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EARLY RECOLLECTIONS BY WM. C. HOYT
June 7th, 1873
FIRST TRIP TO MICHIGAN.
BY ENOS NORTHRUP.
February 6, 1878.
On the thirty-first day of May, 1830, I started from Hinckley, Medina county, Ohio, for Michigan, with a gentleman from the same place, as a traveling companion. We started out with a one-horse wagon, and some patent wheelheads to pay our fare on the route. Our plan was to go up the lake shore to Detroit. Well, the first day we went sixteen miles, to Columbia.
June 1—Started out this morning after a hard^ shower; went about five miles, and broke king-bolt to our wagon. We were five miles from any one, in the woods, so we mended up as best we could, and drove on as far as Ridge-ville, and put up for the night.
June 2—We struck out this morning through bad, muddy roads, and made twenty-one miles, then stopped for the night at Elbridge.
June 3—Our road to-day took us through oak openings; timber short, soil sandy. We called it a poor country, and let it go at that. We crossed the Huron river at Milan, and went on to the village of Enterprise. This is on a low prairie, the first I saw. I suppose at that time it was more properly a marsh. It is ten miles long, by six or eight wide. We put up for the night on the town line. We came nineteen miles to-day.
June If—We started out this morning through a light, sandy country, with scrub oak timber. About ten o'clock we struck the Black, or Maumee swamp. Many of the pioneers of Michigan know what the Black Swamp is better than I do. It is a place never to be forgotten by any one that traveled through it in those days.
Michigan
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