USA > Michigan > Michigan as a province, territory and state, the twenty-sixth member of the federal Union > Part 4
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Governor Baldwin was deeply interested in philan- thropic work and all efforts to ameliorate the condition of the unfortunate and neglected classes. Before enter- ing upon his duties as chief executive of the state he per- sonally visited and inspected the several public institu- tions, penal and charitable, including poor houses and jails. The result of his observations was his recommenda- tion in his inaugural message to the legislature for the creation of an institution under the auspices of the state which should care for all the children theretofore shel-
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
tered in poorhouses. The squalor and untidiness and the listless vagrant life of young children in the poorhouses were positively demoralizing and harmful. It was the rescue of these innocents and the putting them on the wayto become self-respecting and valuable citizens which inspired his recommendation. The legislature by joint resolution authorized the appointment of a commission to investigate the question and to submit a plan of ac- tion. This commission made a report in which it recom- mended that the state assume control of its dependent children and provide for and educate them. This was the inauguration of the State Public School, soon there- after established at Coldwater, which was the first insti- tution of its kind in this or any other country. The citi- zens of Coldwater contributed twenty-seven acres of land and $25,000 in money and the legislatures of 1871 and 1873 made liberal appropriations. The school was completed and opened in 1874 and was enlarged in 1875 to a capacity of two hundred and fifty children. It was organized upon the congregate and cottage plan combined. A large main building with wings provided a residence for the superintendent, offices, dormitories for teachers, school rooms, chapel, and a dining room, kitchen, etc., in a rear extension. Behind this building and extending both sides of it are ten cottages entirely disconnected, with a capacity of about thirty children each, and each under the charge of a matron. Children over two and under twelve years of age, sound in body and mind, are sent to the school by superintendents of the poor upon the order of the judge of probate. They are instructed in the branches taught in the common schools and receive proper moral and physical training. The school is intended to provide only a temporary shel- ter until such time as a home can be found in a good family. Senator Caleb D. Randall of Coldwater drew
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MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
up and secured the passage through the legislature of the bill which brought about the establishment of the school. He, with Julius S. Barber, also of Coldwater, and Charles E. Mickley of Adrian, was a member of the first board of commissioners. He remained upon the board many years and took an earnest and active in- terest in its affairs so long as he lived.
No more beneficent measure has been enacted by the legislature of any state, nor one tending more surely to cut off the tap-root of crime and pauperism. The school has been admirably managed from the start. A vast number of children have been rescued, given the ele- ments of education and placed in homes where they are growing up into virtuous and worthy citizenship. No stigma attaches to any child from having been an inmate of the school.
The State Board of Charities and Corrections was or- ganized in 1871. It was the outcome of the commission first appointed by Governor Baldwin which led to the organization of the state school. This board has no ex- ecutive function. Its duties are to investigate the man- agement of all our prisons, reformatories, asylums, and the jails and poorhouses of the several counties. Its province is advisory, to discover and expose abuses and to improve conditions by suggestion and recommenda- tion. This board has a duly appointed agent in every county, who is active in finding homes for children of the state school, who discovers neglected and abandoned children, and looks generally after the welfare of those who need such attention. This board is also required to investigate and report upon all appropriations asked for by the charitable and reformatory institutions of the state, and to pass upon all plans for new buildings or enlargments of old ones. The board has justified by
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
its service the idea of its creation and its development as a factor in sociological reform.
The necessity for another asylum for the insane was brought to the attention of the legislature by Governor Baldwin. This initiated the movement which resulted in the Eastern Asylum at Pontiac. The governor also sug- gested an intermediate prison, or reformatory, for the purpose of separating young convicts and first offenders from those hardened and confirmed criminals to be found in our state prisons. This suggestion culminated in the State House of Correction and Asylum for the Criminal Insane, established at Ionia. This was a wise and humane effort to rescue from criminal lives those who had fallen from weakness, temptation and thought- lessness, and not inherently vicious. This was designed to be a reformatory rather than a prison, in which the effort was to be to inculcate moral stamina and the at- tractiveness of an upright life, as against the lot of the depraved and the outlawed. From these statements it will appear that to Governor Baldwin belongs the cred- it of inaugurating important measures for the better- ment of the relations of society toward the dependent, the unfortunate and the criminal classes.
