preached there as early as 1835-6. The detailed history of these churches may be found in the respective township histories.
The first Sunday-school organized in the county was one in White Pigeon, in the early days of the Presbyterian and Methodist churches, but the pre- cise date is not known. It was a union school, and was well attended. Mrs. Jane Cowen, of Leonidas, organized a class in her own house, quite early, at least as soon as there were children to go to such a school, and taught them orally, her husband, Robert Cowen, taking his class-the older indi- viduals-out of doors in seasonable and pleasant weather.
THE EVANGELICAL ASSOCIATION.
The first society of the above-named church was formed in the township of Park, about the year 1849, under the labors of Rev. George Dell, a mis- sionary sent out by the Ohio conference of the Evangelical association, who also organized a class in Flowerfield township, four miles northwest of Three Rivers, about the same time. He served the mission (then called the St. Joseph mission) two years, and was followed by two missionaries named M. Hoehu and George Kissel, who likewise served two years. The St. Joseph circuit of Michigan conference, under which the classes and churches of this denomination have been organized and erected, was constituted out of the St. Joseph mission, which was discontinued in 1849 or 1850, since which time the following ministers have been the presiding elders of the district : Rev. A. E. Driesbach, 1853-54; Rev. A. B. Schafer, 1855; Rev. G. G. Platz, 1856-59; Rev. Joseph Fisher, 1860-63; Rev. George Steffey, 1863- 64; Rev. Andrew Nicolai, 1865-68; Rev. M. J. Miller, 1869-74; Rev. L. Scheuermann, 1875; Rev. S. Copley, 1876-77.
Under the labors of Rev. C. S. Brown there were one hundred persons added to the church in the St. Joseph circuit, and from seventy-five to eighty were added as members under the ministrations of. Revs. E. B. Miller and T. N. Davis. Under the present pastor, Rev. J. H. Keeler, who has sup- .plied us with the history of the churches of this denomination, there
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HISTORY OF ST. JOSEPH COUNTY, MICHIGAN.
have been one hundred and sixty-five persons added to the church, and a revival is now in progress at this writing (January, 1877).
The religious sentiment in those days was as well-defined and aggressive as it has been since, as far as opportunity offered.
The present statistics make the following exhibit of the religious affili- ations and church property in the county in 1876:
The Methodist Episcopal denomination has fourteen hundred and ninety- six members ; thirteen churches, which, with their parsonages, are valued at one hundred and eleven thousand six hundred dollars. There are en- rolled in its Sunday-schools seventeen hundred and thirty scholars, and its libraries aggregate thirty-six hundred and eighty-two volumes. The Presby- terians have about five hundred members ; five churches, valued at fifty thousand dollars. The Reformed Church (Dutch) have about the same membership, and the same number of church edifices are valued at forty thousand dollars. The Baptists have about four hundred members, and three churches valued at twenty thousand dollars. All other denominations, including Episcopalians, Catholics, Lutherans and the Evangelical Associ- ation, number some nine hundred members, and their thirteen churches are valued at fifty thousand dollars. The total of church membership in the county exceeds thirty-eight hundred, and thirty-nine churches are valued at the sum of two hundred and seventy-one thousand six hundred dollars.
EDUCATION.
A government " for the people, by the people and of the people," to be suc- cessful and just and progressive, must be based on intelligence. Native wit and ability, to be broad and liberal, must be cultivated. The rich few must give of their plenty for the education of the less unfortunate many, if a free and independent Republic is to be maintained, for if "the fountain send forth . bitter waters, how shall the stream be sweet ?" Michigan, recognizing the principle that on intelligence the State is most surely founded, made ample and liberal provision in her constitution for the education of her people, and alone, of all her sister States in the great northwest, has reaped, and is still gathering, abundant harvests from the munificent donations of the general government to them in aid of the instruction of the masses. She alone of all her sisters has founded and maintained, from the proceeds of the gen- erous benefaction, an institution for the classical, professional and scientific education of not only her own sons and daughters, but of all others who may come, without distinction of race, sex, condition or color, and substan- tially without money or price. The fame of the Michigan University is national, and it stands in the front rank of educational institutions in the land, not only for the erudition of its instructors, but also for the excellence of its system of instruction and the extent of its appointments.
The State not only stands foremost among her sisters of the northwest, in regard to her provision for the higher education of her people, but she leads them in her system of common schools. Her excellence is shown in this respect by her successful competition in the grand gathering of the world's evidences of progress, at Philadelphia, in the centennial year of the republic, whereat she was awarded eight prizes in the educational depart- ment on her exhibit of the attainments of her children in her free public schools, and for her unsurpassed system of instruction therein. Under the first constitution there were no absolutely free schools, and only those per- sons sent their children to the schools which were established but such as paid the small per capita tax laid on each scholar ; yet it was optional with the people to vote a general tax on the property of the district, and dispense with the per capita tax whenever they chose so to do. Some districts adopted the latter course from the outset, and others continued the first until after the adoption of the new constitution, which provided for free schools without payment of tuition. In 1859 the legislature provided for the establishment of graded or union schools, whenever the people of a dis- trict saw fit to adopt that system.
The settlements on White Pigeon and Sturgis prairies, and in the open- ings of Constantine and Mottville, were " neck and neck" in the first estab- lishment of schools in the county, each one having a term taught in 1830; but White Pigeon has the honor of building the first school-house. In the summer of 1830, a log school-house was built at Newville (east of White Pigeon village), and a Mr. Allen-afterwards postmaster in White Pigeon -taught the first school in it, in the winter of 1830-31.
The same year a school was taught in the upper room of the double log house of Philip H. Buck, in the village of Sherman (Sturgis), by Doctor Henry, which was attended by all the young men and maidens of the re- gion round about. The schools were taught in this room until 1832, when a log house was built on the east side of Nottawa street as now laid out. From this beginning has arisen the truly admirable Union school of Sturgis.
In the fall of the same year a school was taught in Mottville township, in Solomon Hartman's neighborhood, in a log house formerly occupied as a residence by John Bear, but the name of the person who taught the school is forgotten by the old residents. Mr. Hartman's children and three or four of the Davidsons attended the school.
The first school taught in Constantine was presided over by Thomas Charlton, at the time a clerk in Niles F. Smith's store, in the basement of which store, fronting on the river, the children were confined. This was in the winter of 1830-31. The room was dark and gloomy, one small win- dow admitting the sunlight, to cheer and gladden and lighten the tasks of the pupils; the door was on the river bank; the benches were split logs with sticks for legs, and the desks were rough counters nailed against the walls. If the young prisoners longed more for liberty than they did for that in- telligence that makes liberty more desirable, it is not to be wondered at. Joseph Bonebright and his sister, Mrs. A. B. George, are still living in Con- stantine, the only representatives of this pioneer school. The master treated his pupils to a Christmas dinner of " sweet-cake," during his term of au- thority. But from these crude and forbidding beginnings has been devel- oped that which is a just pride and ornament of old St. Joe, the superb Union school and its magnificent house and appointments of Constantine.
In 1832 a school-house of logs was built on Nottawa prairie, near the present house of the late Thomas Engle, deceased, and Miss Delia Brooks was the first teacher therein, the same year. The teacher afterwards mar- ried Colonel Jonathan Engle, but has since died. This old building is still standing, but it is fast settling to mother earth, from whence it came. It has been the nursery of many who are now gray-headed ; and within its rude walls and on its ruder benches, the young idea in Nottawa, in pioneer days, received its " bent," to "shoot" in later times for the increased benefit of later shoots from the old parental stem.
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