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Michigan Select Michigan Counties
Your reader (the writer) well remembers the first school ma'am who taught in the township, Miss Sarah L. Beach, now the honored wife of Mr. Benj. Holcomb, of Fremont, Ind. I have in my mind's eye a picture of the double log house, in one apartment of which she gathered the urchins. Built of rough unhewn logs, and cobbed to the ridge, and covered over with shakes weighted down with poles, its floor of split basswood puncheons, and its furniture of the most primitive kind. The seats were slabs with two inch pegs for support, and the desks were of the same character, supported against the wall on pins driven into the logs of the house. The house itself was built by Mr. Ira Purdy in the spring of 1836, and Miss Beach opened her school therein in the fall of 1837. The next year logs were drawn together for a school building, but an accident to Mr. William Beach at the raising dispersed the company, and for a time the work was abandoned, Subsequently the site was changed and a house built of whitewood logs, hewn outside and inside, was erected in School District No. One, the lath for the ceiling being split of oak by Mr. Samuel Beach, the first justice of the peace in the township.
In this house the Rev. Louis Mills preached many times, and his son, Joseph Mills, Esq. (well known here in Lansing, and now deceased), when but sixteen years of age taught his first winter school.
When, in the summer of 1837, Mr. Joseph W. Lawrence came with his family to reside at the corners, he paid 20s. per bushel for oats to feed his team; and leaving the Chicago turnpike at Allen's prairie, and after fording Hog creek, the water of which came into our wagon-box, we reached Long lake, and camped down on its bank for the night.
Michigan Counties
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