USA > Michigan > St Clair County > St. Clair County, Michigan, its history and its people; a narrative account of its historical progress and its principal interests, Vol. I > Part 4
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TERRITORY OF MICHIGAN CREATED
By act of congress passed January 11, 1805, the Territory of Michi-V gan was established. The original limits of the territory were not as extensive as the subsequent state, comprising only the lower peninsula and the eastern part of the upper peninsula. It had a white popula- tion of about three thousand, which was confined to Detroit and a nar- row fringe along the Detroit river as far south as the Raisin river and northward to Lake Huron, together with a small settlement at Mack- inac and one at the Sault.
The government of the new territory was substantially that of the Northwest Territory and consisted of a governor and three judges, all appointed by the president and who combined in an unusual way the legislative, judicial and executive functions. Acting together, the gov- ernor and judges enacted laws, the judges, when occasion arose, con- strued them, and the governor administered them. This anomalous form of government was so extremely centralized that it is difficult now to realize that men who had fought the war of the Revolution
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in order to be free from distant management, could frame and adopt artieles of government under which the governed had no voice in cleet- ing their legislators or rulers. It was in no sense a representative government, but the people at that time, who were mainly French, were not accustomed to political independence, and did not desire it, and even as late as 1818, when the question came before them, they voted not to change the form so that they might have a voice in the selection of their legislature. This was no doubt largely due to the great preponderance of the old French element, accustomed to be governed by officials appointed, not elected. In 1824, however, the territory passed under an advanced stage of government provided by congress, with a legislative council of nine members elected by the people.
The president appointed as the first governor, William Hull, who had performed a ereditable part in the Revolution and had attained the position of colonel in the army, and afterwards while living in Massa- chusetts was major general in the militia and a man of wealth and prominence. The judges were Augustus B. Woodward, a man of great abilities, but of equally great idiosynerasies; Frederick Bates, soon succeeded by John Griffin, and James Witherell.
INDIAN TITLES EXTINGUISHED
By 1810 the population of the territory had increased to 4,528; its administration in the hands of Governor Hull and the three judges pro- ceeded rather inharmoniously, and its development was slow, for several reasons. It lay to the north of and out of the path of ordinary travel from the settled east to the territories of the west. Until 1807, with the exception of Detroit and a strip six miles wide along Detroit river, prac- tically all the rest of the territory was recognized as belonging to the Indians, from whom no valid title could be obtained by individuals. In 1807 a treaty was made with the Indians by which they ceded their rights to a considerable area in the southeastern part of the territory, v ineluding St. Clair county. In 1819 another treaty was made by which a large part of the central portion of the state was ceded, and this was followed by other treaties until in 1842 all Indian rights, except to certain small reservations, were extinguished.
NATURAL RICHES FINALLY RECOGNIZED
The War of 1812, including the surrender of Detroit to the British, temporarily destroyed the American jurisdiction, but the battle of the Thames, October 5, 1813, restored the former status, and the appointment V of Lewis Cass as governor, in the place of William Hull, imparted a vigor and spirit to the administration of affairs which were soon felt in many directions. The question of land titles was unsettled for several years after the Americans came into possession in 1796. Efforts were slowly made by congress to provide a method by which people who had gone into actual occupation of land might obtain title to it, but it was not until 1807 that an aet was passed for this purpose, and the claims author-
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ized by this act were not surveyed until 1810 and 1811. Although by the Indian treaty of 1807 about six million acres of good land in the southeastern part of the territory became public land, subject to survey and sale. the treaty line itself was not surveyed until 1815, and in that year Edward Tiffin, the surveyor general of the United States. reported that all the lower part of Michigan was extremely sterile and barren and that not more than one acre in a hundred. or one in a thousand. would admit of cultivation.
It is probable that this report did not do much damage. as it was not published at the time and the survey of public lands in the territory began the following year. Efforts were made to attract immigration. and to diffuse knowledge of the quality and extent of the land available for purchase from the government. and the developments of later years have made the " Tiffin Report" a subject of ridicule.