The governor called the legislature into special ses- sion in March, 1872, to apportion the state into con- gressional and legislative districts, made necessary by the census of 1870. Such other matters as might be brought to their attention were also to be considered. Shortly after the assembling of the legislature a peti- tion signed by a considerable number of citizens of Lans- ing was presented in the house for an investigation of Charles A. Edmonds, Commissioner of the State Land Office, and his conduct of the office. This petition was referred to a select committee which heard testimony and reported that serious charges had been made of the
70 MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
management of the office, and against the moral char- acter and habits of Mr. Edmonds, and of several of his clerks. The result was that the house decided to begin impeachment proceedings. It appointed Ira R. Gros- venor, Lyman Cochrane, Benjamin W. Huston, Jr., as managers, who prepared articles of impeachment and the senate was called to try the case. It assembled April II, and sat as a court of impeachment that day and the. following day and then adjourned until April 30, to en- able the managers to make preparation and secure the presence of witnesses. It met on April 30 and continued in session until the whole matter was finally disposed of on May 24, sitting altogether twenty-four days on the trial.
The managers presented charges embodied in eleven articles, each covering a distinct offense. The First was withholding from sale in violation of the constitution and laws, of divers large tracts of land for the particular benefit of certain land dealers and for private pecuniary consideration for himself, his deputy and clerks ; Second, that he corruptly, by himself and with his deputy and clerks, engaged in the purchase of lands from the state and for sale in his office; Third, that in cases where licenses had been issued to settlers upon swamp lands and where proof of actual settlement had not been filed, he corruptly held that such lands were subject to sale, and furnished certain persons with descriptions of such lands and issued patents, whereby a gross fraud was practiced upon actual settlers and large profits accrued to Edmonds and his deputies; Fourth, that in conniv- ance with' others he fraudulently withheld from sale, or marked upon his books as sold, large quantities of state lands for the benefit of conspirators and in fraud of oth- er bona fide purchasers; Fifth, that he and clerks in his office engaged in the purchase and sale of "scrip," to
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
the detriment of the several counties and of the state treasury ; Sixth, that he appointed dissolute, disreputable and dishonest persons to clerkships in his office; Sev- enth, that he received current money in payment for lands, retained the money himself, and entered the land as paid for by "scrip"; Eighth, that he was concerned in the publication and circulation of a certain anonymous printed paper entitled "Every Wednesday Night," con- taining impure, scandalous and obscene matters, lan- guage and description; Ninth, that in violation of the laws of the United States he deposited for mailing in the postoffice at Laporte, Indiana, copies of the aforesaid "Every Wednesday Night"; Tenth, that at divers times in the city of Lansing he had been so affected by drink- ing intoxicating liquors as to unfit him for the discharge of his official duties ; Eleventh, that at various times and places in Lansing, being a married man, he had com- mitted adultery, in violation of the laws of the state and the laws of decency and morality.
Messrs. J. B. Shipman and Jonas H. McGowan ap- peared as counsel for Mr. Edmonds and presented his answer, which denied in whole and in detail every one of the charges, except that portion of Article Three which charged him with so construing the law as to cut off the rights of actual settlers upon swamp lands who had failed to furnish proof of such settlement, but he denied any collusion with other persons in the sale of the lands thus put upon the market. He claimed that the law specifically required him to do what he had done. There was more or less gossip in connection with the fil- ing of these charges. It was claimed on the part of Ed- monds' friends that the whole matter grew out of the animosity of a resident of Lansing who had formerly been a deputy of the commissioner but had been dis- charged from that position. It was alleged that the
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MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
scandalous publication which Edmonds was charged with getting out and mailing was intended to reflect up- on the character of this discharged deputy. Though Edmonds was arrested and taken to Laporte on a war- rant for mailing obscene matter the prosecution was sub- sequently dropped.
