USA > Michigan > Washtenaw County > Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan > Part 59
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one who walks in the humblest spheres of life. they each receive his most careful, honest and un- tiring consideration. He has been known to ac- cept and to diligently prosecute many cases for the poorer classes when he knew in advance that if he received any fee at all it would not by any means compensate his labors. An examination of the records of the cicuit court of Washtenaw county will disclose the fact that Mr. Stivers has. during the past few years, been actively connected with much of the more important litigation that has earnestly engaged the attention of the court. His practice has also extended to many important cases in the supreme court of the state."
In his political views Mr. Stivers is a stalwart republican. He was once solicited by his party to become its candidate for prosecuting attorney but refused. In 1900, however, he received the party nomination and made a strong race but was defeated. In May, 1905. he was appointed by Mayor Francis M. Hamilton to the position of city attorney and is now discharging the duties of that office in connection with those of a satisfactory private practice.
On the 22d of June, 1898, in Liberty, Indiana. Mr. Stivers was married to Miss Margaret Mc- Kay, a native of that state and a daughter of Wil- liam Mckay, of Liberty, who was a prominent contractor there, successful in his business affairs. His specialty was the construction of courthouses and he erected many courthouses in various parts of the state. Mr. and Mrs. Stivers now have a wide and favorable acquaintance in Ann Arbor and. quoting from our former authority, "He is a young man of high and noble character, of a pure and upright life, worthy of the respect and confidence of all good men."
CHARLES W. STIVERS.
Charles W. Stivers, editor of the Liberty Her- ald and now ( 1884) serving as postmaster at Liberty, Indiana, was born near Decatur village. Adams county. Ohio, August 21. 1848. He was the second son of a family of five children born to James M1. and Louisa J. ( Higgins) Stivers. His father was a native of Adams county and
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his mother of Clermont county, Ohio. They were united in marriage in 1844 and soon after took up their residence in Adams, then in Clermont, and after the death of the mother in 1861 near Felicity, Ohio, the father removed to George- town, Ohio, where he spent the remainder of his life. In early life, James M. Stivers was filled with an ambition to attain an education sufficient to qualify him for a professorship in some institu- tion of learning, but circumstances prevented his realizing that cherished hope, although he became a teacher and taught in the common schools of Adams, Clermont and Brown counties for twen- ty-five years. While teaching, he took up the study of surveying and civil engineering and be- came proficient as a surveyor. A few years after moving to Georgetown he was elected county surveyor, a position he held for ten or twelve years, with credit to himself and lasting benefits to those for whom he labored. He was an edu- cator of popularity and excellence, and his work as a surveyor was noted for its correctness and dispatch. At the early age of nine years he be- came a member of the Methodist Episcopal church and remained a member during his life of sixty-eight years. He was descended from German ancestry and his wife from Scotch-Irish parentage who emigrated from Virginia to Ohio. Her maternal grandfather and six of his broth- ers were in the Continental army under Wash- ington ; while her father was in the Indian wars under General Wayne. Mr. and Mrs. Stivers were not surrounded in their lifetime with afflu- ence, but were, nevertheless, highly respected and much esteemed where they lived for the pur- ity of their lives and the high standard of mor- als they observed. Mr. Stivers died September 20, 1882. His wife had preceded him to the better land some twenty years.
Charles W. Stivers, the subject of this brief sketch, assisted his father on the farm until thir- teen years of age. Soon after his father moved to Georgetown, Ohio, young Stivers was appren- ticed to John G. Doren, editor of the Southern Ohio Argus, to learn the printing business. Soon after Mr. Doren sold the Argus to Hon. L. B. Leeds, in whose employ, in the Brown County News, young Stivers continued for one year.
From Georgetown he went to Batavia, Ohio, where he worked one winter with Baxter Smith on the Batavia Courier, and in the summer of 1865 went to Connersville, Indiana, where he entered the employ of W. N. Green in the Con- nersville Times office. After a little over a year's service there, he went to Cincinnati, where he worked for C. N. Morris, receiving instruction in job printing. In July, 1866, he came to Lib- erty, Indiana, to accept a situation with James N. McClung, then editor of the Liberty Herald. In less than a year, Mr. McClung wishing to sell out, Mr. Stivers, then but eighteen years of age, purchased the printing office, and with the exception of about a year and a half has since been its editor and publisher, a portion of the time in connection with his brothers, Scott and Jackson Stivers. From 1873 to 1877. C. W. Sti- vers owned the Brookville American, and during the campaign of 1876 he owned and edited the Rushville Republican. In February, 1877, he sold the last named paper to John F. Moses and in September of the same year he sold the Brook- ville American to his old preceptor, W. N. Green, its present owner. These papers, under the effi- cient editorial management of Mr. Stivers, did telling and effective work for the republican party during the hotly contested campaign of 1876, in which he took part also as a speaker.
