USA > Michigan > Shiawassee County > Past and present of Shiawassee County, Michigan, historically; with biographical sketches > Part 15
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The county officials also early felt called upon to deal with the matter. The first business of the board of supervisors at the session beginning October 2, 1838,-the earliest session of which a record exists,- was the examination of wolf certificates. An additional bounty of one dollar appears to have been added to the state bounty, making the bounty for wolves nine dollars and for whelps five dollars. Twenty-five certificates were examined and allowed, embracing a total of twenty-six wolves and eleven whelps. On the 4th of October, the third day of the session, the board rescinded a resolution "that was passed in October last," allowing
a county bounty of five dollars for the de- struction of wolves. At the meeting of the board of county commissioners on November 18, 1838, the state bounty only was allowed. They also recorded the names of those to whom bounties were paid. From that time the names of such persons were recorded, together with the date of certificate and the amount of bounty allowed.
Wolf-certificates were granted for several years, the last case being recorded on Janu- ary 5, 1869, when Mr. Rush presented a claim for a bounty for killing a wolf, in favor of B. W. Steer, and moved that the same be allowed. The certificate, however, was referred back to claimant for further proof, and as it was not again brought up, it is fair to presume it was not again presented.
The territorial government had been more liberal in the matter of wolf bounties. The first settiers found that eternal vigilance was the price of pork, occasionally of their young cattle, and sometimes even the price of their own lives. At the time the Baker family set- tled at Newberg, April, 1833, wolves were considered such a menace to the safety of the widely scattered farmers that the bounty had reached what was probably the high- water mark, thirty dollars. Thus trapping became an important part of the pioneer's work and for a time his most remunerative
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occupation. It is an industry which has never quite disappeared, muskrat and mink being plentiful still along the rivers. But in the early '30s it was a serious business, with much of value to gain or to lose.
Many are the thrilling tales recorded of nights passed in cabins miles away from any other human habitation, with the gray wolves' mournful howl reverberating through the forest until the light of day dispersed the grim disturbers of the settlers' peace. Many are the stories told of nights of terror spent by pioneer mothers, alone with their little children, while the father was making a long journey with the oxen to get food. The fear of the wolves, the awful loneliness of the isolated homes, and the distance from help in time of need are the familiar warp upon which the personal threads of the dif- ferent tales are woven.
Pontiac was for many years the nearest place at which Shiawassee settlers could pur- chase provisions in quantity, and women and children were frequently left alone while the men made the journey of fifty miles with ox teams. On one such occasion Hosea Baker and his son Ambrose started for Pontiac to buy flour, intending to be gone about six days. Soon after they left, a heavy rain swelled the streams until it was impossible to ford them, and there were, of course, no bridges. It was six weeks instead of days before they returned. Ambrose had left traps set for wolves and on these his young sister Caroline, a girl of fourteen, kept a watchful eye. During his absence she man- aged to trap and kill, unaided, three grown wolves, which brought the fair sum of ninety dollars bounty money.
The second summer after the Bakers came
to the county they had a somewhat serious experience in consequence of the ever present dread of wolves. Civilization had practically forced the aborigines out of the country, even the earliest settlers having little con- tact with them. The Indians living along the river were remnants of the Fisher tribe, a branch of the Saginaw-Chippewas. Their early removal left but few traditions of their life here. Their old trails were remembered for a time, but little is positively known of their history. The last chief of the tribe known to the pioneers was Mae-mae-ket- che-wunk, a somewhat picturesque character. He sought an interview with the whites, who in turn avoided him and his followers. With small bands from the tribe he wan- dered about the country, camping sometimes a few weeks or even months in one place, quietly coming and going on hunting expedi- tions, then suddenly departing for fresh fields. The Indians were never known to molest settlers, but were nevertheless unwelcome neighbors, the whites generally believing their name to be a synonym for treachery.