Wm. Darby, the author of an "Emigrant's Guide " and other descrip- tive works, visited Detroit in 1818. and in his book, "A Tour From the City of New York to Detroit." gave a favorable report upon the terri- tory. its soil and climate, timber and products of the soil.
In 1818 Estwiek Evans. a noted and eccentric traveler, made a trip from New Hampshire to New Orleans, returning by way of Detroit, and published an account of his journey in a book with the peculiar title, "1 Pedestrious Tour." and in it he said : "In traveling more than four thousand miles in the western parts of the United States I met no tract of country which upon the whole impressed my mind so favorably as the Michigan territory. The soil of this territory is generally fertile and a considerable portion of it is very rich. Its climate is delightful. and its situation novel and interesting. ' One observation which he makes shows how great was the ignorance at that time of one of the greatest sources of Michigan wealth: "The growth of timber here is principally black walnut, sugar maple, ehm, sycamore. and pine. There is not, however, an abundance of the latter." Such reports began to draw attention to the possibilities of Michigan. In 1825 the opening of the Erie canal made the transportation of people and products between the east and Michigan easy and rapid. The population of the territory increased between 1820 and 1830 from 9,048 to 31,639, and during the next decade at even a much higher ratio.
MICHIGAN BECOMES A STATE
By 1832 the people of the territory felt that they had increased in number and importance enough to entitle them to statehood. and in December of that year formal application was made to congress for admis- sion as a state. A census was taken in 1834 to determine the population and it was found that in the four years since the last national census there had been an increase to 87.278, or nearly three hundred per cent.
In January, 1835, the legislative council, feeling that a population of this size should no longer be deprived of state government, particularly as by the ordinance of 1787 it was expressly provided that when the free inhabitants of any of the three or five states which might be formed out of the Northwest Territory should number 60,000 they might form a perma-
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nent constitution and state government, called a convention to meet in May and form a constitution. This convention was held, a state consti- tution framed and adopted, senators and a representative elected, and a memorial from the senate and house of representatives of the state of Michigan sent to congress requesting admission into the Union.
Action upon this request was complicated by the controversy which had been going on for some time with increasing bitterness between the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan over their common boundary line. After much trouble, and many threats of war and arming of forces, and marching and counter-marching, congress settled the matter by allowing the disputed territory to Ohio and compensating Michigan by the addition of what is now the Upper Peninsula and required Michi- gan to assent to these conditions before it could be admitted as a state. One convention was held in April, 1836, and this provision rejected, but as the people were anxious for statehood, another convention was held in December, the conditions of congress accepted and Michigan was admitted as a state in January, 1837.
PROGRESS UNDER STATEHOOD
All this controversy and danger of war had not diminished the inflow of settlers. In 1836 considerably more than four million acres of public land was sold, an amount greater by more than one million aeres than was sold in any other state or territory in the same period.
The eensus of 1840 showed a population of 212,267, an increase during the decade of six hundred per cent. At the time of the adoption of the first state constitution, the people were ambitious and optimistie, and incorporated a provision expressly encouraging the state to aid in the making and extension of internal improvements. During the first four years of the new state, railroads and canals, calling for the ultimate expenditure by the state of many million dollars, were authorized. The appropriations for railroads and canals by the legislature of 1838 amounted to over one and one-half million dollars. The traffic to supply these arteries of trade did not exist, the state was still a wilderness, with a multitude of new clearings and new homes just in the process of crea- tion, but everyone was hopeful. By 1840 the opposite state of mind existed; the panie of 1837 had come with its destruction of eredit, the building of canals and railroads ceased, and the state was glad, in 1846, to sell its railroads and retire from business in those lines. When the people came to adopt a new constitution in 1850. the memory of the results of the former state activity was so strong that they expressly provided that the state should not aid in internal improvements.
A period of fifty-seven years elapsed before another constitution was adopted, and the people of the state are now living under their third charter of government, adopted in 1907.
Since Michigan became a state three-quarters of a century has passed, and many and marvellous changes have come. From a population of about 175,000 it has increased to nearly three millions. Its largest city then contained less than 9,000 people : now 500.000. Its railroads have
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY
grown from less than 30 miles to 13,000 miles; its taxes for state pur- poses have increased 30 times.
