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Lenawee County By John J. Adam, February 7th, 1878.
Some of the settlers who took up land of the more sandy or easily tilled kind, got along by using smaller plows and less powerful teams; but the thorough deep plowing on most of the openings was then considered the best. A Pennsylvania settler, John J. Schnall, who took up some land about a mile west of Clinton, in 1826, and was living there when I came to Michigan, had made out a breaking-up team by joining with a Mr. Allen, of Allen's prairie, in Hillsdale county, each of them putting in two or three yoke of cattle. Though living about forty miles or more apart, they were considered in those days as neighbors near enough to exchange such work with one another. Mr. Schnall soon after I came sold out and moved farther west, whether because he was getting too crowded, or because of an innate propensity such as some frontiersmen have, of constantly moving on, I did not learn.
My first real practical trial of pioneer life may be said to have commenced when I began to prepare for building a log house, and to split rails, etc. I had never before cut or split anything larger than some stove-wood, and had to take some lessons in such things from older backwoodsmen. I thought that I proved a pretty apt scholar, as I soon learned to do about as much for a day's work as almost any of my neighbors, although I had to hire a great deal of rail-splitting and such work done. Also by getting a lesson or two in shingle splitting and shaving, I made out to split and dress my own long shingles, or " shakes," as some called them, for a log house, and afterwards for a barn and sheds.
Michigan
Page 85
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