USA > Michigan > Washtenaw County > Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan > Part 102
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"The Huron river crosses the southwest corner of the township, cutting across the southwest corner of section 30, and cutting section 31 into nearly equal parts from near the northwest cor- ner, to near the southeast corner. Also the Hu- ron river runs through Base Lake, which is about two-thirds in Webster on section 6, and one-third in Hamburg. Base Lake is a little less than one mile in length, and about three-fourths of a mile in width. The other lakes in Webster are, In-
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dependence, and three small lakes having no name on the maps, but known in the town as Park's Lake, Scadin's Lake and Dead Lake. Park's Lake is on the corners of sections 7, 8, 17 and 18. Scadin's Lake is on the north part of section 26. Dead Lake is about midway on the section line between sections I and 12. The larg- est lake in town is Independence : is nearly circu- lar in form and about one-half on section II, and the other half on section 12, and is less than one mile in diameter. This lake has a history ; some- time toward the close of the month of June, 1827. and as the anniversary of the natal day of our nation approached, the then few and scattered hard working settlers took it into their matter-of- fact, patriotic, fun-loving heads to have a celebra- tion, and as the question went around, Where shall it be? echo responded, let us go to the lake. And when the Fourth of July came, to the lake they went, being full of patriotism, and well armed with fishing tackle, cooking utensils, bread, butter and any and everything that was thought could add to the enjoyment of the celebration of the day. And. although they had no orator, none of the spread eagle eloquence, none of the boast and braggadocio common on such occasions, yet they had a good time, and while all was going 'merry as a marriage bell,' Luther Boyden pro- posed the name 'Independence' for the lake, and so the lake was christened.
"There are two small creeks in town. One running across the southeast corner of the town empties into the Huron river. The other is one of its branches heading in the east part of the town, and the other branch leading from Inde- pendence Lake runs northwesterly and empties into Base Lake.
"We had abont a half mile of the Michigan Central in our town for several years after it was built. But a few years ago 'The Hon. Board of Supervisors' gave to Scio that portion of Web- ster south of the Huron river and east of Mill creek, and this carried with it about all the rail- road we had.
"The most common Indian tribe was the Pot- tawatomies. There was another tribe quite hostile to the Pottawatomies. I think they were the Ojib- was or Ottawas.
"An Indian mound, in which the Indians had buried their dead to a limited extent, was found by Thomas Alexander on his farm. In this mound were found some of their utensils, such as a ket- tle, knives, tomahawks, etc. I have a relic found by John W. Alexander near the same place. Whether of Indian, or of the make of and used by some people who preceeded the Indians, may be a question yet to be settled. The face seems to be Egyptian.
"The Indians never manifested any hostility to the early settlers, and were never troublesome ex- cept when intoxicated, and then were generally submissive when white men were present. Some- times their strange and unique manner of ap- proach and salutation was such as to excite fear in the minds of the newcomers, and if it did not produce fear it always did produce profound curiosity. All old pioneers know very well the strange stealthiness of the approach of the In- dian when he wishes to enter your house. But there are many of our children and many of our fellow citizens who know nothing of it. Those of you who have never experienced frontier life may imagine yourselves quietly sitting in your domicile in the evening, and all at once your door is seen to open very slowly and without the least premonitory rap or noise of any kind, and the next moment you see the face of an Indian with glaring eyes peering into your domestic arrange- ments. This is the Indian mode of making calls, and as it is the way he is brought up we must overlook his peculiarities. If you wished to leave your house alone for a time and desired to pro- vide against any depredations by the redmen you must leave a stick leaning against the outside door. This would indicate your absence, and the Indian code forbids intrusion, and I never heard of one who violated this law.