Mr. Stivers was united in marriage, October 3, 1867. with Laura E. Freeman, daughter of Israel and Jane ( Ward) Freeman, one of the old and prominent citizens of Union county. Her grandfather, Silas Ward, was also under General Wayne in the Indian wars. Unto Mr. and Mrs. Stivers were born three children-Frank A., Sep- tember 6, 1868: Orion L., December 25, 1870, and Florence Estella, January 28, 1877. C. W. Stivers was appointed postmaster at Liberty, In- diana, February 10, 1882, by President Arthur upon the recommendation of Senator Benjamin Harrison and served four years. Mr. Stivers is an orator above mediocrity; always fortified with sound argument, he is ever ready when occasion requires to take the stump in defense of the prin- ciples which his convictions of right teach him are just. A strong, clear-sighted and vigorous writer, Mr. Stivers has gained many friends and
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admirers while connected with the Liberty Her- ald and other journals. In his present position as postmaster, he is demonstrating his capability and efficiency as a public officer. He is active in every good work and enterprise to build up the community and benefit his fellowmen. He is a member of the Methodist church, the Masonic and I. O. O. F. fraternities. As a citizen bis character is unblemished by a single dishonor- able act, and his conduct toward others is of that nature calculated to secure friends, and so essen- tial an element in making up the popularity of a public man.
The foregoing sketch was published in 1884. since which time and up to now, July, 1905, Mr. Stivers has continued as editor of the Liberty Herald. During 1903-04 he served as president of the Indiana Republican Editorial Association, and is an active member of that organization.
SAMUEL WILLARD BEAKES.
Samuel Willard Beakes was born in Burling- ham, New York, January 11, 1861. He was the son of Dr. George M. Beakes and Elizabeth Bull. Dr. George M. Beakes was born in Middletown, New York, January 2. 1831, on a farm which has been in the family for over one hundred and twenty-five years. He was educated at Michigan University and the Albany Medical School, served during the Civil war as assistant surgeon of the First New York Cavalry and afterwards as sur- geon of the One Hundred and Forty-fourth New York Infantry. He was the only democrat, for forty years, to represent Sullivan county, New York, in the state assembly, where he served two terms, declining re-election. He was a United States pension examiner. He died June 18, 1900. Elizabeth ( Bull ) Beakes is a descendant of Wil- liam Bull and Sarah Wells, who came from Eng- land to New York in the seventeenth century. The Beakes family have long been Americans and trace their descent from Nathan Beakes, who owned a mill in New Jersey on the Delaware river in 1680 and was a Quaker.
When nine years of age S. W. Beakes moved with his parents to Bloomingburg, New York, where he attended the district school. After a year and a term at the Wallkill Academy in Mid- (letown, New York, he entered the literary de- partment of the University of Michigan in 1878. After entering the junior class he was compelled by accident to remain out of college for a time, and for a year he ran a drug store at Bloom- ingburg, New York. Entering the law depart- ment of the University of Michigan in 1881. he graduated in 1883. While in the law department he was private secretary to Judge Thomas M. Cooley. He began the practice of law in Wester- ville, Ohio, in 1883 and had built up a good law practice when he left that village. In the mean- time he had purchased the Westerville Review. which he ran at the same time he continued his law business, trebling the circulation of the paper, which had been running fifteen years, in ten months. Selling the paper in 1884, he bought the Adrian Record, a daily paper in Adrian, Michi- gan, which he published for two years. Selling this, he was managing editor of a Jackson Morn- ing Daily for a month, when he purchased the Ann Arbor Argus in June, 1886. With this paper he maintained connection until October. 1905, when he became city editor of the Ann Arbor Daily Times, and he is the oldest news- paper man in point of continuous service in Washtenaw county, with the exception of Mr. Blosser, of Manchester.
