Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Part 64

Author: Beakes, Samuel W. (Samuel Willard), 1861-; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago : The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 886

USA > Michigan > Washtenaw County > Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan > Part 64

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"The next day we left for Ann Arbor. We were delighted with the country before us. It was beautiful in its natural state and I have sometimes thought that cultivation marred its loveliness. Where Ypsilanti stands there was but one building-an old trading house on the west side of the river. The situation was fine. There were scattered oaks and no brushwood. Here we met a large number of Indians, and one old squaw followed us some distance with her pa- poose, determined to swap babies. . At last she

gave it up, and for once I felt relieved. We passed two log houses between Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. About the middle of the afternoon we found ourselves at our journey's end, but what a prospect !

"There were some six or seven log huts occu- pied by as many inmates as could crowd into them. It was too much to think of asking strangers to give us a place to stay in even for one night under such cicumstances. Mr. John Allen himself made us the offer to share with him the comforts of a shelter from storm, if not from the cold. His house was large for a log one, but quite unfinished. There was a ground floor and a single loft above. When we got our things stored in this place, we found the number shel- tered to be twenty-one women and children, and fourteen men. There were but two bedsteads in the house, and those who could not occupy these slept on feather beds upon the floor. When the children were put in bed, you could not set a foot down without stepping on a foot or hand. We cooked our meals in the open air, there being no fire in the house but a small box stove. The fall winds were not very favorable for such business and we would frequently find our clothes on fire, but fortunately we did not often get burned. We lived in this way until our husbands got a log house raised and the roof on. This took them about six weeks, at the end of which time we went into it, without door, floor, chimney or anything but logs and roof. There were no means of get- ting boards for a floor, as everything must be brought from Detroit, and we could not think of drawing lumber over such a road. The only al- ternative was to split słats of oak with an ax. My husband was not a mechanic, but he managed to make a floor in this way that kept us from the ground. I was most anxious for a door, as the wolves would come about in the evening, and sometimes stay all night and keep up a serenade that would almost chill the blood in my veins. Of all the noises, I think the howling of wolves and the yelling of Indians the most fearful-at least it appeared so to me when I was not able to close the door against them. We had our house as comfortable as such a rude building could be, by the first of February.

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"It was a mild winter. There was snow enough to cover the ground only a few days, a fortunate circumstance for us. We enjoyed uninterrupted health, but in the spring the ague with its accom- paniments gave us a call, and by the middle of August, there were but four out of fourteen who could call themselves well. We then fancied we were too near the river for health. We sold out and bought again ten miles west of Ann Arbor, and on November 3. 1825, just a year from the day we came to Ann Arbor, we moved out of it to Dexter.

"There was one house in Dexter, that of Judge Dexter. He was building a sawmill and had a number of men at work at the time. Besides these there was not a white family west of Ann Arbor in Michigan territory. Our log house was just raised, forming only the square log pen. Of course it did not look very inviting, but it was our

home, and we must make the best of it. I helped to raise the rafters and put on the roof. but it was the last of November before our roof was completed. We were obliged to wait for the mill to run in order to get boards for making it. The doorway I had no means of closing except by hanging up a blanket, and frequently when I raised it to step out there would be two or three of our dusky neighbors peeping in to see what was there. It would always give me such a start I could not suppress a scream, to which they would reply with 'Ugh' and a hearty laugh. They knew I was afraid and liked to torment me. Sometimes they would throng the house and would stay two or three hours. If I was alone they would help themselves to what they liked. The only way in which I could restrain them at all, was to threaten to tell Cass, the governor of the territory, of whom they stood in great fear. At last we got a door. The next thing we wanted was a chimney. Winter was at hand and the stone was not drawn. I drove the oxen and rolled the stone off the sled while my husband dug them from the ground and loaded the sled. We were four days building the chimney. With a chimney and floor and a door. I have often thought our little log cabin the most comfortable little place that could possibly be built in so new a country.

And but for the want of provisions of almost ev- ery kind, we should have enjoyed it very much.

