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BATTLE CREEK BY A. D. P. VAN BUREN
Being an intelligent young' man, of agreeable manners and much personal pride, he could hardly brook his destitute condition. His father saw this state of affairs, and being unable to get any cloth for a pair of pantaloons for Aranthus, he took his gun, and Crocket-like, went out hunting. He soon brought down a large buck, ripped off his hide, tanned it, and of it made his son a pair of pantaloons. _,
The following account relates to building the first house in Battle Creek, called the Foster house. As we have stated in a previous article, Sherman Comings, of Toland Prairie, had borrowed money of Daniel G. Gurnsey, whom
he met at White Pigeon in 1831. The account we now present, the writer got of James R. Comings, of Galesburg, son of Sherman Comings; it is copied from the account hook of the latter. The Mr. Rich mentioned is Mr. Estes Rich, who, it seems, worked for Mr. Comings, as he charges his labor to Mr. Gurnsey: This account fixes the time when the work on the house was begun and when they had the "raising, " which was in September. Also, when the building was finished, for the "five days myself and son, " being ten days' labor, which, as the account has it, was performed in October. While Mr. Comings and son, Rich, when with them, were building this house, they boarded with Isaac Toland, who lived south of the river. They forded the Kalamazoo going to and returning from their meals each day. Mr. Toland had been a neighbor of Mr. Comings' on Toland Prairie, where he had located in 1828, Mr. Comings settling there in the fall of 1820. Josiah Goddard moved Sherman Comings and family into Michigan late in the fall of 1829.
Michigan
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