Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches, Part 14

Author:
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Lansing, Mich. : Hist. Pub.
Number of Pages: 580

USA > Michigan > Shiawassee County > Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches > Part 14

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Early in February, 1873, a call was issued through the newspapers for the holding of a meeting on the 22d of that month, at the court house, in Corunna, to which were in- vited all residents of the county who had set- tled in Michigan previously to January 1, 1845. A large number of old settlers at- tended the meeting and an association was organized under the name of The Old Set- tlers' Society of Shiawassee County. The objects set forth in the constitution adopted were "to cultivate social relations and to collect and preserve biographical sketches, statistics, and historical facts, and reminis- cences which are fast fading from memory."

The roll of the society showed sixty-six members and twenty-two honorary members,

and in the list were many of the most hon- ored names known in the annals of Shiawas- see county. Very few of the original mem- bers are now living, but the society has been perpetuated by their descendants and others interested in preserving historical data and honoring the memory of those who redeemed Shiawassee from the wilderness.

The annual meetings of the society are held at the court house in Corunna on the 22d of February, and in the summer of each year a picnic is held at some convenient point, generally at McCurdy park, in recent years. At these meetings addresses are made by persons from different parts of the county and papers are read, all bearing on the early settlement and incidents connected with it.

SCHOOLS

The public schools of the county are under the general supervision of a county commis- sioner of schools, who is elected for a term of two years. This official and two county school examiners, appointed by the board of supervisors, constitute a board of exam- iners, whose duties are to conduct examina- tions of applicants for teachers' certificates.

The public-school system of Shiawassee

county now includes one hundred and twenty- four schools, two of which are city schools, a number called village schools and the re- mainder district schools. According to the annual report for 1905 there are about eight thousand five hundred children of school age in the county. Of this number six thousand five hundred and thirty attended school during the year. The number of teachers re-

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quired to instruct these pupils was two hun- dred and seventeen. The total cost of maintaining the schools for the year was one hundred and fifteen thousand two hundred and thirty-nine dollars and eleven cents.

Plans for reducing the number of rural schools have been proposed at intervals dur- ing the last decade, but as yet no substitute for the time-honored district school has been accepted. The cost of maintaining these schools has become enormous in proportion

to the number of pupils receiving instruction. Schools which a generation ago had from fifty to one hundred scholars enrolled now have less than a- score, and many schools are kept up through the year with less than a dozen pupils enrolled.

Many of Shiawassee's teachers take ad- vantage of summer sessions at our state normal schools. A county normal, free of tuition, is maintained at Owosso, and its graduates go directly into the schools of the county.

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION

Prior to the year 1836 there was no physi- cian living in Shiawassee county. The set- tlers who needed medical attendance before that time were dependent upon Dr. Cyrus Baldwin, of Grand Blanc, and Dr. Samuel W. Pattison, of Fentonville.

In these days, when a Shiawassee farmer may consult a specialist at Ann Arbor by telephone without leaving his own house, or even speak to one in New York with scarcely greater trouble, one's sympathies are terribly harrowed by imagining the suffering some- times endured in those little log cabins scat- tered through the forests, while a neighbor on horseback was riding twenty or thirty miles to "fetch the doctor."

Dr. Pattison, after making many hurried journeys by night and day to this county, decided to locate at Owosso, where he prac- ticed about six years and then removed to Ypsilanti. He did not come, however, until 1839, and a number of physicians had before that time settled in the county. One of the earliest was Dr. Peter Laing, who built a

hotel, late in 1836, where Laingsburg now stands. He did not practice after coming here except in cases of emergency. The same was the case with Dr. Joseph P. Rob- erts, who settled in the township of Perry in 1837.

Dr. Nicholas P. Harder was undoubtedly the first resident physician in the county who located here for the purpose of practicing his profession. He came from Sullivan county, New York, accompanied by his wife, five children of his own and two sons of his wife by a former marriage. The party drove the entire distance with a pair of horses. Dr. Harder had previously made one trip to Mich- igan and had selected Grand Rapids as a place in which to settle. Crossing the Shiawassee river in October, 1836, he followed the Grand River road as far as Blood's tavern, four miles east of Laingsburg. There night over- took his party. The roads were in bad condi- tion, the journey had been long and Grand Rapids was many miles beyond.