The senate sitting as a court of impeachment very pa- tiently listened to all the testimony and the summing up of the case by the counsel on both sides all of which was stenographically reported, and printed by the state. Each of the several articles in the charges was voted upon separately by the entire senate of whom there were twenty-seven members present when the final vote was taken. The constitution requires a vote of two-thirds of the senators elect for conviction to impeach an officer. Although a majority of the senators present voted guilty on three of the articles, on no one of them did two-thirds so vote. Consequently Mr. Edmonds was declared ac- quitted of all the charges. The vote on the several ar- ticles was as follows :
On Article I, sixteen guilty ; eleven not guilty. 2, four, guilty; twenty-three, not guilty.
3, twelve, guilty ; fifteen, not guilty. 4, none, guilty; twenty-seven, not guilty.
5, eight, guilty; nineteen, not
guilty.
6, sixteen, guilty; eleven, not guilty.
7, one, guilty ; twenty-six, not guilty.
8, fourteen, guilty; thirteen, not guilty.
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
9, eight, guilty; nineteen, not guilty. IO, none, guilty; twenty-seven, not guilty.
II, one, guilty ; twenty-six, not guilty.
CHAPTER IV THE DISASTROUS FOREST FIRES
IV-6
O NE of the most notable events of the per- iod of which we write was the great de- struction of life and property by the for- est fires which swept across the state in the autumn of 1871. The summer had been an unusually hot and dry one. From June there had been in the state only scattered and insig- nificant showers, and in some localities, it is said, not a drop of rain had fallen for several months. As a result all vegetation was parched, the earth was cracked from lack of moisture and everything was dry as tinder. The swamps were dried out, grass dried and withered, wells and cisterns exhausted, and in some places no water for many miles from running streams.
. It will be borne in mind that at that time Michigan was enjoying its most prosperous days of pine lumber- ing. The forests were being felled, the severed branches of trees were piled upon the ground; the trunks, cut up into logs, were floated down the streams to near their mouths and there cut into lumber and piled, awaiting transportation to market. The sap and moisture had been thoroughly evaporated from all this wood by the merciless sun and wind. At this season of the year there were usually brush fires raging in the clearings.
On Sunday, October 8, 1871, fire broke out in a wooden stable in the south side of Chicago, which on that night and the two following days and nights, lit- erally wiped out the entire city. This was one of the great conflagrations of history. Many lives were lost, millions of dollars worth of property were destroyed and thousands of persons were left homeless, without shelter or food. While our people were reading the startling news of this calamity and were planning to send relief to the sufferers, there came drifting to their ears the story of the horrible experiences of dwellers
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MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
within our own borders. The wave of lurid flame swept across the entire state, wiping out, within a few hours, everything combustible in its path. The fire in Chicago and those in Michigan could have been controlled under ordinary circumstances, but the circumstances were very extraordinary. The atmospheric conditions were pecu- liar. A hot wave came up from the southwest with a gale which reached the proportions of a tornado. It was a gigantic blow-pipe which fed oxygen to the flames which withered and consumed every combustible thing in their path.
On this same night of October 8, and on the follow- ing day and night, the fires crossed the entire state from Lake Michigan to Lake Huron. The city of Holland in Ottawa county was entirely destroyed, and the city of Manistee in the county of that name, was nearly wiped out. From the latter city a zone of flame extended al- most due eastward through the counties of Lake, Osceo- la, Isabella, Midland, Saginaw, Tuscola, Sanilac and Huron, where its further progress was stayed by the waters of the lake. This entire region was one in which pine lumbering was then in active operation. Holland and Manistee were lumber towns, where the logs brought down from the interior were cut for the market. The numerous mills were surrounded by great quantities of highly inflammable material. Edgings and bark had accumulated in bulk ; large piles of sawed lumber were stored in the yards, the streets were paved with sawdust and slabs.
