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Michigan Towns Select Towns
The next morning my husband started with his oxen and "sleigh for Ann Arbor. He was gone about one week, and got along without accident until within three miles of home, when one of his oxen gave out and could go no further. He turned him out and took the end of the yoke himself, and reached home about eleven o'clock at night, tired and hungry. The ox left by the wayside died, and we sold the other, which left us without a team. The winter soon passed away, and the time of the singing of birds came, and with it came work on our farm. We had some of our land enclosed, and, in order to secure our wheat crop, it must be fenced. We were in a close place, without a team or means to get one. It is said that' necessity is the mother of invention,' and it did not fail us in this instance. My husband felled a large oak tree, and sawed off some wheels, and made a wagon, upon which we together could draw ten rails at a time by both pulling one way, which all married people should do. In this manner we drew the rails, and fenced a field of twenty acres.
Mr. Neal, Mr. Ames and my husband procured their seed potatoes this season by making a canoe on the Rice creek, and going with it to Kalamazoo, where a Mr. Bronson had raised some to sell. They boated them up the Kalamazoo in their canoe, which took them about five days.
Michigan
Page 49
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