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GRAND BLANC 1833 FIRST TOWN MEETING IN GRAND BLANC
There were several passengers on board and we requested the captain to run down by the Pictured Rocks, which he did, it being a beautiful, bright afternoon. The view of the rocks., was beautiful beyond description. On our passage down the lake we passed near to and the spot was pointed out to us
where Dr. Douglass Houghton was drowned. I felt sad, very, for I was intimately acquainted with him; he was with us much of the time at Saginaw when he was locating the salt well for the state at Salt Spring on the Ta-ta-ba-was-say. Messrs. G. D. & E. S. Williams took the contract and made the brick for the well. The doctor often urged us to use our mill steam power for boring a salt well near the mill at the foot of Mackinac street, city of Saginaw, he pointing to the spot to bore, saying we were in just the best place to strike the salt basin, which in after years proved so, and was and is now worked by the Williams Brothers, sons of Gardner D. Williams. They manufacture from one hundred to one hundred and fifty barrels per day, using the surplus steam from their saw mill.
In the years 1836, '37 and '38 we had living with us in Saginaw a gentleman and his family, consisting of his wife and two beautiful daughters, by the name of Joseph J. Maiden, formerly a sea. captain. The captain and his family were very much esteemed and respected. Mrs. Maiden was a good, motherly, lovely woman; the daughters were married in Saginaw; the eldest was married to James Busby, one to a Mr. Beach, and the other to a Mr. Palmer. Mr. Palmer established a tannery, the first in Saginaw. In a few years he died, and at about the same time Mrs. Maiden died. Both were much missed in our little settlement. The captain remained with us a few years; he received the appointment of light house keeper at the Island of
Mackinac.
GRAND BLANC MICHIGAN
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