Hearing of a desirable location where the

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Bakers had settled on the Shiawassee, he de- cided to return to that point, and did so the following day. He purchased considerable land along the river and became prosperous as a farmer as well as in the practice of medicine. Having formerly lived near New- burg-on-the-Hudson, Dr. Harder named the little village which grew up around his home for that historic place. He was a doctor of the old school, the "Doctor MacLure" of the neighborhood, and had a wide practice in the eastern part of the county until his death in 1863. He was elected county treasurer in 1849. Mrs. Harder died in 1886.

The only surviving members of the family party who settled here in 1836 are a daugh- ter, Mrs. R. H. B. Morris, and a stepson, Joseph L. Gardner, who removed to Hart, Oceana county, in 1883. Norman A. Harder, who occupies the homestead, was born after his parents settled at Newberg. His son, Clifford J. Harder, inherited his grand- father's taste for the medical profession. He became a student of the University of Michi- gan and after graduating practiced at Ban- croft several years, but was stricken by an illness which resulted in his death, in 1896. Another grandson, Nicholas P. Harder, now owns one of the farms purchased by his grandfather at Newburg. Dr. Abner Sears settled at Byron in 1838 and Dr. William Weir was a well known physician of Shia- wasseetown from 1840 to 1850.

Dr. Charles P. Parkill, a native of Niagara county, New York, emigrated to Michigan when nineteen years old and in the fall of 1841 came to Owosso. He was one of the early school teachers in Shiawassee and other townships. In the spring of 1843 he com- menced the study of medicine with Dr. Pat-

tison, at Owosso, and graduated at Willoughby Medical College, in Ohio, in 1846. Re- turning to the county, he practiced at Ben- nington until 1868, when he removed to Owosso, gave up practice and opened a drug store. He continued in business until his death, which occurred November 28, 1893. Dr. Parkill was elected a member of the legislature in 1857.

Dr. John B. Barnes settled in Owosso in 1842, and practiced there until his death. He was foremost in this section in the anti- slavery struggle, a director of the under- ground railroad, and intimately acquainted with Garrison, Phillips, and other abolition leaders.

Dr. Pierce and Dr. Bacon were early physi- cians of Corunna; the latter died there in 1869. Dr. Freeman Mcclintock first came to Laingsburg in 1846. Except a few years spent in California he remained a resident of the village the remainder of his life. Dr. E. B. Ward, a later well known physician, settled there in 1862.

Prominent among the later physicians of the county was Dr. Wells B. Fox, who served during the war of the Rebellion as surgeon in the Eighth Michigan Infantry and as surgeon-in-chief, field hospital, First division, Ninth Army Corps. At the close of the war Dr. Fox settled in Antrim town- ship, and some years later opened an office in Bancroft. He had an enviable reputation as a surgeon and was in active practice to the time of his death, May 30, 1893. Two weeks later occurred the death of another able physician of Bancroft, Dr. E. W. Har- vey, who was a son-in-law of Dr. Fox.

Dr. Jabez Perkins was born in Defiance county, Ohio, in 1820, when educational ad-

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vantages were extremely rare. Home study and two or three months of school at long intervals fitted him to enter an academical institution at Delaware, Ohio. In 1849 he graduated in the medical department of the Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; took a post-graduate course at the same place and subsequently two full courses at the College of Physicians & Surgeons, New York. After practicing a few years in Lenawee county, Michigan, he represented his district in the state legislature, at the close of which time he came to Owosso, Michigan, in 1860. In February, 1862, he entered the service of the civil war as con- tract surgeon at Chattanooga, Tennessee, and later served in the following positions: Sur- geon of the Tenth Kentucky United States Volunteer Infantry; medical director of the Twentieth Army Corps; medical director of cavalry command of the Army of the Cum- berland, which position he held till the close of the war. He was then put in charge of a hospital at Nashville, Tennessee, where he remained until he was relieved, at his own request, in the fall of 1865. After a year in New York, in further pursuance of his med- ical study, he returned to Owosso, which has since been his home. The scene of his labors has not been confined by the county limits. Scarcely a man, woman, or child in the county but was familiar with him and his