In 1888 Mr. Beakes was elected mayor of Ann Arbor, turning an adverse majority of two hun- dred and forty-three into a majority for himself of two hundred and sixty-six. The next year he was re-elected by about the same majority. He was the chairman of the committee which drafted the present city charter and did most of the work on it. He was city treasurer in 1801 and 1892 and again in 1903 and 1904. He was postmaster of Ann Arbor from 1894 to 1898. As postmaster. Mr. Beakes secured the enlarge- ment of the free delivery service, so that the mail was delivered throughout the city limits, he se- cured the establishment of a night mailing service, and put a stop to the postoffice rushes which had been a practice for years. During Mr. Beakes'
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administration as city treasurer, with a decrease in the amount of taxes, a deficit was converted into a twenty-thousand-dollar-surplus, and the scheme for bonding the city for forty thousand dollars for current expenses was thus shown to be unnecessary. In 1894 he was a candidate for presidential elector on the democratic ticket. In 1898 he came within one vote of being nominated for congress on the democratic ticket. During his administration as mayor a deficit was turned into a balance in the treasury without increased taxation, Cedar Bend avenue was constructed, Felch Park was obtained for the city, a paid fire department was organized, the street railway was constructed, stone walks on the business streets were built and the movement for good walks on residence streets given a great impetus, the streets of the city were put in good condition, and the
new charter adopted which has given an impetus to the growth and development of the city.
On July 7. 1886, Mr. Beakes was married to Miss Annie S. Beakes, the only daughter of Judge Hiram J. Beakes, who came to Ann Arbor in 1851 and was for many years a leader of the Washtenaw county bar and one of the keenest lawyers in the state. He was mayor of the city two terms, member of the state legislature in 1863, and judge of probate from 1864 to 1872. He died May 18. 1882. His wife, Sarah C. Swathel, who died September 7, 1904, came to Ann Arbor in 1843. Both Mr. and Mrs. Beakes are members of the St. Andrews' Episcopal church, and for several years Mr. Beakes served on the vestry. For a number of years he has been a member of the civil board of the local military company.
Samuel lo Beakes.
Historical.
CHAPTER I.
THE FIRST INHABITANTS OF THE COUNTY.
It is but a trifle more than four score years since the first white settlement was made in Washtenaw county, but the march of events has been so rapid that the county has all the appear- ance of an old and long settled country. Those with actual personal knowledge of real pioneer life in the county have all passed away; for the actual pioneer life in Washtenaw was of short duration. So quickly was the county settled and so rapidly did the soil respond to cultivation, and so soon was it brought into quick communica- tion with the older civilization of the east, that that it was only a very brief period, indeed, that the hardships of the pioneers were endured.
The settlers of the county never clashed with the Indians. No record of Indian massacres is there to be written. In fact, the Indians had re- moved from the county before the first perma- nent settlement was made, and it was only the occasional Indian callers or bands bound to re- ceive payments or supplies from the government who came into contact with the Washtenaw set- tler from the beginning, and what little inter- course there was, was of a friendly character.
Back of the first settlement by the hardy pio- neers of 1823 only glimpses at wide intervals, and somewhat vague in character. can be obtained of the history of the county. At the time of its settlement it was not "a trackless wilderness." to use a current phrase. Its forests were inter- spersed with openings, denuded of trees and
shrubs. It was ready to respond quickly to the touch of the white man's hand, and this probably accounts, in some measure, for the rapidity of its settlement, after such settlement began.