"The spring of 1831 is memorable as the year of the 'Black Hawk war.' At that early day the facilities for obtaining news were very unlike the present. The slow stage coach would require a week to move the distance which the mail is now carried in a few hours. Rumors that lose little by travel often become a nightmare to the timid and the weak. The tales of Indian butcher- ies and torture, that formed so large a factor in
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the education of a previous generation, had not been read without leaving the impress on the minds of many of the early settlers, which needed but the slightest rumors to create intense excite- ment. The Pottawatomies, a friendly tribe, were dispersed through the state, and often met the early settlers for the purpose of traffic or begging for food or tobacco. Their presence alone was sufficient to connect them with a race that had been considered the enemy of the whites and when the rumors and memories of warlike move- ments on the part of Indians obtained credence among the scattered and defenseless population, intense fear was the result. It was said that the squaws and papooses were being sent into Can- ada, while the fighting braves were massing by thousands in close proximity to the settlement. Hurried consultations were had when the neigh- bors met, and the latest rumors were. exchanged and intensified. A public meeting was called at the house of John Williams to devise means of defense, but with no definite results. Mr. Cogs- well, living in the north part of the town, and in the then outlying settlement, removed his house- hold goods and family to the barn of Mr. Wil- liams, where they remained till the excitement ceased. And so my father's place came to be called the fort. Many hopes and fears were en- tertained, and even jokes and repartee passed freely around.
"Mr. Ranney, of Dexter, at that time a corporal in the organized militia, took the responsibility, or had it conferred on him, I am not sure which, of calling out the soldiers within his district. Hur- rying from house to house on foot he delivered his orders, accompanying them with all the latest and most exaggerated reports. His message be- ing usually given to the women of the family, in the absence of the men at their work, and with an instinctive idea that no report should suffer for want of exaggeration, he seemed to rejoice in his success as an alarmist. One instance of a pretty big scare is well remembered. Mr. Gard- ner Bird, the neighbor next west of us, had that spring moved onto his new farm, erected his log house, and taken a few acres of land to work on the plains. He was three miles from home at
work when Mr. Ranney called and related his rumors of the intentions of the Indians, their numbers and proximity. Mrs. Bird, with her three children, two in her arms and the oldest on foot by her side, clinging to her dress, started for her husband. Mr. Bird received the intelligence with many scruples-did not believe the danger so imminent, but could not resist the entreaties of his wife with her helpless little ones, and they all returned to their endangered home, packed up their household goods, and the next morning they were loaded upon the only vehicle they pos- sessed with the family atop, and with an ox team they were at an early hour en route for their old home in 'York state.' They reached Ypsilanti that day, where they stopped for the night. But during the day's travel they discovered that the farther they traveled the less alarming the re- ports became. And so after a good night's rest, and the assurance they received that the danger was not so imminent as it had appeared from Ranney's recital, they determined to retrace their steps, and the next night found them once more at their new home, and still no Indians near.
"But the militia with a hurried preparation, and exchanging the goodbyes with mothers, sis- ters and sweethearts, made their rendezvous at Ann Arbor according to military order. But here an unexpected difficulty met them-by what au- thority were they called there? Who should take charge of them? Such were the interrogatories that passed from lip to lip, and still the question returned unanswered.
"Gen. Brown, who was supposed to have some authority in the premises, failed to put in an ap- pearance, and no military officer could show any authority for receiving or holding the men, who with such ebulitions of patriotism had taken up their arms in defense of those sacred homes which the untutored savage would so ruthlessly desolate. The day was passing away when by common consent the soldiers dispersed to their respective homes, cancelled their goodbyes and went back to work in their cornfields, thankful when the news reached them at a later day that Black Hawk and his braves had not been this side of Lake Michigan, and that the emigration of
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squaws and papooses to Canada was a myth ; and thus ended, so far as the town of Webster was a party to it, the scare of the Black Hawk war.
"Hon. S. W. Dexter was the first settler of Webster. Coming as he did from the city of Boston into this then western wild, the change must have been very great, and at as early a day as 1824 must have taken considerable energy and forecast. Judge Dexter contributed very largely towards the formation of good society in the state, and especially in the county of Washte- naw, and also in developing the natural resources of the country. Possessed of wealth, he could and did gratify his benevolence and largeness of heart in his bestowal of goods upon the needy. He has gone to his reward.
