USA > Michigan > Washtenaw County > Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan > Part 63
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Dr. David E. Lord. the first physician in the county, had built a house here in the summer of 1824. He was appointed the first county clerk and served as such from 1827 to 1830.
Bethuel Farrand. the first judge of probate of the county, and family, removed to Ann Arbor in the fall of 1825. He was an older man than most of the first settlers and had come to Michigan from Cayuga county, New York, in February, 1825. to obtain, if possible, a contract to supply Detroit with water. On February 22, 1825. the "freemen of Detroit granted to Bethuel Farrand and his legal representatives the sole and exclu- sive right of watering the city of Detroit." He returned on foot for his family, and in May brought his family to Detroit with Rufus Wells. to whom he sold out in the fall in order to settle at Ann Arbor. At that time only an Indian trail ran between Detroit and Ann Arbor. Mr. Far- rand started to take his family and possessions by a flat-bottomed boat up the Huron river. but after getting about twenty miles up the river, he became discouraged and bought a large wagon and yoke of oxen and hired a man with another yoke of oxen and started through the wilderness where it was said but one wagon had been be- fore. Much of the distance they had to cut their way. Some of the hills, as one of the party af-
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terwards wrote, were so steep that they had to chain one yoke of oxen behind the wagon to hold back the load. After ten miles of unbroken road they reached Ypsilanti, which then contained two families. The next day they had reached Anu Arbor, and Dr. Lord let them have two rooms in his house until they could provide shelter for themselves. Six weeks later they had a shanty completed on the corner of Main and Williams streets and moved into it. They constituted the fifteenth family in Ann Arbor. As soon as his house was completed, Mr. Farrand went to De- troit for provisions and returned with a drove of hogs, which he butchered, and all the neighbors, it is said, came to buy, borrow or beg some of the pork, which was considered so much greater a treat than was venison.
When the Farrands came to Ann Arbor, it is evident that there was a family here which has not yet been mentioned, if their count of the num- ber of families in the village when they arrived is correct. Who they were, it is impossible to state with absolute certainty. Nathaniel and Sylvanus Noble had settled in Ann Arbor town north of and near the village before this and there were several other settlers living in the town- ship. Two men had been engaged with Allen and Rumsey in building Rumsey's house. One of them was Calvin Chipman who lived in Manches- ter until nearly ninety years old, and who claimed to have put the question as to the new village being called Ann Arbor, as told on another page. The other may have been Cornelius Ousterhaut, a carpenter and joiner, in whose house E. W. Rumsey died in 1827. In the summer of 1826, from Connecticut, came James Kingsley, who at once became one of the leading men of the county and who will be mentioned time and again on the pages of its history.
In June, 1826, came the first tailor to settle west of Detroit in the person of Lorrin Mills, better known in his later years as Deacon Mills, as he was a deacon in the Congregational church for over thirty-four years. He built a small frame building and afterward built the first brick house in the city, on the southwest corner of Main and Huron streets. He died February 11, 1891.
In 1826 also came Hiram Welch and family
from Harrisonburg, Virginia, an old-style Vir- ginia gentleman, and for some years he kept a store on the corner of Main and Huron streets.
By 1827 Ann Arbor had become a village of considerable importance. It had about one hun- dred fifty inhabitants and boasted of three stores. Three new taverns had appeared to compete with Rumsey's "Coffee House," which was then oc- cupied by Oliver Whitmore. Andrew Nowland had a tavern on North State street. Samuel Camp had one on the southwest corner of Main and Huron streets, and Ira W. Bird had one on the southeast corner of the same streets.
In the meantime, the rest of Washtenaw county was being settled. Northfield, Ann Arbor town, Pittsfield, Ypsilanti city, Webster and Dixboro had been settled in 1824; and in 1825 the first settlements in Lima, Salem, Scio, Dexter, Lodi and York were made ; and the pioneers built their first log houses in Saline in 1826. Bridgewater and Augusta were settled in 1829, Sylvan in 1830, Freedom and Manchester in 1831, and Lyndon in 1833.