horse as he drove about in response to the calls of the suffering. No distance so great, no roads so bad, no night so dark, no storm so severe, that would deter him from going on his errands of relief. In hundreds of families he was the trusted friend and confi- dential adviser. In 1871 he was married to Evora I. Doane, whose parents were early settlers of the county. In the fall of 1903 he was compelled by ill health to retire from active practice, but is still a member of the pension examining board which holds its weekly sessions at his residence. He is now in his eighty-sixth year and in full posses- sion of his mental faculties, though unable to leave his chair without the assistance of two crutches. Dr. Perkins is a Republican and a member of several branches of the Masonic fraternity.

One of the earliest physicians of the Home- opathic school was Dr. J. D. Kergan, who came from Canada and first settled at New- burg. He removed to Corunna about 1868 and ten years later began practice in Detroit. He died in California in 1905.

The Shiawassee County Medical Associa- tion was formed in January, 1880, at which time Dr. Jazeb Perkins was elected president; Dr. A. G. Bruce, vice-president; Dr. L. M. Goodrich, secretary; and Dr. W. C. Hume, treasurer. Meetings are now held regu- larly.

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POPULATION

The total population of Shiawassee county in the year 1837, as shown by the census - was 3,010; in 1900 it was 33,866.

SYNOPSIS OF FACTORY INSPECTION

Following is the synopsis of factory in- spection of Shiawassee county for the year 1905 :

Number of factories inspected in Ban- croft

5 Number of factories inspected in Co- runna

Number of factories inspected in Du- rand

*Number accidents reported during

Number of factories inspected in Owosso

3 power

Number of factories having gasoline power

Total number of factories inspected in county

73 power

Number of superintendents who are owners

Number of factories having electric power

Number of factories having no power. CITY OF OWOSSO 1905.

Number

of establishments vis-

ited

Capital invested in manufactur- ing plants $3,073,262

Whole number male employes in busi- ness offices 37

Average daily wages paid them. $2.44

Whole number female employes in business offices 37

Average daily wages paid them. $1.21

Whole number other male adults em- ployed 1,531

Average daily wages paid them. $1.67

Whole number other female adults employed 368

Average daily wages paid them .. $0.93

Whole number boys between 14 and 16 years of age employed. 28 Average daily wages paid them. $0.75

Whole number girls between 14 and 16 years of age employed. 27 Average daily wages paid them $0.85 Whole number employes 2,150

Average daily wages paid all employes. $1.58 Average number hours worked each day

9.9 Average number days worked each

month 25.9 Average number months worked each year

11.2

Average number years factories in op- eration

12.6

Number of factories inspected in Laingsburg Number of factories inspected in Mor- rice

5 year 1905

Number who report business good ... 65

Number who report business fair .... 8

Number who report business poor ... Number of factories

having steam 40

Number of superintendents who draw regular pay 18 65

Whole number of superintendents: . . Average daily pay of superintendents .. $3.54 Whole number of foremen employed .. 77 Average daily wages paid foreman .... $2.49

Cost of material used. $1,839,005 Miscellaneous expenses $233,327 Value of manufactured product .. $3,109,232 Number of salaried officials and clerks 136

Aggregate annual salaries. $97,648 Average annual salary of each ... $718 Number of other employes. 1,547

Aggregate amount of wages paid annually $665,210

Average annual wages paid each employe $430

(These statistics of Owosso were taken from the report of the census taken last year by the United States in conjunction with the state of Michigan.)

*NOTE .- Of the 6 accidents reported, 5 occurred in the city of Corunna and 1 in Owosso.

Number of factories inspected in Perry Number of factories inspected in Ver- non

3 Number of factories having water

returns of that year, was 1,184; in 1845 it

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PAST AND PRESENT OF

REMINISCENCES

Only a very few of the settlers who came to the county prior to 1840 are still living within its boundaries. These were nearly all young children when brought to the new country by their parents, and are themselves now well advanced in years.

Among those who remember Shiawassee as it was when the work of nature had scarcely yet been altered by the hand of man is Mrs. R. H. B. Morris, a daughter of Dr. Nicholas P. Harder. She was fourteen years of age when, in 1836, her parents made the journey from Sullivan county, New York, to Shiawassee township, being four weeks on the road and driving one team of horses the entire distance.