Buried in obscurity as its previous history is, the names of the white men who first set foot within its borders can be stated with almost ab- solute certainty. And it was no common man who had the honor of having first trod the soil of Washtenaw and floated down the Huron river. Robert Cavalier de La Salle, with four French- men named Hunand. La Violette. Collin and Daubray, and a Mohican Indian hunter, passed through what is now Washtenaw county in April. 1680, or one hundred forty-three years before a permanent settlement was made within its borders. This intrepid French explorer was in search of a passage to the East Indies, the goal for which Columbus, as well as many others of the great explorers of America, had started. La Salle believed that the Mississippi river flowed into the Pacific ocean, and he sought to reach this river by way of the Great Lakes. With his vessel he had coasted along the shores of Michi- gan, passing through the straits of Mackinac. and had built a fort on the banks of the Illinois river, a little below what is now Peoria. Here he encamped and sent his ship back for supplies before proceeding to the Mississippi. The vessel never returned to him, and, giving it up as lost. he determined to return on foot to Fort Fronte- nac near the entrance to the St. Lawrence River. Leaving the greater part of his men at Fort Creve Coeur, as he called the post on the Illinois river. he started on his long journey with the
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four Frenchmen named above, and his Mohican Indian hunter as a guide. They embarked in two canoes, but the ice soon stopped them, and they made two rude sledges to carry their canoes and baggage. They reached the mouth of St. Joseph river March 24. 1680. From here, instead of following the lakes, they determined to cut across through southern Michigan by paths that white men had never trod. Sledges and canoes had soon to be abandoned. La Salle's letters depict each day's events of this perilous journey, from whence his course can be traced. They made rapid progress, and a day or two later than April 4. 1680, they struck the Huron river. Two days before this they came upon a troop of Mascoutin warriors, who made prepara- tions to attack them, thinking they were the dreaded Iroquois, the scourge of the other Indian tribes. This danger being escaped as soon as the Indians discovered they were not Iroquois, the exhausted adventurers continued unmolested on their way. Parkman, in his "Discoveries of the Great West." thus describes the journey through Washtenaw: "Two days after this ad- venture, two of the men fell ill from fatigue and exposure, and sustained themselves with difficulty till they reached the banks of a river, probably the Huron. Here, while the sick men rested. their companions made a canoe. There were no birch trees and they were forced to use the elm bark, which at that early season, would not slip freely from the wood until they loosened it with hot water. Their canoe being made, they embark- ed in it and, for a time, floated prosperously down the stream, when at length the way was barred by a matted barricade of trees fallen across the water. The sick men could now walk again, and. pushing eastward through the forest, the party soon reached the banks of the Detroit."
This is the first glimpse that history affords us of Washtenaw county. One hundred and eighty-eight years after the discovery of America, the first white men to trod the soil of Washtenaw were Frenchmen. Then ensues a long period of silence. French traders and Jesuit priests undoubt- edly visited the country shortly after this period. and continued so to do while the French domin-
ion lasted. But the French were not seeking to colonize. As Judge Cooley, in his "History of Michigan," has well stated, "The primary ob- ject of French adventure in Canada were profit- able trade with the savages, and then conversion to the true faith of Christ. Every company of adventurers had its priests, and the eagerness of the traders for gain was more than equaled by the self-sacrificing zeal of the missionary of the cross." The Jesuit priests early took possession of the missions in New France, and their aim was the conversion of the Indians, not the settle- ment of the country by Europeans. The English colonized. It was the object of the English to make, indeed, a new England, as near as possible like the merry England they had left, and peo- pled with the same kind of people. The French. on the other hand, wanted trade, and trade with the Indians. The French fur trader was natur- ally as unfriendly to colonization as were the Jesuit priests, who came solely as apostles to the Indians and did not wish the savages to add the vices of the civilized to those they already pos- sessed. The fur trader desired only posts enough to which he could take his furs and have them transported to Europe. To cultivate the land would drive away the wild animals and Indian hunters, and this was inimical to the trad- er's fortunes. Hence it was that, near as Wash- tenaw is to Detroit, where a permanent French post was established in 1701, it was nearly a cen- tury and a quarter later before the first settlement was made in the county.
In the meantime this was really Indian terri- tory. Claimed in letters by both Canada and New York, neither had much ground for their claims until Cadillac had established a French post at Detroit. But the Indians certainly had good claims and Washtenaw seems, at least some time before its settlement by the whites, to have been a happy hunting ground for the Indians. which several tribes used in common, rather than the home of any particular tribe. Cadillac, in his memorials to his government, has left us a description of the country about Detroit, which applies largely to Washtenaw, as we gather from the meager accounts left by the few who trod its soil before the settler's ax and plow got in
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their work. Cadillac spoke of the vast prairies, of the natural orchards which "soften and bend their branches under the weight and quantity of their fruit towards the mother earth which has produced them," while "the ambitious vine, which has never wept under the pruning knife, builds a thick roof with its large leaves and heavy clus- ters, weighing down the top of the tree which receives it, and often stifling it with its embrace." The forest trees were large and straight, above them the courageous eagle soared, looking fixedly at the sun, swans were numerous in the rivers, elks and deer were plentiful.