Settlers were still so few and their time so fully occupied with the work of clearing; that there was almost as little social inter- course between themselves as there was be- tween them and the Indians. The nearest neighbors the Bakers had the first year were the families of Henry Leach, living a few miles down the river, where the village of Vernon now stands, and of Tinkelpaugh, the Frenchman, who had built a cabin about a mile up the stream. In the summer of 1834 Mae-mae-ket-che-wunk's band camped near their home. The silent chief, invariably ac- companied by a sharp-eared, savage-looking dog, became a familiar figure, but he treated
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the settlers with proud disdain and evidently regarded them as intruders.
The previous spring Mr. Baker had re- ceived a visit from his neighbor, Tinkel- paugh, who was in an uncomfortable frame of mind concerning the frequent sales of land along the river, which presaged the arrival of many settlers in the near future. Having no title to the land on which he was living and being then unable to procure one, he came with the proposition that Mr. Baker should buy the land to prevent its falling into less friendly hands and then sell it to him on easy payments. The bargain was made and Tinkelpaugh's first payment was a sow and litter of pigs. By fall the pigs had become fine shoats and, running at large in the woods, were fattening on acorns. In the early dusk of an autumn day a tremen- dous uproar was heard in the woods where they were feeding. Wolves! was always the quick conclusion when there was a dis- turbance among the live stock. Mr. Baker grasped his ever loaded rifle and dashed into the woods behind the cabin. Guided by the squealing of the pigs and the noise of their mad scramble over dead leaves and branches, he soon learned the cause of their distress. By the fading light he saw some- thing biting and tearing the carcass of a pig. To level the rifle and fire was but a mo- ment's work. Over on the body of his vic- tim fell that of the vandal. Up came the avenger to secure his booty, thinking that the wolf bounty would compensate for the loss of the pig. But, alas, the supposed wolf, lying lifeless at his feet, was the yellow- brown dog which belonged to the Fisher chief.
There was consternation in the settler's
home when the result of that shot was known. Visions of a red assassin slaying some member of the family began to haunt their dreams, and when the anger of the chief was reported to them it became evi- dent that an explanation must be offered. Wishing to conciliate the chief and feeling unable to do so without the aid of an in- terpreter, Mr. Baker bethought himself of the proprietors of the Williams trading post as possible mediators between himself and Mae-mae-ket-che-wunk. They spoke fluently the particular Chippewa dialect which was the language of the Fishers, and were fre- quently called upon to act as judges in the differences which arose between them and the settlers. So Mr. Baker went to the post and told them of the difficulty in which he found himself. They were willing to under- take a settlement. Later a meeting was ar- ranged for at the trading station, and thither the settler and the chief repaired.
Seated in solemn conclave around the great stone fireplace of the log house, the group formed an impressive picture, the three white men, typical of the vigor and determination of civilization's advance guard, and the lone Indian, representing the despair of his race in its futile clutching after one more brief moment of imperious freedom be- fore being swept forward by the encroach- ing tide.
The chief was given the first hearing. His story was brief, but to the point and full of bitterness. The white man had come to his country and taken from him his land. He was planting corn on the spot where his home had been. He was shooting his deer and snaring his fish. He had taken from him all his rights, and left him no chance
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for life or happiness. And now he had killed his dog. That was all, but the hard bronze features and blazing eyes were em- phasis enough.
Then the settler arose and, although the chief's knowledge of English was comprised of a half dozen words, 'addressed his reply to him.' "Mae-mae-ket-che-wunk," said the tall, straight Saxon to the dark, tall chief, "I am not guilty of wantonly destroying your property. I have taken no land from you. The land I claim I purchased from my government. You and your people have been paid for this country and have no longer any right to it. You roam over it still to hunt and fish, but only because my government is generous and allows you to do so. I did not kill your dog to injure you, but to protect myself. He destroyed what would have been food for my children and I killed him to keep him from destroy- ing more."
This was the burden of the settler's speech and when reported to the Indian seemed to puzzle him greatly. He made no reply. After a long interval of silence he rose sud- denly and offered the white man his hand, then, turning abruptly, he left the cabin and stalked away through the forest. That day the chief and his band disappeared from the neighborhood and were never again known to camp in that part of the Shiawassee valley.