Benjamin Sutton was the first settler of North- field, and the story of his settlement has been told by his nephew, Hon. George Sutton, who came only a few years later. Northfield was settled on the same day that Ann Arbor was. Benjamin Sutton, who was from New Jersey, started out from Detroit with Allen and Rumsey on their first trip to Ann Arbor, in February, 1824. The trail they took passed near Tenick's, through the Bucklin woods and across the Rush river at the place afterward known as Swartsburg. From there they went over the Tonquish plains to what is now known as Plymouth, where the trail forked. Here Allen and Rumsey took the trail that went to what is now Ann Arbor, while Sut- ton took the other trail and brought up in North- field, which looked pleasing to him, and he there located upon sections 34 and 35. on the road which was soon laid out from Plymouth Corners through Salem and Northfield to Ann Arbor, and known as the Sutton Road. In the fall of 1824 Mr. Sutton moved his family from the River Rush where they had been living while he pre- pared his cabin and their new home. His cabin as it was six years later when George Sutton ar-
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rived was a double log house one and a half sto- ries high. The logs were hewn inside and out and there was only one chimney which was built of sticks and mortar made of clay. It had a very large fireplace and the first supper which the Sut- tons, who came in 1830, ate in this house con- sisted of biscuit baked in what was called a bake kettle. The flour or meal was mixed with sala- ratus and buttermilk. molded in rolls and put in the iron kettle which was put between hot coals. The biscuit was served with wild honey and fried venison. At this time, Benjamin Sutton's family consisted of his wife and six children, two of whom had been born in this cabin. George Sut- ton, in describing his arrival upon the scene, says that the "sun was setting in the west with its golden tinged canopy. The cattle and horses came up to be yarded for the night. The mos- quitoes were holding a carnival in the open air to the annoyance of the poor bovines ; and the sheep had to be put in vaults for safety from the wolves." When Benjamin Sutton arrived in the township it was purely an oak opening district. Since that time extensive clearings have been made and the beautiful oaks have almost disap- peared. The Indians at this time were very nn- merous and very friendly. Their usual trade with the white settlers consisted in exchanging a leg of venison for a loaf of bread. They also had honey to exchange in the fall and sugar in the spring. The Indians every fall and spring went through here to Detroit with all their movable effects con- sisting of their squaws, papooses, ponies and dogs, to await an opportunity to cross the river to Sarnia to draw their allowance. This allowance consisted of a blanket and a small fowling piece. known to the white settlers as a "squaw gun." with some ammunition, a knife and a hatchet. These guns were the only kind the Indian hunters used until the white settlers taught them the use of rifles, while Indian boys at this date were taught to shoot with a bow and arrow and to use a hatchet. The Indian trails were very numerous and ran in many directions to suit the roving dis- position of the migratory tribes. These trails were deeply worn, showing that they had been long in use. A company of Indians on the march always went in single file, whether on horseback
or on foot, and the squaws carried their papooses in wicker baskets, with poles tied to the basket, which was carried on the mother's shoulders. As illustrative of the life of these pioneer settlers, Hon. George Sutton has given an account of the killing of an Indian chief on the trail the Indians took to come to Northfield, and the murder of a young Indian squaw in Northfield at a little later date. His account is as follows :
"The Pottawatomies were the most numerous tribe of Indians that hovered around the Sutton settlement. Their principal chiefs were Ton- gush (commonly called Togush), Chevas, La- comas and Lone Arm.
"In the year 1824 or 1825. three men were eat- ing a lunch in Detroit, when Chief Togush ap- proached them with a request for bread. The men refused to give him any, which so angered Togush that he walked away a few steps and then turned and fired his gun, and one of the men fell dead. Togush tried to make his escape west, and crossed the river Rush at Swartsburg. He got partly over the plains, when he was over- taken by a posse of white men from Detroit and shot. His remains were cared for by his tribe. Their burial consisted in making a chair of sticks and setting their dead chief thereon in an up- right position near the trail. The Indians in passing by their dead chief would put pipes and tobacco into his hands that he might enjoy com- fort in the Indian hunting ground. The plains where this circumstance took place have ever since been known as Togush plains.