"Thomas Alexander, the first settler in the southeast part of the town, came from Wales, England. He did not come directly to Webster, but in the township of Ann Arbor, on-as I am told by one of his family-the farm later owned by Captain Huson. This was the fall of 1825. He remained there until the next spring, and then moved into Webster, May 1, 1826, built a shanty and lived in it until fall, and then built a log house in which he lived until near the close of his life. Mr. Alexander was a man of uncommon physical endurance. His son, M. H. Alexander, told me that he and his father cut and shocked nineteen acres of wheat from Wednesday morn- ing to Saturday night, the old gentleman cutting it with a grain cradle and the son binding it after him. Mr. A. prided himself on his skill in plowing. shearing sheep, stacking grain and farm work generally, and very justly, too, for his fur- rows were as straight as a bee line, and his stacks were as nicely turned as a top. The best instructions ever received by me upon sheep shearing was from him. Sometimes it was thought that Mr. A. was a little hobbyhorsical in some of his notions, and then, too, we used to think he was too profoundly impressed with the belief that everything in England, and everything English, was decidedly superior to anything of the same class, or of like production in America. But perhaps this is characteristic of Americans and other nations as well. Quite likely, Americans, in visiting England, entertain the same com-
parative view of England. Allow the relation of an incident in illustration. A number of years ago. three young Englishmen, just over, were riding one day in a stage coach with a Yankee. The Englishmen were very loquacious and in- quisitive-as it was quite right they should be --- remarking upon nearly everything they saw, and with a keen sightedness discovering the good and bad qualities of every animal, every building and every tree, and in their judgment there was one characteristic common to everything they saw. and that was diminutiveness. If they saw a horse, it was small; if they saw a tree, it was small. and so with about everything compared with the English pattern, everything was small. The Yankee could not dispute them very much, as he had never visited England, and so the smart young men had it all about their own way. At length there came up one of our American storms of wind and rain, accompanied with terriffic dis- charges of electricty and peals of thunder. One shock, more powerful than any preceding it. seemed to shake the old stage with great violence. When the passengers had sufficiently recovered from their fright, and collected their benumbed senses, the Yankee, with all due respect and with becoming gravity, submitted this question : 'Well. gentlemen, do you have any bigger thunder than that in England ?'
"Please pardon the digression. We will re- turn to the biography. Maria Alexander, after- ward Mrs. Alonzo Gorton. born June 5. 1827. was the first white child born in the township. Mr. A. raised a large family, had two wives, bur- ied the first, and married the second before leav- ing England : had four children by the first mar- riage, only one of whom -- Mrs. Anson Powers, of Hamburg-is now living, and to whom we are indebted for some of the facts here given. Four of the sons are living on and near the old farm. The other living children are scattered beyond my knowledge.
"Luther Boyden came to Michigan in the spring of 1826, from Conway, Massachusetts. He looked out and selected his location at the same time Mr. Alexander did, and, as I am told, agreed with Mr. A. as to how they would locate what they did of what was subsequently called Boy-
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den's Plains, the agreement being that Mr. A. should take west on section 35 and Mr. B. on section 36. Mr. Boyden did not stay very long in Michigan at this time, but after locating his land, and making an agreement with someone to break up a piece of ten acres for wheat, returned to Massachusetts, and made all due preparations to settle with his family on his new farm.
"He arrived with his family, consisting of Mrs. Boyden and three children, August 26, 1826. At this time there were only two steamboats on Lake Erie. The Erie canal was the great thorough- fare through New York. No railroads had as yet been built in the world. From the arrival of Mr. B. and family to the spring of the year 1828, a few, and only a few, reminiscences of those bygone years have been gathered up. And although we are now able to snatch, as it were, only a few facts from the tooth of time, we may suppose those years were full of adventure and the stirring incidents common to pioneer life. One, the celebration of Independence Lake, has been noted. Another, of a purely domestic na- ture, occurred June 18, 1827, when Mrs. Boyden presented her husband with another son, who was in due time christened John Augustus. This, so far as we know, was the second white child and the first white male child born in the town- ship. The cradle in which this child, as well as the two subsequent children, was rocked, is still in being, and for primitive simplicity and real practical utility is not excelled by any baby cradle either of ancient or modern, foreign or domestic make. It consists of a section of a hollow but- tonwood tree about three and a half feet in length. and eighteen or twenty inches in diameter, with a piece of board fitted to the ends, and the log made as smooth and round on the outside that rockers are not needed. One advantageous fea- ture in this cradle over a cradle on rockers is that in case the child should be rocked out on the floor, it would be merely a rolling out and not a falling out.