"The roads had been so bad all the fall that we had waited until this time, and I think it was De- cember when my husband went to Detroit for supplies. Fifteen days were consumed in going and returning. We had been without flour for three weeks or more and it was hard to manage with young children. After being without bread three or four days, my little boy, two years old, looked me in the face and said, 'Ma, why don't you make bread ; don't you like it?' His innocent complaint brought forth the first tears I had shed in Michigan on account of any privations I had to suffer, and they were about the last. Yet the want of society, church privileges, and other things that make life desirable, often made me sad. I had no ladies' society for one year after coming to Dex- ter, except sister Noble and a Mrs. Taylor, and was more lonely than either of them, my family being so small.

"The winter passed rather gloomily, but when spring came everything looked delightful. We thought our hardships nearly at an end, when early in the summer my husband was taken with the ague. He had not been sick at all the first year. He would break the ague and work for a few days when it would return. In this way he made his garden, planted his corn, and thought he was quite well. About August he harvested his wheat and cut his hay, but could get no help to draw it, and was again taken with the ague. I had it myself, and both my children. Occasionally we would all be ill at the same time. Mr. Noble and I had it every other day. He was almost dis- couraged and said he would have to sell his cattle or let them starve. I said to him, 'To-morrow we shall neither of us have the ague, and I believe I can load and stack the hay, if my strength per- mits.' As soon as breakfast was over I prepared to go into the field where I loaded and stacked seven loads that day. The next day my husband had the ague more severely than common, but not so with me: the exercise broke the chills, and I was able to assist him whenever he was well enough until our hay was all secured.

"In the fall we had several added to our circle.

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We were more healthy, then, and began to flatter ourselves that we could live very comfortably through the winter of 1829. We were not des -. tined to enjoy that blessing, for in November my husband had his left hand blown to pieces by the accidental discharge of a gun, which confined him to the house until April. The hay I had stacked through the fall I had to feed out to the cattle with my own hands in the winter, and often cut the wood for three days at a time. The logs which I alone rolled in would surprise any one who had never been put to the test of necessity. The third winter in Michigan was decidedly the hardest I had yet encountered. In the spring Mr. Noble could be out by carrying his hand in a sling. He commenced plowing to prepare for planting his corn. Being weak from his wound, the ague returned again. He then went to New York and came back in July with a nephew who relieved me from helping him in the work out of doors. Although I was obliged to stack hav this third fall, I believe that it was the last labor of this kind that I ever performed. At this time we began to have quite a little society. We were for- tunate in having good neighbors and for some years were almost like one family, our interest be- ing the same, and envy, jealousy and ali bitter feeling being unknown among us."

Other early settlers in Ann Arbor town were a newly married couple from Genesee county, New York, Mr. and Mrs. Elnathan Botsford, who set- tled in the southeast portion of the township in May, 1825. Robert and John Geddes, two single men, who settled near the Botsfords in June, 1825. Mr. and Mrs. Amos Hicks and seven children who came in October, 1825, and Rev. and Mrs. Moses Clark and seven children who came in 1825. All of these came from New York, except- ing John Geddes who came from Pennsylvania. The Clarks left the township in 1832, selling out to Elnathan Botsford. Mr. and Mrs. Botsford continued to reside in the township until their death ; Mrs. Botsford dying in 1847 and Mr. Botsford in 1853. Amos Hicks died in 1835 and his wife in 1868. Robert Geddes built a saymill at Geddes in 1826. He died in 1866. John Geddes, who held many local offices and was a member of the legislature, died in 1888

There were fifteen purchasers of land in Pitts- field in 1824. the year of its settlement. As has been seen, the first person to take up land from the government in the township was George W. Noyes, who never lived there, but at Woodruff's Grove and Ann Arbor. One or two others of the first purchasers never resided in the town. Sev- eral of the first settlers arrived at about the same time and the month of June, 1824, saw several log houses in a town which on May 1, 1824, the stroke of the white man's ax had not been heard. The honor of the first settlement has generally been given to Oliver Whitmore, after whom, by the way, Whitmore lake was named, and Samuel D. McDowell. They came from New York. although Mr. Whitmore was a native of Massa . chusetts. They first met in Detroit in April. 1824. and came up the Huron river with their families in boats as far as Rawsonville, and left their fami - lies with Major Woodruff at Woodruff's Grove until the men could build a log house. Mr. Whitmore's house was built first, on the north- west quarter of section II, and while it was build- ing. Mrs. Whitmore tented on the ground and cooked for the builders. The floor of the new log house was made of split logs smoothed with an ax, and the roof of long staves, fastened on with riders. Mr. Whitmore's family consisted at the time of his wife, two grown sons, Oliver and Jo- seph, Miss Venus, and Walstin, a boy of twelve. Mr. McDowell's family consisted of his wife and an infant daughter. He had been married but two years. The two families moved into the first log house built in Pittsfield, June 1, 1824, and im- mediately thereafter turned in to build Mr. Mc. Dowell's log house on adjoining land.