"It was said that this tribe after losing their chief chose in his place a young warrior who was a relative of the old chief, and bore the same name. Soon after his accession, young Togush and his retainers came to the house of Benjamin Sutton, and tied their ponies to the fence, the ponies standing close together. The Indians made themselves at home as was their usual custom. Now, on this particular occasion, the Indians had procured some whiskey, contrary to the good gov- ernment of the neighborhood, and some of them drank too much. It is an awful thing for an Indian to drink whiskey, a little makes him wild and savage as it did Chief Togush on this occa- sion. The chief was displeased with some of the
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doings of his wife and flew at her with his knife. The squaw ran toward the horses. She first attempted to go under them, then jumped on their backs, and would go from one horse to the other. Her movements were like the wind, dear life was at stake. She knew what effect fire- water had on the brain of her chief. She also knew that he carried a hatchet in his wampum and a knife dangling by his side. Oh! what the poor creature saw in that agonizing moment of cruelty, when death would soon claim her. She miade one more effort to escape the missile of death held by the chief by running to a big oak tree near by. The chief pursued her. They met each other on the opposite side of the tree, the chief's hand fell, and his hellish deed was ac- complished. The victim of this diabolical act was buried near where it occurred, but the grave could not be found by the whites who were liv- ing in the settlement, until recently. Mr. A. Steffy, who now owns a farm near where this outrage was committed, in clearing the land found the bones of a human being supposed to be those of the murdered squaw."
The Indians. however friendly, were some- times very troublesome to the early settlers, as is proved by an incident related in after years by Almand Allen, who was at the time about five years old and an eye witness to the transaction, which has gone down into history as "The Battle of the Bee Tree," at Sutton's Corners. Mr. Al- len's story is as follows :
"In the fall of 1826 the Indians found a bee tree about forty rods south of Mr. William Al- len's house at Sutton's Corners, and came one fine day to cut it down and get the honey. On their way to the tree they stopped at the house to get the little five-year-old Almand to go with them. His mother objected, but the Indians in- duced the little fellow to follow them. Mrs. Al- len, feeling anxious for the safety of her son, went partly down to where they were cutting the tree, and seeing him among the Indians, re- turned to the house satisfied that all was right. The chief had Almand between his knees to keep the little fellow from being stung, after the tree was cut down. Now, it happened on the morning of that day that one of the tribe had killed a deer,
and brought the hide to the bee tree, and the honey was enclosed in it, after which it was sewed up with strips of fine bark, ready to be taken to the camp, which was located on the bank of a lake near by.
"The Indians, on returning, passed by Mr. Al- len's house as their nearest way home. It hap- pened by accident or otherwise, that three of the Indians who had been at the cutting of the bee tree, stayed behind the others. One of them car- ried in his hand a piece of honey in the comb.
"When they got to the Allen house he walked in and gave the honeycomb to Mrs. Allen and wanted to trade it for bread. Mrs. Allen taking the honeycomb in her hand and turning it over, found no honey on the lower side. She said to the Indian, 'Kow in nisheshin' ( no good honey ).
"Whether this remark of Mrs. Allen, or the objection she had made to her little son going with them to the bee tree, aroused the Indian's hatred, is not known. At this time Mrs. Allen was alone in the house with her children. Moses Allen, her brother-in-law, was plowing near by, and she supposed that her husband was at Benja- min Sutton's, nearly one-half mile distant.
"The Indians commenced striking Mrs. Allen with sticks, and as their anger and passion in- creased, they took her up bodily and cast her on the fire which was burning on the hearth.
"She screamed to hier little son Almand to run for his father. Mr. Allen was returning from Mr. Sutton's, and met Almand at the corner of the house.
"Learning of the awful condition that his wife was in he rushed into the house, one of the Indians meeting him with a gun. A conflict en- sued. The gun was wrested from the Indian and thrown out of doors. Another Indian threw a tomahawk and missed Allen. It stuck in a log of the house and remained there for several days afterwards.
"Moses Allen heard the sereams from the house of his brother and came to his assistance. By this time Mrs. Allen had managed to get off from the fire, but little injured from its effects as happily her elothing was made of domestic woolen.
"How long the battle lasted between the Allens
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and the Indians is not known, or what the weapons of warfare were. The narrator says that great clots of blood were left on the bed and carried out of the house on the 'coverlet.' Two of the Indians retired from the conflict and car- ried off a dead companion.
