|
Michigan Select Michigan Counties
a tree or log had ever been moved; and though we did not " wade knee deep in gore " to do it, we did wade more than knee deep in mud and water, fording streams and marshes, driving over logs from twelve to eighteen inches through, which we could not move or get around.
It was in the month of November, 1835, that Israel R Hall, from Ontario county, N. Y., located 640 acres of government land on sections 3, 4, 9 and 10, township 8 south, range 5 west, which location soon became known as " Hall's Corners." It was to this location that he moved with his family in the spring of 1836, leaving the cultured society of Canandaigua for the privations of the pioneer. Mr. Samuel Beach, from Saline, Mich., formerly from Geneseo, N. Y., with his family, were now
here on section 4, and when, in the summer of 1837, they were joined by the two families of Col. Joseph W. Lawrence, Sr., and Joseph W. Lawrence, Jr., (the last named the honored father of your reader), the four families were a social community bound together by kindred ties. They brought with them from Western New York a Bible Christianity, and a love of the Sabbath and its institutions. From Sabbath to Sabbath the families gathered together under one roof, and led by the aged colonel, the patriarch of the settlement, their service of prayer and praise with the reading of a sermon from the " National Preacher." made to our little band, " the Sabbath a delight," and the surrounding settlements, pointing to this one, styled it " the Holy Land." The aged father rests at last, and his memory is blessed. Many of those early settlers have passed to "that bourne from which no traveler returns," but a goodly company yet remains to contrast the things that are with the things that were. The brothers, Joseph W. and James H. Lawrence, still occupy land on section 10, in the township of California, which they began to cultivate in 1837.
Michigan Counties
Page 5
|
|
Please help us keep this site online and to continue to bring sites like this one.
Thank you
|