"As Mr. Boyden's first wheat crop began to ripen, he began to look about for harvesters. He with the other New England men in the neigh- borhood, had never seen wheat or rye cut with anything but a sickle. But the Moe family having
emigrated from New York where grain cradles were in vogue, knew well how to use them. So Mr. B. having made himself acquainted with these facts, engaged the Yankee with their sickles and the New York men to come on with their cradles. But the cradlers were engaged with this express proviso, that in case the wheat could be well cut with their new-fangled instruments, all right, but failing to do this they must lay aside their long blades with wooden attachments, and conform to the good old way. With com- mendable promptitude both classes of reapers ap- peared, each carrying their respective instru- ments on their shoulders. The trial commenced, and when Mr. B. and his Yankee friends saw the New York men sweep down the grain with com- parative ease, and lay the swath so evenly, and at such a rapid rate, they felt somewhat as the Chronicles say the Queen of Sheha did, on the occasion of her visit to King Solomon, when it is said of her, after she saw how Solomon did things. 'There was no more spirit in her.' The sickles were speedily laid aside, and those who brought them set at binding.
"During the winter of 1829-30 the good people of the settlement began to see and feel the alarm- ing effects of the free use of whiskey, and began to hold temperance meetings, and they organized a temperance society, and adopted a pledge to abstain altogether from the use of whiskey as a beverage. Mr. Boyden entered heartily into this movement, and did much toward the suppresion of the vice of intemperance. In the first month of the year 1830, Mr. B. set out to build his first barn. He employed Horace Carpenter to put up the frame. Mr. Carpenter commenced to hew the timber in January, and when the timber was ready for framing he employed C. M. May- nard and a Mr. Goodnoe (who located just west of J. C. Mead's) to assist in that work. The country was so sparsely settled that in order to get men enough to raise a good sized barn, invi- tations must be extended to the distance of about twelve miles. This was done in this case, east. south and southwest, but north there were but two families, and they were within about one mile. It was an unheard of thing to attempt to raise a building without whiskey, but Mr. B. de-
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termined to make the trial, and when told that he would fail, his reply was, 'Then fail it is.' The 25th day of March was appointed as the day for the raising. The men were invited with the un- derstanding that no whiskey would be furnished, but in lieu thereof a good supper would be pro- vided, of which all would be invited to partake after the frame was up. And although it was an innovation on an old established custom, it was a success. Mr. B., with his indomitable energy. and with the assistance of other temperance men. carried it through, and thus raised the first barn in Webster without whiskey. And in after life Mr. B. looked upon this act as one of the achieve- ments of his life which gave him peculiar pleas- ure.
"The second child born to Mr. and Mrs. Boy- den, in Webster, and rocked in the primitive cradle before mentioned, was Edward L. Boy- den, who subsequently became the first grandfa- ther born in Webster.
"Israel Arms came to and settled in Webster in the fall of the year 1827. He came from Mas- sachusetts. He lived in Webster about twelve years, and then sold out and moved into the east part of Livingston county. He was a good citi- zen : other than this I know but little of him.