"For months after this horrible circumstance occurred. Mr. Allen was in constant dread of a return of the Indians and kept his house barri- caded from fear of an attack by some of the wily savages who were constantly encamping in the neighborhood. My informant says that the Indians did not give them any more trouble, but when approaching near the Allen house would keep a good distance from it."
In the course of two or three years the settle- ment was augmented by the arrival of Moses Allen, William Allen, James Noyes, a Mr. Lane, a Mr. Laverty, and Nathaniel Brundige, the lat- ter of whom died soon after his arrival.
Among the early settlers of Northfield was Isaac Secord, who came from Pontiac in 1828 with a young wife and a large family of small children. Mr. Secord was a noted hunter and his trusty rifle was his constant companion. His footsteps were carefully guarded and not a quiver of a leaf or a motion of the grass would escape his notice. During the War of 1812 Se- cord came to Michigan from Canada, where he had been living and was in the British army. One day when he was marching with the rest of the soldiers and the Indians they passed by a thick clump of bushes. Secord disappeared in the bushes and made his way to Michigan. From here he undertook to get his family from Canada and also to act as a spy for the Americans, but was discovered and withdrew to a high hill where he laid on his arms in the grass for two days watching the soldiers and Indians hunt him. He was obliged to return to Michigan without his family. They attempted to come on alone and were followed by the soldiers who hoped in this way to catch Secord. On their way a little child was born, Joanna Secord, who was married in Northfield in June, 1830, to William Jackson by Justice Wilcoxson, of Ann Arbor, and this was the first marriage in Northfield township.
In 1833 some Mormon evangelists visited North- field and Mrs. Secord was converted and im- mersed in a hole cut in the ice in a small pond near where the Methodist church now stands.
The first schoolhouse in the township was built in April, 1828, but it was not until May, 1829, that school was held in it, with Miss Miranda Le- land as teacher. A spelling and debating school was organized in September, 1829, and in 1830 Mr. Merrill organized a Sunday-school over which Miss Parmelia Leland presided.
Hon. John Renwick, who came to Northfield in 1827 from New York, describes the township as it then was, in the following words: "The first impression I had of the township of North- field was in traveling through the southern part of the township on an old Indian trail from Plymouth to Ann Arbor in the year 1827. The township was in a state of nature, except what was settled by Benjamin Sutton and Moses Allen. Mr. Benjamin Sutton was the pioneer of the township, having settled on his farm in 1824. He cut his way from the river Rouge. Mr. Sutton possessed all the requirements of the pioneer ; first, a strong robust constitution, a quick discerning and intellectual mind, and a perseverance that never faltered. He was a man of uncommon hospitality. His house was a home for all the pioneers that passed in that section of the country. Such was the man, strong minded and calculated to be admired in any society ; none were above him, and few his equal."
Moses Allen, who came into the township from New York with his family in 1826 and settled on land adjoining Benjamin Sutton's, brought the first apple trees and peach pits to the town- ship and planted the first apple and peach orch- ard. Four years later he sold his land and re- moved to Plymouth. Joseph Lane settled here in 1826 and sold his farm and log house in 1829 to Nathaniel Brundige, who died the following year. His wife and four children continued to reside here for many years. Peter Sears came from Massachusetts to Northfield in November, 1826, where he lived until January 18, 1867. when he died at the age of 80. Capt. John Moe
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arrived with his family in 1827 and was particu- larly lucky in his choice of a location. where he lived until 1855.
Twenty-three different purchasers of land in Ann Arbor town in the year 1824 from the gen- eral government added to the work of the land office in Detroit, and indicated an influx of immi- grants. Col. Orrin White, his wife Ann White, who was a sister of Capt. Chas. Thayer, and three children were the first settlers in what is now Ann Arbor town. They bought the land on which they settled on section 26 in 1823 and moved into the log house they erected on July 4, 1824. Mr. White was from New York and his wife was a native of Pennsylvania. He was a soldier in the War of 1812, and had been through the territory to locate land in 1823. He was a captain and afterward colonel of the militia of the county, and held a large number of offices including sheriff, member of the constitutional convention, and a member of the legislature. He died in 1864 and Mrs. White died in 1871.
