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BATTLE CREEK BY A. D. P. VAN BUREN
Starkweather went on. The deacon in a short time heard the report of a rifle. He soon learned that "Len. " had killed the bear He then borrowed Dea. Case's oxen and drew his game home on a sled There was a light snow on the ground. Dea. Mason the next morning visited the spot where Starkweather shot the animal. It appears that the bear had laid down under a tree top on the dry leaves, and from where Starkweather stood when he fired he could just see his head. A little thing was the mean: of his killing the bear. The bullet hit a small twig that was between tun and the bear; this turned it just enough from its course to hit the animal in the head. Had it not been for the twig the ball would have missed the mars A few years later, while at the funeral of Edwin Dickinson, on Gogua
Prairie, as the relatives and" friends were at the grave, and as the coffin was lowered into the grave, a large black bear passed by and so near as to frighten the horses. Just as he was opposite the grave he stopped, looked at the group a moment, and then walked on perfectly unconcerned. Henry Hinman and Martin Metcalf of Battle Creek, and several others in the city, yet distinctly remember this incident.
MRS. DE. JOHN BEACH.
Harriet Van Tuyle was born in Grantville, Washington county, Few York, March 25, 1800. She was married to Mr. John Beach on the 1st of May, 1823. Her husband, some thirteen years later, visited the far west, and selected a portion of wild land in the south part of the township of Milton, now Battle Creek, and erected a log house thereon. Mrs. Beach the same year, 1836, with her youngest child, then a babe (now Mrs. D. P. Simmons), started for what was then termed far-off Michigan.
Michigan
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