Mrs. Morris relates many incidents in her father's life as a pioneer physician,-stories of long trips on horseback, with saddle-bags filled with quinine, calomel and lancets. He would sometimes be gone from home a week and return exhausted by the hardships of following a blazed trail, of fording swollen streams, of sleeping only in the saddle after weary nights in comfortless log cabins, where his presence had been the only shield from desolation for those stricken homes.

Two other residents of the same township are Mrs. Lucinda Shears and Mrs. Rhoda Snell, daughters of Sidney Seymour, who also settled at Newberg in 1836. Many in- teresting stories of the vicissitudes of life in a new country are told by these ladies and it is to be regretted that space can not be given to only a few of them.

The migration of the Seymour family from their home near Rochester, New York, was

accomplished in two sections and in two ways. The mother came by stage and brought four of the eight children, with a few of their belongings. Mrs. Seymour, of course, made the trip in considerably less time than her husband. At Pontiac the end of the stage line was reached and then she hired a man with a team to bring her party to Newburg. It was late at night when they crossed the Shiawassee river at Knaggs' Place, but, finding no one at home at this trading post, they pressed on, passing the Exchange, where they saw some men at work by candlelight, making a coffin,-said to have been the first one made in the county, -- and at three o'clock in the morning arrived at the home of Hosea Baker, who was Mrs. Seymour's brother.

Mr. Baker at that time was building the first saw mill erected in the county. He had employed as a millwright a Mr. Ball, who lived somewhere near Pontiac. On the day before Mrs. Seymour's arrival the important act of "raising" the mill had taken place. All the settlers in the township had been in- vited to assist in the event and had cordially responded with one exception. This was Stephen Sergeant, an uncle of Mr. Frank Sergeant, the well known farmer now living in the western part of Shiawassee township. He came to the raising but refused to take a hand in the work and warned the men assembled that a tragedy was about to occur. His explanation was that on the previous night he had been told in a dream that a man would be killed at the raising of the mill.

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The story was received with much good natured ridicule and the work proceeded to a successful end. When the raising had been finished and the frame stood in view, com- plete, a little jollification was indulged in with shouting and swinging of hats and some lively badinage concerning dreams and super- stitions generally. After quiet had been re- stored, Mr. Ball, the millwright, noticed at the extreme top of the new frame something which did not entirely suit him. He climbed back upon the timbers, succeeded in adjusting them to his satisfaction, and then lost his balance and fell to the ground beneath. The fall killed him. It was for him that the · coffin was made at the Exchange on the fol- lowing night. This death is frequently men- tioned by early settlers as the first in Shia- wassee county, but whether it antedates that of Kilburn Bedell at Owosso is somewhat of a question. The body of the dead mill- wright was carried to a small log house which Mr. Baker had built near where the mill was being erected. The teamster who arrived with Mrs. Seymour in the following night returned the next day and carried the remains of Mr. Ball back to Oakland county in his wagon.

Traveling in those days was a matter of most uncertain expense, there being no fixed price for transportation by wagon through the roadless forests. Mrs. Seymour, after settling with her driver, found herself in possession of just ten cents, and being too independent to remain longer than necessary the guest of her brother, she looked about for some means of supporting her children until her husband arrived. The little log house in the mill yard was the only vacant building in the neighborhood and she at

once decided to move into that and did so on the following day.

Finding employment in a country from which the timber was cleared only in spots must have seemed at first nearly impossible. But this pioneer mother learned that there was a store at Shiawasseetown and also some building going on in which several men were engaged. She walked to the store and expended her ten cents for soap, then she proceeded to the place where Mr. Wil- liam Newberry, with two assistants, was putting up a rather pretentious building which it was then expected would be used as a county court house. There she engaged to wash the clothing of those three men, and by this work she managed to earn five dol- lars, which kept her and her children supplied with the necessaries of life until her husband came with the remainder of the family. And this was only one incident in the experience of one woman among the many who braved the hardships of settling in the wilderness.