An eye-witness describing the destruction of Holland says that in the short space of two hours, between one and three o'clock on the morning of October 9th, the devastation was complete. No one, unless he had wit- nessed such a scene, could have any conception of its terror. The entire territory covered by the fire was
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
swept clean; there was not a fence post or a sidewalk plank, and hardly the stump of a shade tree left to desig- nate the old lines. People fled to the nearest open ground; many took to the waters of Black Lake, escap- ing in small boats. The fierceness of the wind and the rapidity with which the fire spread may be inferred from ยท the fact that over two hundred and fifty dead horses, cattle and swine were found. A partly burned bank check, which had been in one of the stores was after- ward picked up on a farm twenty-five miles away. Only one human life was lost, that of an aged widow, who had not been able to save herself. Over three hundred families were left without shelter. The number of build- ings destroyed were, dwellings two hundred and ten; stores, shops and offices, seventy-five; manufactories, fifteen ; churches, five ; hotels, three; miscellaneous build- ings, forty-five; docks and warehouses, five, beside a number of vessels. The amount of property destroyed was estimated at nine hundred thousand dollars. One of the losses most severely felt by the entire community was the total destruction of the buildings of Hope Col- lege.
While this destructive scene was in progress in Hol- land, its almost exact counterpart was witnessed at Man- istee. This also was a lumber town-a sawdust city. All the buildings were of wood. The lumber mills were scattered along the shore of Manistee lake. Their sur- roundings were of a most highly combustible character. When once the flames had seized upon some portion of the town there was no staying them. They swept un- restrained, licking up whatever was overtaken. The in- habitants fled for safety to the open spaces outside the town or escaped in small boats upon the water. Within an incredibly short time almost the entire city was de- stroyed, including dwellings, stores, schools, churches,
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MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
mills and other manufacturing establishments, docks and warehouses. The estimated money loss was up- wards of one million two hundred thousand dollars, a very large proportion of which was mill property and manufactured lumber. On account of the enormous de- struction by fire at Chicago and elsewhere at that time, insurance policies had very little, if any, value. Fires also caused much damage in the surrounding vicinity, and by the destruction of bridges and telegraph poles practically cut off all communication, for a time, with the outside world.
As the fires raged in the belt extending entirely across the state, they swept everything in their path. The gathered crops of the season had been stored in the farm barns; the fall wheat had been sown, and the corn was ripening in the shock. All were destroyed, togeth- er with dwellings and their contents farm buildings, in many instances, domestic animals, leaving nothing but ashes, blackened stumps and putrid carcasses. Orchards which had been the work of years to rear were wiped out in an hour. School houses, churches, bridges, dis- appeared, as if by magic. While this zone of flame stretched across the state, it seemed to work its greatest havoc as it approached Lake Huron.
Huron and Sanilac counties, though largely devoted to lumbering, were nevertheless, quite well settled by an agricultural population and abounded in prosperous and well cultivated farms and orchards. Throughout this whole region, a tract at least forty miles square, scarcely a vestige of life was left. Blinded by smoke and stifled by the on-rushing flames, the inhabitants hid in wells and cisterns and ditches, or fled in terror to the lake shore, where they saved themselves by wading into the water up to their necks. There were along the Huron shore or near it the following villages of two
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VIEW OF DETROIT IN 1873
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
hundred to six hundred inhabitants: Glen Haven, White Rock, Forestville, Sand Beach, Port Hope, Elm Creek, Huron City, Forest Bay, Center Harbor, Rock Falls, Verona Mills. These villages were almost wholly obliterated and the people who lived in them were left entirely destitute, without food and with only the cloth- ing which they wore. Many of them were obliged to leave the country to find homes and sustenance for the coming winter in other localities.
When this great calamity became known prompt and energetic measures for relief were instituted at once. Governor Baldwin took hold of the matter and ap- pointed relief committees composed of well known citi- zens of Detroit, Grand Rapids, Saginaw and other lo- calities, and the gifts of money, supplies, clothing and materials for rebuilding homes were speedily offered. At the extra session of the legislature in March, 1872, the governor submitted the following facts: Early in October last several of the northwestern states were vis- ited by fires unparalleled in the annals of history. A large portion of the beautiful and wonderfully prosper- ous city of Chicago was reduced to ashes. In Wiscon- sin the wide-spread conflagration was attended with a most fearful loss of life.
While the people of Michigan were engaged in the noble work of furnishing relief to the sufferers in Chi- cago, the same devouring element was making sad havoc in our own state. Thriving towns, farms and school houses, churches, stock, crops, and thousands of acres of valuable timber were consumed. Nearly three thousand families, upwards of eighteen thousand per- sons, were rendered houseless and deprived of the neces- saries of life.