Near the White's, settled in September, 1824, Mr. and Mrs. George Rash, their five children and a bound boy. Levi Bunt. They, too, came from New York. Mr. Rash died in 1855 and his wife in 1859. They remained until their death on the land they took up from the government. Bunt, the bound boy, enlisted in the Mexican war, and died while a soldier.
Nathaniel and Sylvanus Noble came in Octo- ber, 1824, and settled just north of what is now Ann Arbor city. Mrs. Harriet L. Noble has left us a pen picture of their settlement, which affords a good description of conditions in the new vil- lage of Ann Arbor, and a year later in Dexter where they moved ; and depicts the hardships of the early Washtenaw pioneers. Mrs. Noble, at the time she came to Michigan, was 27 and her husband was 33. Her reminiscences are so inter- esting that we transcribe them :
"My husband was seized with the western ma- nia and accordingly made preparations to start with his brother in January, 1825. They took the Ohio route and were nearly a month getting through by way of Monroe, Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. Mr. John Allen and Walker Rumsey, with his wife and two men, had been in Ann Ar-
bor some four or five weeks, and had built a small house and moved into it the day my husband and his brother arrived, and were just preparing their first meal, which the newcomers had the pleasure of enjoying. They spent a few days in Ann Arbor and located a farm a little above the town on the river Huron, and returned through Canada. They had been so much pleased with the new country that they immediately com- menced preparing to emigrate ; and, as near as I can recollect, we started about September 20, 1824, for Michigan. We traveled from our home in Geneva, New York, to Buffalo in wagons. The roads were bad, and we were obliged to wait in Buffalo four days for a boat, as the steamer Michigan was the only one on the lake. After waiting so long we found the Michigan had put into Erie for repairs, and there was no prospect of her being able to run for some time. The next step was to take passage in a schooner, which was considered a terrible undertaking for so dan- gerous a voyage as it was then thought to be. At length we went on board the Prudence, of Cleve- land. A more inconvenient little bark could not well be imagined. We were seven days on Lake Erie, and so entirely prostrated with seasickness as scarcely to be able to attend to the wants of our little ones. I had a little girl of three years and a babe some nine months old, and Sister Noble had six children, one an infant. It was a tedious voyage, the lake was very rough most of the time, and I thought if we were only on land again I should be satisfied if it was a wilderness. I could not then realize what it would be to live without a comfortable home through the winter. but sad experience afterwards taught me a lesson not to be forgotten.
"We came into the Detroit river ; it was beautiful then as now, on the Canadian side in particular, you will scarcely perceive and change. Detroit, for a city, was certainly the most filthy, irregular place I had ever seen ; the streets were filled with Indians and low French. We spent two days making preparations to go out to Ann Arbor and during that time I did not see a genteelly dressed person in the streets. There were no carriages; the most wealthy families rode in French carts, sitting on the bottom on some kind of seats, and
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the streets were so muddy that they were the only convenient vehicles for getting about. I said to myself. 'If this be a western city, give me a home in the woods.'
"I think it was on October 31, 1824, that we started from Detroit with a yoke of oxen and wagon, a few articles for cooking and such neces- saries as we could not do without. It was neces- sary that they should be as few as possible for our families were a full load for this mode of travel- ing. After traveling all day we found ourselves ten miles from Detroit at what is now Dearborn. Here we spent the night at a kind of tavern, the only one west of the city. Our lodging was the floor. The next day we set out as early as possi- ble in hopes to get through the woods before dark. but night found us about half way through, and there remained no other recourse but to camp out. The men built a large fire and prepared our sup- per. My sister and myself could assist but little so fatigued were we with walking and carrying our infants. There were fifteen in our company. two gentlemen going to Ypsilanti accompanying us. It seemed a long, long night in the wilder- ness. We started again as early as possible, all who could walk moving on a little in advance of the wagon, the small children were the only ones who thought of riding. Every few rods it would take two or three men to pry the wagon out of the mud, while those who walked were obliged to force their way over fallen brush, timber, etc. Thus passed the day, at night we found ourselves on the plains three miles from Ypsilanti. My feet were so swollen I could walk no farther. We got into the wagon and rode as far as Woodruff's Grove, a little below Ypsilanti. There were four or five families at this place.
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