The Seymours afterward lived at the Ex- change farm, and Mrs. Snell tells of a thrill- ing moment in her life when, entering the house by the back door, she found an Indian leaning over a bed on which two children were sleeping, with a long hunting knife drawn above their heads. When he saw her he quickly straightened up and said, "Bushue, che-mok-e-mon's squaw!" and then she found that he only wanted to sharpen his knife on their grindstone and was gazing at the children out of curiosity.

Mrs. Cordelia Sheldon Carruthers came to the county with her mother and her step- father, Martin Post, in 1840. She was then a child of seven. The family settled on sec- tion 12 of Shiawassee township, on the farm

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now owned by John P. Whelan. Mrs. Car- ruthers, with an older brother, attended the school opened that year at Shiawasseetown. In 1848, when she was fifteen years old, she received a call from Mr. Place, an early set- tler of Woodhull, who offered her the posi- tion of teacher of a district school in his township. "Teachers didn't apply for schools in those days," says Mrs. Carruthers : "they were scouring the country to find teachers."

The law required that a school be con- ducted three months in a year ; otherwise a district could not draw the public school money to which it was entitled. So the school was taken for that time and was taught six days in the week for the compen- sation of one dollar and fifty cents per week, and board. The nearest house was one and one-half miles from the school house, and "boarding 'round" involved some exercise. The school house itself was built of unhewn logs, and had in each of two sides the half of a window, or one sash. It had a stone fireplace, with stone hearth and stick chim- ney, and had a shake roof and a puncheon floor. The seats were rough slab benches. Along one side of the interior a wide planed board was fastened at a convenient slant and this served as a desk for pupils and teacher when it was necessary to use one. The desk was the only piece of sawed lumber in the building, but as it had been erected thirteen miles from a saw mill, there was certainly an excuse for a lack of fine wood- work. This was probably a typical school building of the early years of the county's set- tlement.

What can we now know of the lives they led, those dwellers in the forest primeval? How can the college boy of to-day under-

stand what it was to fell oak timber day after day of long cold winters and all the time think longingly of the schools back in "York state"? Many a bright young man gave up a dream of Harvard or Yale and went on a new farm in Michigan, there to spend the best years of his life making the state agricultural college and the university possible for other young men.

And the pioneer mothers! We should rev- erence their memories. The light of their tallow dips is shining brightly down the years and the good they did lives after them. The hand that sixty years ago rocked a cradle on the western frontier has since been plainly visible in many a crisis of the nation's growth.

Michigan and her sister states in the north- ern timber belt were settled by a people whose work will never be duplicated in Amer- ica's history. The settler of the western lands need never know the privations of those early farmers. This is not to say that he has not, in the past, had his share of hardships. He has had his blizzards, his hot winds and his grasshoppers, but he has not been required to obliterate a forest inch by inch, and hold his appetite in check while he made a space in which to grow wheat and potatoes. The western settler now has the telephone and rural delivery of the mail at his door almost as soon as he possesses one ; automobiles are speeding on his trail and the latest things in farming machinery and canned edibles chase him into the wilder- ness.

A new country is a new country, but never again will it be necessary for men to subdue the forest with no tool but an ax, while they live where their own connection with the

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world is fifty miles of blazed trail. To at- tempt an estimation of the value of the pioneer's work is a useless task. A few printed words of praise are small reward, yet it is an honor to be privileged to offer

even that. Emulation of their industry and public spirit is the truest praise, and that way our duty lies,-to remember that it is as much the part of patriotism to preserve a nation as to build one.

WOLF BOUNTIES

Among the dangers and hardships which beset the "pathfinders" of Shiawassee county, not the least were those attending the war- fare they found it necessary to wage with wild animals. The beasts of the forest had never ceded any land to the government and evidently regarded the whites as trespassers upon their ancient preserves. Among the four-footed enemies of the settlers, wolves were the most numerous and aggressive. They were recognized as such a common cause of annoyance and loss that the first state legislature passed an act providing for a bounty of eight dollars for the killing of a ful grown wolf, and of four dollars for a wolf's whelp under the age of three months.

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Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches, Part 14

Author: Publication date: 1907 Publisher: Lansing, Mich. : Hist. Pub. Number of Pages: 580

Author:
Publication date: 1907
Publisher: Lansing, Mich. : Hist. Pub.
Number of Pages: 580