Ezra Maynard and his family, and Charles .\n- derson and wife, came in June, 1824. The May- nards came from Massachusetts. They had nine children, six of them grown, at the time they came to Pittsfield. They built a house of square logs on section 3 that summer and in 1825 Mr. Maynard built a frame barn, the first of its kind in the town, which was still standing over fifty years afterwards.

Charles Anderson, a native of Ireland, and his wife, a native of England, located near Maynard. They had a two-year-old daughter and in No-

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vember, 1824, a son was born to them, the first white child born in the township, whose birth an- tedated the first birth in Ann Arbor by a year. Mr. Anderson died in 1826.

John Anderson also came about this time. The next year he was one of the grooms in a double wedding which took place in October, 1825, at the house of Ezra Maynard, when Laura Maynard was married to John Anderson, and Abby Maria Maynard was married to James T. Allen, of Ann Arbor. Evidently the young people of the early settlement did not forego the pleasures of court- ship.

Aaron Barney moved into Pittsfield from near Detroit in the summer of 1824, and built in the same section as the others. He had seven chil- dren, the oldest a young man. He built a log hut and soon he built a shop, and with a turning lathe began manufacturing hay rakes, cradles, etc.

John Hitchcock located his farm on section 4 in June, but did not get his log house up until fall. It was near the present stone schoolhouse on the Ypsilanti road and was quite a pretentious dwelling for those days. He came through from Ohio with a horse team, the only one in the town- ship for a couple of years. His family consisted of his wife, four small children, his father and mother and his wife's grandmother. It will be apparent to all who read these pages that the fam- ilies who moved into Pittsfield the year of its set- tlement, were large ones.

Still, some of the pioneers were unmarried. For instance Claudius Britton, who located where the County House farm now is, June 4, 1824. worked for Mr. McDowell until the following spring. He sold his land and moved from the township.

Luke H. Whitmore, Joseph Parsons and Lewis Barr bought land from the government in 1824 and built log houses during the winter or early spring. Whitmore's family consisted of seven. His oldest daughter, Emily, died September 12. 1825, the first death in the township and the sec- ond death in the county, Walter Oakman having died in Woodruff's Grove only two days pre- viously. James Martin also huilt a log house in the spring of 1825.

The first schoolhouse in Washtenaw county

was built in Pittsfield in the summer of 1825, be- tween the houses of Samuel McDowell and Luke H. Parsons, and Harriet Parsons took charge of the new school and also started a Sunday-school. All these early settlements in Pittsfield were in the northeast corner of the township and were in what is known as the Mallett Creek district. There were twenty-five purchasers of land from the government in 1825, and if they all had as large families as the pioneers who came in 1824, the town must have had quite a population.

The first permanent settlement in what is now Ypsilanti city was made in the fall of 1824, by John Stewart who bought the north French claim and moved into the old French trading house. Jolin Geddes has described Stewart as a quiet and inoffensive man who had probably never heard of General Ypsilanti, after whom the city, of which he was the first settler, was named. He bought his claim of 622 acres on May 29, 1824. This was the La Chambre claim which had been transferred to Godfroy in 1814. But he was not in the trading post on July 19, 1824, when John Geddes first saw Ypsilanti, and he was there when Mr. Geddes made his second trip May 25, 1825, and informed him that he had brought his family from Romulus, Seneca county, New York, in the fall of 1824. Stewart sold out to Jason Cross in 1831 and removed to Battle Creek where he lived for many years. He had a large family.