The vast extent of valuable timber which then covered the state was often regarded as a hindrance to development, rather than an asset of great value, and the state and the nation both pursued the short-sighted and extravagant policy of giving away to a few enterprising individuals a property which, administered with ordinary prudence, would have created a heritage so great that the state of Michigan would never have needed to collect a state tax to support and extend all desirable forms of state activity.
In many ways, however, Michigan has done much to be proud of. Its system of education has been thorough and extensive, culminating in a university standing high among the world's educational institutions. It has had a long line of public officials, capable and honest ; its judiciary has ranked among the highest, and in its material resources, minerals, timber, fertility and variety of soil, its climate and its unequalled water advantages, it furnishes to its citizens the widest opportunities, and it is no mean boast for a man to proclaim himself a citizen of Michigan.
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CHAPTER II
EARLY MAPS AND DESCRIPTIONS
THE GALLINEE MAP-LA SALLE-HENNEPIN VOYAGE AND NARRATIVE- LAHONTAN AND CADILLAC-GEOGRAPHER TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -- DELISLE, POPPLE AND OTHERS-FIRST AMERICAN GEOG- RAPHY-EMIGRANT'S DIRECTORY-SCHOOLCRAFT ON THE ST. CLAIR REGION.
The first white men to traverse St. Clair river, whose records have been preserved, were Dollier and Gallinée, two French priests who came up the river in the spring of 1670. It is true that Joliet had come down the river the preceding year, but unfortunately his maps and records were lost by the overturning of his canoe in the St. Lawrence river as he approached Montreal. In 1650 Sanson, the French geographer, had published a map of North America, which was the first to show all the Great Lakes, including Lake St. Clair, and their intercommunication and connection with the St. Lawrence, but this map gives no details of this region.
THE GALLINEE MAP
The map of Gallinée, who was an engineer as well as a priest, while poorly proportioned and not at all exact in its relative positions of the bodies of either land or water-he had no instruments of precision with him on the journey-is, however, of much interest and importance. It notes the chief physical characteristics of the route traveled, which included the Upper St. Lawrence river, Lakes Ontario, Erie, St. Clair and the cast shore of Lake Huron, with return down the Ottawa river.
The descriptive account of the journey says that after passing up the Detroit river they "entered a small lake about ten leagues in length and almost as many in breadth, called by M. Sanson the Salt Water lake, but we saw no sign of salt in this lake. We entered the outlet of Lake Michigan, which is not a quarter of a league in width (by which he means St. Clair river). At length, after ten or twelve leagues, we entered the largest lake in all America, called the fresh water sea of the Hurons or in Algonquin Michigan." (Lake Huron was called by some early ge- ographers, Lake Michigan.)
Upon the map opposite the St. Clair flats are the words "great
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meadows (or prairies), " and the mouths of two streams emptying into St. Clair river upon the west side are shown.
LA SALLE-HENNEPIN VOYAGE AND NARRATIVE
The second traveler and explorer of whom record remains was La Salle, who had formed the ambitious program of uniting by a chain of posts and settlements the French territory along the St. Lawrence with the settlement at the mouth of the Mississippi. In the historie "Griffon." the first sailing vessel upon the western lakes. La Salle set sail from his shipyard upon the Niagara river August 7, 1679. Fortunately for pos- terity, he was accompanied by Louis Hennepin. a Recollect priest, who has preserved for us the main incidents of the journey, and whose descriptions are in the main reliable, although he was absurdly egotistie in the importance he assigns to himself, and on all occasions minimizes or entirely omits to mention the services or importance of others.
After Hennepin's return to Europe he published in 1697 an account of his experiences in a book entitled "A New Discovery of a Large Country in America," and in it. after narrating the incidents of the preparation and trip through Lake Erie. and referring to the country between Lakes Erie and Huron. he says: "The country between those two lakes is very well situated and the soil very fertile. The banks of the strait are vast meadows, and the prospect is terminated with some hills covered with vineyards, trees bearing good fruit, groves and forests so well disposed that one would think nature alone could not have made. without the help of art. so charming a prospect. That country is stocked with stags, wild goats and bears, which are good for food, and not fierce. as in other countries : some think they are better than our pork. Turkey cocks and swans are there also very common: and our men brought several other beasts and birds whose names are unknown to us. but they are extraordinary relishing.