"Charles Stark, the next settler in order ( and they have been taken in the order of their ar- rival), was born in Pennsylvania, January 8, 1799, and came to Michigan in 1819. Worked in and about Detroit for about two years. At one time he was on a small vessel which ran up to Port Huron, and sometimes went to Macki- naw. On one of their trips across Lake Huron they encountered a storm, in which they were shipwrecked on the west coast of the lake. The crew succeeded in reaching the shore without the loss of a life. In this disaster Mr. Stark lost his little all. The Indians, of whom there hap- pened to be a company near the shore, took them in, and very kindly cared for them the best they could. until they could set out on their way back by land to Detroit. This was enough of that kind of adventure for Mr. S. He made his way west from Detroit as far as a settlement, then be- gun on the River Rouge. After a stay of about
four years in this place, during which time he married a wife, they found it to be so sickly a lo- cality that they concluded to push on further west. So in the spring of 1827, Mr. S. looked out and located a piece of land on the north side of Boyden's plains, moved on his family and ar- rived at the newly found home, March 1, 1827. They found shelter in Mr. Arm's house until a small log house could be built. This continued to be the residence of the family until the summer of 1848. when Mr. S. built a brick house. For several years in his middle life he made pump- making a business as well as farming. His was a manly struggle with the trials and privations of pioneer life. And this remark may be made with equal truthfulness respecting all whose names have preceded Mr Stark's, as well as all who may follow. Mr. Stark took part in all the moral and religious enterprises of the community, and contributed his full share in the establishment of good society. He belonged to the Methodist demonination, and it was in his house that the first sermon by a Methodist minister was preached in Webster. On the 26th day of March, 1828, was born in Mr. Stark's family a daughter, who subsequently became the first grandmother born in Webster, and this grand- mother is the wife of your subscriber.
"The next addition to the population of the township was the arrival of Salmon H. Mat- thews, who came from Conway, Massachusetts, and arrived in Webster May 19. 1827. He lo- cated what was later the home of the Backus brothers. Mr. Matthews brought with him a wife and one child, his wife's mother, Mrs. Bond, who was a widow, and two young sisters of Mrs. Matthews, viz. : Miss H. Bond and Miss M. Bond, the latter of whom became the wife of Hon. S. W. Dexter. Miss H. Bond became the wife of Gen. Asa Williams. The infant child of Mr. and Mrs. Matthews, whose name was Wil- liam W. Matthews, died August 14. 1828, and this, so far as I am able to learn, was the first death of a white person in the township. Mr. Matthews did not remain very many years on his farm, when he removed to Dexter village, where he engaged in business, and where, after a few
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years, he died. His widow, after a number of years of widowhood, married Mr. Westfall, of Lima.
"It was with the family of Mr. Matthews that my father, with the three boys whom he brought to Michigan with him when he first came. boarded for the first two months, and it was to their hospitality that we were indebted for a shelter until we could build a suitable habitation of our own.
"The next man in order was Peter Sears, who located in the southeast corner lot in the town- ship. Here Mr. Sears ( Uncle Peter, as he was familiarly called ), built his first house, and here he lived for a number of years. His farm em- braced lands in the townships of Ann Arbor and Northfield, as well as in Webster. The time of his arrival was June 1, 1827.
"Mr. Sears came from Massachusetts, and my impression is that Conway is the town from which he came. The first time the writer saw Uncle Peter an impression of a lasting charac- ter was made on his mind. We were on our way from Ann Arbor to the location made a few days before by my father, and somewhere between Mr. Moe's and Mr. Sear's fell in with Uncle Peter, who was on foot. He got onto our load and rode on toward his house. He was full of talk, and having been in the country nearly a year, could give much valuable information to the newly arrived. My father brought with him from New York a pretty large and rather good looking span of horses. These attracted Mr. Sear's attention, and directing his conversation to Henry Scadin, who was with us, remarked that such a team would not amount to much in this country, and if we expected to do plowing and farm work generally with such a team, emphasi- zing the word such, we would find ourselves mistaken. His auditor, who took an interest and a pride in all that his Uncle John (John Wil- liams) had and did, said: "Don't you believe those horses could draw a plow along there?' as he pointed to the side of the road. 'Well, yes,' said Uncle Peter, ' much easier along there ( and along there meant the same kind of soil and land he had located, for we were nearing his house ) than on such land as Boyden's plains,' pointing
westward to the plains where Mr. Boyden had lo- cated. Following up this last remark with con- siderable talk on soils, location and timber, Uncle Peter sought to convey the impression that in his judgment he had made a much better selection than Mr. Boyden. I said a lasting impression was made on my mind, and it was not only by this incident, but others which occurred ; and had the word eccentric been in my vocabulary, and had he been as well known to me as I came to know him afterward, that word would have been applied in speaking of Uncle Peter's character- istics. Once in speaking of the spelling of words he said, 'one was a very poor scholar who could not spell a word more than one way.'
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