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Michigan Select Michigan Counties
The following memoranda, from the lips of Alfred Holcomb, interested me very much, and will abundantly repay the reader for the time he may spend in their perusal: On the 3d June, 1831, he went aboard the old Superior at Buffalo, destined for Detroit. At the mouth of Black River, in consequence of a shipwreck, the steamer was detained seven days for repairs. The boat was ten days from Buffalo to Detroit. Mr. Holcomb, wife and two children arrived at Dry Prairie on the first day of July. At Detroit a man with his team was hired to carry them to Athens. At Jackson, then consisting of three houses, the team gave out. Mr. Holcomb left his wife and children here and made a journey to Dry
Prairie after two yoke of oxen, with which to complete moving his family to their destined home. Another ten days was consumed between Detroit and Dry Prairie. In this whole route there were no bridges. At very wet and miry places, half built causeways kept the teams in sight of their drivers. Streams were all forded. The family camped out every night between Detroit and Dry Prairie, except at Ann Arbor, which then had five or six houses. Lot Whiteomb, a recent emigrant from Vermont, had put up a shanty on seminary land at Dry Prairie, into which Mr. Holcomb moved his family. A log school-house was raised in 1831, and every year since that period a school has been kept in that district. To reach a grist-mill and a doctor, a journey of twenty-five miles each way was made. In 1834 a Methodist minister from Kentucky, of the name of Dickinson, commenced preaching at Holcomb's house. The first mail route was extended to Dry Prairie in 1835.
Michigan Counties
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