A letter written from Ann Arbor by a traveler from Upper Canada, who visited Washtenaw in 1829. describes the appearance of the country six years after its first settlement, and accounts for its open appearance as follows :
"The singular and interesting appearance of the country, in its alternating groves and fields. orchards, and timber lands, is a subject of inquiry with the speculative mind. To me it has the ap- pearance of a highly improved district from which every vestage of art has been annihilated. It is supposed by many to have been produced by the labor and enterprise of the natives for the culture of Indian corn. This is very improbable. The character and habits of no tribe of Indians of which we have any knowledge in North Amer- ica would justify such an opinion. So far as my observations and inquiries have extended they go to the support of the hypothesis that the fire annually communicated by the Indians for the purpose of hunting has produced the present prairies, plains and openings that diversify the whole face of the country. This will be the more readily admitted when the fact is known that the soil of the land on these openings or plains is universally sandy, or a mixture of sand and marl in such proportions as to render it porous. Consequently the rain or moisture of the surface is readily absorbed. Vegetation soon becomes dry and the fire, in its usual destruction of the undergrowth. makes gradual inroads upon the timber until not a shrub is left to the extent of this dry soil. The contrary of this is the effect upon the clay or moist land. Here the water is retained upon the surface, the leaves are kept
constantly moist, so that the fire makes little or no impression. Consequently the heavily tim- bered land is generally more or less clay, and is better adapted to the culture of wheat and grass than the plains, which excel in the articles of corn, potatoes and all kinds of vines."
Parkman, in his "Conspiracy of Pontiac." has given us a beautiful word picture of the appear- ance of this country before the advent of the white man. He says :
"One vast continuous forest shadowed the fer- tile soil, covering the land as the grass covers a garden lawn, sweeping over hill and hollow in endless undulation, burying mountains in ver- dure and mantling brooks and rivers from the light of day. Green intervals dotted with brows- ing deer, and broad plains blackened with buffalo. broke the sameness of the woodlawn scenery. Unnumbered rivers seamed the forest with their devious windings. Vast lakes washed its bonn- daries, where the Indian voyager, in his birch canoe, could desery no land beyond the waste of waters. Yet this prolific wilderness, teaming with waste fertility, was but a hunting ground and a battle-field to a few fierce hordes of sav- ages. Here and there, in some rich meadow opened to the sun, the Indian squaws turned the mould with their rude implements of bone or iron, and sowed their scanty store of maize and beans. Human labor drew no other tribute from that inexhaustible soil. So thin and scattered was the native population that, even in those parts which were thought well-peopled, one might sometimes journey for days together through the twilight forest and meet no human form. Broad tracts were left in solitude. A great part of Up- per Canada, of Michigan and of Illinois, besides other portions of the west. were tenanted by wild beasts alone. To form a close estimate of the numbers of the erratic bands who roamed this wilderness would be a vain attempt, but it may be affirmed that, between the Mississippi on the west and the ocean on the east, between the Ohio on the south and Lake Superior on the north, the whole Indian population at the close of the French war did not greatly exceed ten thousand men."
The Indians in Washtenaw at the beginning
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of the nineteenth century were Pottawatomies, Chippewas or Ojibwas, Ottawas, and Wyandots or Hurons. The Pottawatomies were the most numerous and had the most trails. Many years previous to this time, the Assequin or Bone In- dians, and their allies, the Mascoutins or Little Prairie Indians, probably skulked through the forests. The Assequins were at one time at Mi- chelmackinac, and Schoolcraft, in his "Archives of Aboriginal Knowledge," says that, prior to 1649 the Ottawas drove the Assequins from Michelmackinac and finally pursued them south "to the banks of the Washtenaw, called by the French, Grand river." During this quarrel the Mascoutins allied themselves with the Assequins and, as we have seen, La Salle fell in with a tribe of them just before he struck the Huron river and made his elm bark canoes. It was the Mascoutins, together with the Ontagamies, who undertook to capture Fort Detroit in May, 1712. but were driven away by the Ottawas and Hu- rons after the loss of a thousand warriors. The Mascoutins are eredited by Schoolcraft with the cleared fields and mounds on the banks of the Grand river. From southern Michigan they were driven hy the Chippewas and Ottawas to Chi- cago, whence they fled to the south and west, and from whence no further trace of them can he found in Indian tradition; and it is believed that they were absorbed by the Kickapoos whom they closely resembled in traits and habits.
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