On a cold March morning of the fol- lowing spring, Ambrose Baker started out to make the round of his traps. Some of them were large steel ones, set for wolves. One of them, he found, had been torn from its fastenings and dragged away over the east bank of the river. The track of the
wolf which had thus made its escape, though some hours old, was still plainly visible to the trapper's eye, and Ambrose decided to start at once on its trail. That he chanced to have his rifle with him he deemed a piece of good luck, for it was evident that the wolf was a large one to have escaped with the trap.
Away he hurried, keen with the hunts- man's instinct. It was hard traveling on the snow crust and sheets of crackling ice, but the pioneer was a hardy youngster and the hope of saving trap, wolf, and bounty was a spur to his strong young limbs. After an hour or two the track appeared somewhat fresher. The sunlight fell with scant warmth through the gray March atmosphere. More and more nearly vertical the dim rays be- came, but the hunter pressed on without thought of hunger or fatigue. Noontime passed and the sun dropped behind the tree- tops. The wind grew stronger and stronger and here and there a snowflake whirled. How many miles he had come Ambrose could not tell; he only knew that he had traveled east and northward.
Just before nightfall he reached the edge of a great black-ash swamp. The wolf had plunged into it and he followed. Thinking that he heard the clank of a chain in the distance, Ambrose started on a run in the direction from which the sound had come. Numb with cold and clumsy with fatigue, he stumbled, and, rifle in hand, went crash- ing through a thin coat of ice into two feet of water. Struggling out of his dishearten- ing situation, he found that the cause of his wearisome tramp was crouching but a few feet from the place where he had fallen. The wolf gathered his flagging energies for one
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more effort to escape, but Ambrose was upon him in an instant. His gun, now useless, was flung aside and a large club substituted. With a few blows the worn-out wolf was quickly killed.
As the also worn-out hunter gathered up his game, the trap and the dripping rifle, he felt suddenly overcome with exhaustion. The distance between himself and home he knew to be many miles, and it looked a long road to the weary boy. He began to figure on the exact location of his father's farm and to wonder whether he could not return more directly than he had come. To get out of the swamp must be the first move. He would go out the way he had come in and then take a straight line through the woods for home. But that was not to be so easily done. The snow had thickened and become a driving stormn. To retrace his steps was impossible, for the ground was being pelted with snow and his track obliter- ated. He had no idea which way to turn. Gradually it dawned upon his mind that he was lost.
He realized that he must do something quickly and the only thing that suggested itself was to halloo as loudly as possible in the hope that someone might be within hear- ing distance. I wolves should answer? But there was nothing else to be done, so shout after shout he sent out from his strong, young lungs. No sound came back but the whirr of the storm and the echo of his own voice through the tree-tops. Then again and again in long-drawn whoops and quick, sharp calls. Again no reply, and in despair he leaned on his gun for rest before starting to find his way out, or farther into the swamp, as it should happen.
He thought he heard the sound of snapping twigs. He strained every nerve to listen. Silence again. Had he been mistaken? No. there it came again, and louder this time. Should he call again, or wait until the sound became distinct enough to indicate what caused it? But it grew fainter in- stead, and in fear that help might be near and passing by he began to shout frantically. Immediately there came a sound of something rushing toward him through the underbrush and snow crust, and the form of an Indian came bounding into view. His right hand was held high to shield his face from the thick branches, and under it gleamed the long sharp blade of a hunting knife. As he leaped over a fallen tree in front of Ambrose, the young man recoiled as if a spectre had threatened him! The Indian before him was no other than the feared and mistrusted Fisher chief.
Mae-mae-ket-che-wunk paused and sur- veved the scene, and then in his scant Eng- lish asked what was the matter. Ambrose, when he found that the Indian did not at- tack him, soon regained composure enough to explain. The chief appeared to under- stand the situation and to be considering it. Ambrose, shaking with cold, wondered whether he meant to help him, or to leave him to his fate.
After a few minutes' silence, which seemed hours to Ambrose, the Indian turned and, beckoning him to follow, walked away in the direction opposite to that from which he had come. Ambrose swung the wolf and trap up on his weary shoulders, grasped his gun in his chilled fingers, and hastened after him. The Indian pushed rapidly on through tangled brush and over the decaying trunks
8
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of fallen trees, and the settler followed as best he could. The chief glided from bunch to bunch of frozen weeds; the white boy stumbled through the ice on the water holes between.