"The forests are chiefly made up of walnut trees, chestnut trees, plum trees and pear trees. loaded with their own fruit and vines. There is also abundance of timber fit for building: so that those who shall be so happy as to inhabit that noble country cannot but remember with gratitude those who have discovered the way, by venturing to sail upon an unknown lake for above one hundred leagues. That charming strait lies between 40 and 41 degrees of northern latitude.'
This language is perhaps a little strongly colored, and it is probable that where he says wild goats. he had seen small deer. but it requires little imagination even at the present. with the river banks no longer covered with the beautiful timber native to them, to reconstruct the panorama as it slowly spread before the eyes of those Frenchmen more than two centuries and a quarter ago, as they came up the noble St. Clair river. A little further on in his account, Hennepin says: "The current of that strait is very violent. but not half so much as that of Niagara, and therefore we sailed up with a brisk gale, and got into the strait between the Lake Huron and the Lake St. Claire ; this last is very shallow, especially at its mouth. The Lake Huron falls into this of St. Claire by several canals, which are commonly interrupted by sands
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and rocks. We sounded all of them and found one at last about one league broad without any sands, its depth being everywhere from three to eight fathoms water. We sailed up that canal, but were forced to drop our anchors near the mouth of the lake for the extraordinary quan- tity of waters which came down from the upper lake and that of Illinois because of a strong northwest wind had so much augmented the rapidity of the current of this strait that it was as violent as that of Niagara.
"The wind turning southerly, we sailed again, and with the help of twelve men who hauled our ship from the shore, got safely the 23rd of August, into the Lake Huron."
By the upper lake and the lake of Illinois. Hennepin means Lake Superior and Lake Michigan.
The map made to accompany the "New Discovery" indicates approx- imately the general location of the Great Lakes and St. Clair river, but is on too small a scale to show any detail, except that the country lying west of St. Clair river is densely wooded.
LAHONTAN AND CADILLAC
Nine years later, in 1688, Louis, Baron de Lahontan came up the St. Clair river to take over from Duluth the charge of Fort St. Joseph, which had been built two years before on the site where Fort Gratiot was afterwards placed. He thus describes his journey: "September 6th we entered the strait of the Lake of Huron, where we met with a slack current of half a league in breadth that continued till we arrived in the Lake of St. Claire, which is twelve leagues in circumference. The 8th of the same month we steered on to the other end, from whence we had but six leagues to run against the stream till we arrived in the mouth of the Lake of Huron, where we landed on the 14th. You cannot imagine the pleasant prospect of this strait, and of the little lake, for their banks are covered with all sorts of wild fruit trees. "Tis true the want of agriculture sinks the agreeableness of the fruit. but their plenty is very surprising. We spied no other animals on the shore but herds of harts and roebucks. And when we came to little islands we scoured them in order to oblige these beasts to cross over to the continent, upon which, they offering to swim over, were knocked on the head by our canoemen that were planted all round the islands."