Immediately after the fires two state relief commit- tees were appointed-one at Detroit for the eastern, and
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MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
the other at Grand Rapids for the western part of the state. Committees or agents were also designated in each of the counties and many of the towns of the burned district, to procure information, as well as to re- ceive and distribute supplies. Cash contributions were received as follows :
By the Governor, $156,876.50
By the committee at Detroit, . .. 129,958.79
By the committee at Grand Rapids, 43,333.57
By the committee at Holland, . . 35,018.11
By the committee at Manistee, . 5,408.49
By the committee at East Sagi- naw, 12,811.47
By the committee at Port Huron,
13,532.00
By the committee at Filmore, etc. 492.00
By T. W. Ferry, Grand Haven, 23,329.73 By W. W. Wheaton, Mayor of Detroit, 11,345.64
By various others, 30,000.00
Total cash contributions, . . . $462, 106.30
Clothing and various supplies were contributed to the estimated value of $250,000.00. The United States War Department contributed two thousand pairs of blankets, four hundred overcoats, one thousand pairs of men's socks.
A considerable number of bridges having been de- stroyed, the state board of control took prompt meas- ures to have them rebuilt and made appropriations of swamp lands for that purpose.
The Detroit committee reported the distribution of funds in its hands to persons in different localities in the east side of the state.
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MICHIGAN AS A STATE
Huron County, No. families, 460 No. Persons, 2,201
Sanilac County,
384
1,862
Lapeer County,
40
200
Saginaw District,
781
66
5,187
Bay City District,
105
350
Detroit Dist., (ref'g's) "
1,688
9,905
Total,
3,458
19,705
The committee rebuilt one thousand two hundred and five dwellings; distributed clothing of the estimated value of fifty thousand dollars, and provisions of the es- timated value of thirty-five thousand dollars. All this was outside the relief work done by the committees at Saginaw and Port Huron, by the mayor of Detroit and by numerous individuals operating independently. No comprehensive statistics were ever gathered of the losses of life and property in these fires, nor of the money col- lected and disbursed for the relief of sufferers.
On the 5th of September, 1881, almost exactly ten years later a second visitation of fire swept through four counties, covering a considerable part of the region which suffered so severely before. The atmospheric con- ditions were strikingly similar. The summer of 188 1 was excessively dry; all vegetation was parched and withered, streams and swamps were dried up, and in the pine lumbering districts the brush piles, wind-falls and slashings were dry as tinder. No rain whatever had fallen for two months. In the early days of the hot, dry, August, forest fires were burning in almost every township of the four counties of Tuscola, Lapeer, Huron and Sanilac. This was usual. Farmers had been accustomed to burn brush and rubbish in this way, and under ordinary conditions it was safe enough. On Mon- day, September 5, a fierce gale from the southwest
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MICHIGAN AS PROVINCE, TERRITORY, STATE
sprang up and the thousand fires burning in as many separate localities were fanned into uncontrollable flames, which spread into an irresistable tornado of fire which licked up everything in its path.
For three consecutive days the conflagration raged with the violence of that of ten years before, and with even more disastrous results, because at this latter date there was a greatly increased population and more val- uable improvements in the way of buildings, orchards, fences, bridges, than formerly. The wind blew with such violence as to uproot large forest trees and lift the roofs from buildings. At the same time, the tempera- ture outside the fire swept district was one hundred and upward in the shade. Under these conditions, it may well be conceived that the sufferings of those exposed to the disastrous fires were something appalling. Men, women and children, old and young were burned while they were flying along the public highway. The air was so thick with blinding smoke that the darkness be- came almost total. Through the cimmerian air flaming balls of punk fell into the villages and fields, and then the fires would burst forth on every side. The flames came rushing on, sometimes in huge revolving columns, then in detached fragments that were torn by the winds from the mass, and sent flying over the tops of trees for a half mile to be pushed down to the earth again. Flames were seen to leap many feet higher than the tallest pines, and in every direction sheets of fire were flying across the country.
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