Night and the storm came on apace. By the time the pair reached the more firm ground of the oak woods it was all the young hunter could do to keep near enough to his alert companion to distinguish his form. Mile after mile he dragged his tired feet on in the wake of his distrusted guide. Hour after hour passed. Ambrose felt that his exhausted frame must soon succumb to the terrible strain upon it; still he forced it onward in a struggle which began to appear objectless and endless. Again and again he braced himself for what he believed would be his last effort.
Suddenly his legs refused to move. His feet had caught in a tangle of wild grape- vine and his shaking body dropped beneath its burden of weariness and hunger. The Indian waited in grim silence for his com- panion to rise. Ambrose wondered, as he stumbled to his feet, what the stoic son of the forest would think of his weakness, and staggered on. He felt as if he were walking against a wall of blackness and stepping up and down in the same place aimlessly. His head swam and a light struck his eyes like a blow. He grasped at a tree trunk to steady himself, and presently made out that the light was not an illusion, but that it
streamed from a square spot directly in front of him. When his dazzled eyes had adapted themselves to the sudden change, he distin- guished the dim outlines of a log cabin sur- rounding the window from which the light came. He was standing at the edge of a clearing. At his left the sky, gray with approaching dawn, arched to a lower wood- land. The ground sloped abruptly away be- fore him. Down the steep bank the snow gleamed faintly in patches among the trees and underbrush, and at the bottom rolled the swollen spring flood of the river.
The Indian raised his arm and pointed to- ward the cabin window; then, silently gliding from the settler's side, he disappeared in the darkness of the wood before the astonished boy had time to speak. Slowly and painfully Ambrose dragged himself across the clear- ing and sank against the cabin door, in an unconscious heap with trap and gun and wolf. He had reached the home of his father's neighbor, Henry Leach, and there he found shelter and care.
That was the last the Bakers ever saw of Mae-mae-ket-che-wunk. It is many years since the last of the Fishers went loitering through the river towns selling baskets. The pioneers sleep under the shadows of the oaks their axes spared, near the spot where the chief's dog was slain. Below, past the sen- tinel sycamore, flows the stream both loved so well and called "Shiawassee,-winding river."
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TOWNSHIPS AND VILLAGES
ANTRIM TOWNSHIP
The township of Antrim is the third from the principal meridian in the southern tier of townships. It has a comparatively level sur- face, though containing several ranges of higher land. One of three elevations forms a watershed which divides the township into two distinct parts, the eastern part being drained by the branches of the Shiawassee and the central and western part by those . of the Looking Glass river. The small branches of these streams, assisted by artifi- cial means, render the township compara- tively free from waste land. The soil is good and in the years when wheat was a profitable crop in Antrim it was noted for its production of that grain.
The earliest settlers in Antrim were Allen Beard and Lyman Melvin, two young men from New York, who came to Michigan in April, 1836. Leaving their families at Lodi Plains, in Washtenaw county, they followed an Indian trail northward and finally reached the log cabin of Dyer Rathburn, in Burns township. Leaving the trail generally fol- lowed by landseekers, they made their way westward over marshes and creeks until they came to a large level tract on section 19, one of the places described as oak open- ings. So charmed were they with the beauty of this spot that Melvin declared that he wished to live, die, and be buried there,- a wish which was fulfilled.
Returning to Detroit, they entered the southeast quarter of section 19, each taking one-half. In July they returned with three yoke of oxen, a wagon and a small outfit of
farming implements and cooking utensils. They built a small hut of bark peeled from black-ash trees and used marsh hay for bed- ding. After thus providing for their im- mediate wants, they plowed a piece of ground for wheat, finding a place in the "opening" where there were few trees and little fallen timber. In the fall they returned to Lodi and brought their families to the new home. Mr. Melvin lived on the land located by him until his death, in 1850. Mr. Beard also lived on his farm, to which he purchased several additions, the remainder of his life.