In 1825 almost all the land where Ypsilanti is located was owned by Stewart, Judge Augustus Woodward, the first territorial chief justice of Michigan, and William W. Harwood. Wood- ward had purchased the Gabriel Godfroy claim, and Harwood purchased the land first bought by Eli Kellogg in 1822, Judge Woodward never lived on his land in this county. Before this, it had been supposed that Woodruff's Grove was to be the town, but about the first of June, 1825, the United States commissioners laid out the Detroit and Chicago road, which passed through what is now Ypsilanti, and left Woodruff's Grove out in the cold. This sidetracked Major Woodruff's ambitious project and brought the city back to the site of the old French claims. The chief surveyor was Orange Risdon, long a well known pioneer in this county, who died in Saline in 1876. This

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road, the first one laid out in Washtenaw county. ran from Ypsilanti to what is now Saline and from there southwesterly, passing out of the county on section 33 of Bridgewater. Risdon, who had been employed by the government in surveying for some years, must have previously had some idea of where the road would strike, as the year previous ( 1824) he had purchased land in section 1 of Saline, where the village now it.

Messrs. Stewart, Harwood and Woodward at once laid out a village plat. Stewart and Wood- ward on the west bank of the river, and Harwood on the east bank, and they employed a Mr. Brook- field, of Detroit, to do the surveying. The only serious trouble over the new village plat was over naming the new village. Mr. Stewart called it Waterville, Mr. Harwood wanted the name Pal- myra. while Judge Woodward was insistent on the name Ypsilanti. Harwood and Stewart were on the ground and thought they ought to have the say, but neither would agree to the name the other proposed. Finally they united on the name Springfield and sent Surveyor Brookfield to De- troit to record the plat. When he got in Detroit. Judge Woodward absolutely refused to accept the name Springfield, and the other two finally agreed to accept the Greek name, and the plat of Ypsi- lanti was duly recorded in 1825.

The early settlers of Ypsilanti, like the early settlers of Pittsfield, were men who had large families. When John Stewart died, he left a family of twenty-two children. How many lived with him in the old French trading post, we are unable to state. When Mr. Harwood died in 1860, he left thirteen children living. We know that six had previously died, and the possibility is that there were more than six. Mr. Harwood was thirty-nine years old when he came to Ypsi- lanti with his second wife, who died in Ypsilanti four years later. In 1831 he removed to Pitts- field, where he lived until his death. He was married four times.

Jonathan G. Morton. with Aretus Belding. opened the first store in Ypsilanti in the spring of 1825. Mr. Morton bought two village lots for $5 each. He brought the goods for his store from Detroit by a small boat poled up the Huron river. The day after his arrival he footed it to Ann Ar-

bor over an Indian trail to get acquainted with his neighbors there. Woodruff Grove still strove to hold its own against Ypsilanti, and that fall David DeForest Ely and Jonathan T. Ely brought a still larger stock of goods to Woodruff's Grove in wagons, but the building of the Chicago road putting Ypsilanti on the main thoroughfare for all western emigrants, soon put an end to any hopes for the nearby village of Woodruff's Grove. Village lots in Ypsilanti soon went up and in July, 1827. Mark Norris paid $100 for two village lots ( half an acre) and records in his diary, "Land is already valued very high."

John Stewart built a sawmill at Ypsilanti in 1826, and Hardy and Reading built another one in 1827. Hardy and Reading built a flouring mill in 1828 and W. W. Harwood built another flour- ing mill in 1829, the dam being constructed by Harwood and Mark Norris. Mark Norris ar- rived in Ypsilanti from New York state. July 28, 1827. His diary of that date contains the follow- ing: "Have spent most of the day in viewing the village. Nature and art combine to make it a place of business. It is situated on the Huron nine miles below Ann Arbor and four miles above the landing. where boats of twenty tons' burden arrive from the lake to unload." Two days later. on Sunday, he said: "Spent most of this forenoon in searching for a man lost in the woods and sup- posed to be dead. Made no discovery. There is no church and no preaching here today. It seems to be a place for lounging and gossip. In the afternoon attended a wedding and saw Mr. Higby united in 'hymen's gentle bonds' to Miss Ann Gorham." On Tuesday, August Ist, he wrote : "This day I have been viewing the lands in the vicinity of the village. Concluded to pur- chase within a short distance of the village. The lands on the Chicago road now being built from Chicago east are mostly taken up by speculators, and also on the river." After purchasing land. Mr. Norris returned to New York for his family and returned to Ypsilanti. June 16, 1828. The party from New York consisted of Mr. and Mrs Norris and their two children. afterwards Judge Lyman D. Norris and Mrs. Elvira N. Follett, and a Mrs. Curtis who was on her way to visit her son in Superior. In Detroit they secured a horse and a