About 1701 either Cadillac or some one connected with his establish- ment at what is now Detroit, but at that time was nameless, wrote so enthusiastic a description of this general locality that it is worth repeat- ing: "Since the trade of war is not that of a writer, I cannot without rashness draw the portrait of a country so worthy of a better pen than mine; but since you have ordered me to give you an account of it. I will do so, telling you that Detroit is, probably, only a canal or a river of moderate breadth, and twenty-five leagues in length, according to my reckoning, lying north-northeast, and south-southwest about the 41st degree (of latitude). through which the sparkling and pellucid waters of Lakes Superior, Michigan and Huron (which are so many seas of sweet water) flow and glide away gently and with a moderate current into Lake Erie, into the Ontario or Frontenac, and go at last
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY
to mingle in the River St. Lawrence with those of the ocean. The banks are so many vast meadows, where the freshness of these beautiful streams keep the grass always green. These same meadows are fringed with long and broad avenues of fruit trees, which have never felt the careful hand of the watchful gardener; and fruit trees, young and old, droop under the weight and multitude of their fruit, and bend their branches towards the fertile soil which has produced them. In this soil so fertile, the ambitious vine which has not yet wept under the knife of the industrious vine-dresser, forms a thick roof with its broad leaves and its heavy clusters over the head of whatever it twines round, which it often stifles by embracing it too closely. Under these vast avenues you may see assembling in hundreds the shy stag and the timid hind with the bounding roebuck, to pick up eagerly the apples and plums with which the ground is paved. It is there that the careful turkey hen calls back her numerous brood, and leads them to gather the grapes; it is there that their big cocks come to fill their broad and gluttonous crops. The golden pheasant, the quail, the partridge, the woodcock, the teeming turtle-dove, swarm in the woods and cover the open country, intersected and broken by groves of full-grown forest trees, which form a charming prospect, which of itself might sweeten the melancholy tedium of solitude. There the hand of the pitiless mower has never shorn the juicy grass on which bisons of enormous height and size fatten.
"The woods are of six kinds-walnut trees, white oaks, red, bastard ash, ivy, white wood trees and cottonwood trees. But these same trees are as straight as arrows, without knots, and almost without branches except near the top, and of enormous size and height. It is from thence that the fearless eagle looks steadily at the sun, seeing beneath him enough to glut his formidable claws.
"The fish there are fed and laved in sparkling and pellucid waters, and are none the less delicious for the bountiful supply (of them). There are such large numbers of swans that the rushes among which they are massed might be taken for lilies. The gabbling goose, the duck, the teal and the bustard are so common there that, in order to satisfy you of it, I will only make use of the expression of one of the savages, of whom I asked before I got there whether there was much game there. 'There is so much,' he told me, 'that it only moves aside (long enough) to allow the boat to pass.'
"Can it be thought that a land in which nature has distributed every- thing in so complete a manner could refuse to the hand of a careful husbandman who breaks into its fertile depths the return which is expected of it ?
"In a word, the climate is temperate, the air very pure; during the day there is a gentle wind, and at night the sky, which is always placid, diffuses sweet and cool influences, which cause us to enjoy the benignity of tranquil sleep.
"If its position is pleasing, it is no less important, for it opens or closes the approach to the most distant tribes which surround these vast sweet water seas.
"It is only the opponents of the truth who are the enemies of this
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HISTORY OF ST. CLAIR COUNTY
settlement, so essential to the increase of the glory of the king, to the spread of religion, and to the destruction of the throne of Baal."
GEOGRAPHER TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
In 1778 Thomas Hutchins published "A Topographical Description of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina," which was intended to accompany and explain "A New Map of the Western Parts of Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland and North Carolina." This map was 3514 x 4234 inches and included not only the territory named in the title, but also part of the Mississippi and Illinois rivers, Lake Erie and part of Lakes Huron and Michigan, with the peninsula between. In the preface to his "Description" he states that the lakes shown in his map were done from his own surveys made preceding and during the French and English war, and since that time in many reconnoitering tours which he had made between the years 1764 and 1775.
Thomas Hutchins, the only person ever having the right to the title of "Geographer to the United States of America,"' is generally credited with having devised the rectangular system of surveys of public lands, and it is certain that he was the first to put it in practice. His map gives the relative locations of Lake Erie, Lake St. Clair and Lake Huron with approximate accuracy. It is the first to show the different chan- nels at the mouth of St. Clair river. There are three rivers emptying into the St. Clair from the west, one a short, unnamed stream represent- ing Belle river, as opposite its mouth is a small island. A few miles above and evidently intended to represent Pine river is a stream named Riviere a Chines; a short distance above that is another small island, and a little south of the entrance of St. Clair river is a stream coming from the west of considerable length, called Riviere au Sapine, and three or four miles above its mouth is marked "Saw Mill." It seems probable that Hutchins had depended somewhat on his memory here. Riviere au Sapine means river of the pine, or pine lumber, and the mill indicated may be the Sinclair mill built about 1765 on Pine river or a mill said to have been built on Bunce Creek about 1740.
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