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HISTORY OF ALPENA COUNTY BY WILLIAM BOULTON IN 1876
The work before him is to cut down the trees, cut them into log lengths, chop off the branches and pile them. This work will take up all his spare time, until he has cut as much as he thinks he can clear for the season. The brush tent answers admirably as long as the season is dry, but a wet day teaches him the necessity of having a more substantial shelter, so he will be obliged to leave his work of clearing and build a small log hut, covered either with troughs or cedar bark. The first season the settler will probably be able to cut down an acre or two of the forest, leaving it until the next season to dry, so that it will burn more readily; and when this is logged and burned, he has a small patch ready to plant with potatoes. Thus the work goes on with unflagging energy, until at last the settler moves his family on to his homestead and becomes a regular settler.
It takes several long years before the wilderness is converted into a valuable farm, and the settler will many a time see the "gaunt wolf of starvation" staring him in the face, and the bottom of the flour barrel will often look reproachfully at him. But year by year comforts begin to gather around the settler and his family; first a garden is planted; fresh vegetables adorn his table; fowls cackle about his door; his cellars or root-houses begin to be filled with potatoes, turnips, etc., rand he has some to spare. A cow is then added to his stock; his barn begins to be filled with hay and grain; he becomes the possessor of a horse or two, and at last, after a few years of heroic self-denial and toil, he sees his dreams fulfilled; he has earned a home for himself and family; he has attained an independence by his own hands; he has obeyed the Divine mandate "to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, " and now, when the work has been done, and the hardships, sufferings, toils, and privations lie in the past, regrets not the struggles he has gone through in attaining it.
ALPENA COUNTY MICHIGAN
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