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two-wheeled gig, and started for Ypsilanti in company with Mr. Anson Brown, an Ann Arbor merchant, who took the two children with him in his one-horse wagon, the two ladies riding in the gig, and Mr. Norris walking. They reached Dix- boro about thirty-eight hours after they started, having stopped one night at a wayside tavern. At Dixboro they remained over night with Mr. and Mrs. Martin. Here the party separated, and Mr. and Mrs. Norris and children continued on alone to Ypsilanti. After a weary walk, the children riding in the gig. Mr. Norris exclaimed. "There's Ypsilanti." Mrs. Norris has thus described her emotions, "In a moment I was seated on a log looking over the half mile of distance-no house in sight, only a board shanty, with a wreath of smoky vapor creeping out of a clump of hazel bushes on the banks of the Huron. Wearied, soiled and worn, not a soul to greet me whose face I had ever seen before, except my little fam- ily, it was little wonder that I leaned my head for- ward on the stump and burst into tears," but that was soon over. Urging her husband to go for- ward and prepare their reception and provide something for two hungry children, the mother and two little ones trudged slowly onward to a narrow foot bridge, quite new, and stretched across the Huron, where now the lower iron bridge is erected. The river was rapid, narrow and clear. The bank on the west was a steep and dangerous hill. at the top of which on the right was a block house. before this Godfroy's trading post, but then (1828) a country tavern kept by Judge Oliver Whitmore. They moved at once into their house on the southeast corner of Washington and Con- gress streets, out of which Mrs. Chester Perry was moving. The front of the house was occu- pied as a store by Arden H. Ballard and Levi Cook. Mr. Norris built a dam across the river and erected a building for his carding machine, which was ready for use in the fall of 1828. In December of that year, Mrs. Norris opened a small school, assisted by Lorenzo Davis, after- wards an Ann Arbor editor. In March, 1829, they moved into the first frame house built on the east side of the river. In 1829 property in Ypsi- lanti changed hands rapidly. A Mr. Hovey

taught the school and a Mr. Perry opened a new tavern.

Ypsilanti, at an early date, had not obtained a reputation for sobriety ; but in this respect was undoubtedly like most of the other frontier set- tlements. This phase has been well stated by Rev. G. L. Foster in his sermon on "The Past of Ypsilanti" delivered on leaving the old Presbyte- rian church edifice in Ypsilanti. September 20, 1851, who spoke as follows :

"The first trading house had been established in part for the purpose of trafficking with the In- dians in intoxicating drinks ; and when permanent settlers came in. they brought these 'comforts of life' with them. To use these drinks then, was more common everywhere than now. The first settlers here were not religious men. For several years nobody lived here who could publicly pray. The first public prayer offered in the county was by Deacon Ezra Maynard in 1824. when passing through with Colonel Rumsey to settle near where Ann Arbor now is. There was no religious nucleus around which the people might gather, and no strong religious heart radiating its influ- ence for good. There was nothing to make the Sabbath differ from other days of the week, ex- cept that idleness was germinating and cultivating its natural fruits. Those who created and con- trolled the public sentiment professed to be free from religious restraints : they wished to be re- strained only from such excesses as would hinder the reputation and progress of the town. The moral state of things, as late as 1829, could not have been very desirable, according to the state- ment I have recently received from the first mis- sionary (Rev. William Jones) sent here from New York, though some religious people had already come in. He says :

"'I arrived at Ypsilanti on October 3, 1829, and found the people without a church, and in a de- plorable condition. Almost the whole village, with few exceptions, were given over to the unre- strained indulgence in intoxicating drinks. The holy Sabbath was openly desecrated by revelry, drunkenness and the pitching of quoits on the banks of the river. The first Sabbath after my arrival, as they were without even a schoolhouse or a public room for meeting, I met the people in

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Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan, Part 64

Author: Beakes, Samuel W. (Samuel Willard), 1861-; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company Publication date: 1906 Publisher: Chicago : The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co. Number of Pages: 886

Author: Beakes, Samuel W. (Samuel Willard), 1861-; S.J. Clarke Publishing Company
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: Chicago : The S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.
Number of Pages: 886