The first neighbors of these two settlers were the families of Peter Cook and Alanson Alling, who also came in the fall of 1836. Mr. Cook located land on sections 17 and 18. After living many years in Antrim he moved to Corunna, where he spent the re- mainder of his life. Mr. Alling entered land on sections 18 and 7, part of which he soon afterward sold to Charles Locke, who set- tled there and whose son was the first white child born in the township.
Among other settlers who came to Antrim in the '30s were Horace B. Flint, who settled there in the fall of 1836; Almon and Harvey Harmon, who came the same year ; Chauncey and Daniel Harmon, who came in' 1839. The following year Daniel built the first saw mill in the township. This was afterward well known as Wright's mill, being owned for many years by Isaac Wright. John Ward took up a farm on the northwest quarter of section 7 and settled there with his family. May 2, 1837. Nathaniel Durfee came about that time, from Palmyra, New York, and
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lived in Antrim until his death, about twenty years ago.
On June 2, 1836, Mortimer Bradley Mar- tin came from New York city to the north- eastern corner of Antrim township, having crossed the Shiawassee at Knaggs' trading post, and picked a location on the line of the Grand River trail, about a mile southeast of where Bancroft now stands. Up to that time he had scarcely thought of farming, but he was so delighted with the view from the top of a low hill, where he afterward built a residence, that he at once decided to make his future home there.
.Mr. Martin was the first settler in the northeastern quarter of the township. He was a man of culture and refinement and did much to increase the natural beauty of his farm. One of his earliest acts was to set along its entire front a row of willow trees, the cuttings having been procured in New York, part of them from a farm once owned by Secretary Seward. These trees, in their nearly seventy years of life, have grown to magnificent proportions and in summer cover one mile, at least, of the old Grand River road with the sheltering shade the forest once furnished for its entire length. Mr. Martin lived at "The Willows" `until his death in September, 1884. Mrs. Martin still lives, at Bancroft.
The postoffice through which the early settlers of Antrim received their mail was at Howell, twenty-five miles distant. When the office was established at Shiawasseetown they found it more convenient, as they could get their mail and "go to mill" at the same time. The first postoffice located in Antrim was established in 1849, at the house of the postmaster, John Near. The name was later
changed to Glass River, the office being in commission until about 1895.
Antrim was erected a separate township, March 6, 1838. The first township election was held April 2 of that year, at the house of Almon S. Harmon. There being only twelve voters present, they nearly all received one or more offices. None, however, qualified, and a second meeting was held at the house of Lyman Melvin, on the 8th of June, at which the following officers were elected : Supervisor, Thomas B. Flint; clerk, Charles Locke; assessors, John Ward, Allen Beard, Henry Harmon; highway commissioners, Horace B. Flint, Lyman Melvin, Henry Har- mon; collector, Lyman Melvin; constables, Charles Locke, Lyman Melvin, Hiram Van Notter; overseers of the poor, Peter Cook, Chauncey Harmon.
The township, while it was yet a part of Shiawassee township, was divided into four school districts, but it appears that the dis- tricts were not organized until 1839. How- ever; in the fall of 1838, a school was opened by John Stiles, a young man from New Jersey, who had come to Antrim to visit his uncle, John Ward. The school was held in a log cabin built by Horace R. Flint, who had built a more commodious one for a dwelling. The attendance at this school, though somewhat irregular, owing to the great distance many had to come, was from ten to twelve. Mr. Stiles received thirty-six dollars for his three months' service.
In the summer of 1839 a log school house was built in the northeast corner of the northwest quarter of section 18, being the same site now occupied in district No. 3. Miss Polly A. Harmon was employed as teacher, at one dollar a week. The next
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school was taught by Miss Lucretia Purdy. The First Methodist Episcopal church of Antrim was organized about 1850. Rev. David Thomas was the minister in charge. Mr. and Mrs. David D. Adams, Mr. and Mrs. Calvin Howard and Walter Wright formed the class. The meetings were first held in a school house which stood on the site now occupied by the church building, on section 21. The church was constructed at a cost of two thousand seven hundred dol- lars and was dedicated February 20, 1876, while Rev. George Stowe was pastor.
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