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MICHIGAN CHAPTER 13 Progress of the Colony Under the Improved
Conditions
He
took their letters from them and told them to make themselves scarce. He states incidentally that they had with them a copy of the Pennsylvania Gazette of July 2tth, containing a declaration of the colonies of their independence of the mother country, which declaration was adopted at Philadelphia on the preceding 4th of July. This was evidently not very welcome news to him, but it caused no sensation whatever among the people of the settlement.
A short time before this a project had been started which evidently originated with Alexander Henry, a trader who had spent some time in the Lake Superior country and who has been already mentioned as an eye witness of the massacre at Michilimackinac, to undertake the working of copper mines. He organized a company and obtained a royal charter for this purpose. A number of prominent Englishmen were concerned in it, including the Duke of Gloucester. Sir William Johnson was interested as was also a Mr. Bostwick, a trader who had been a companion and associate of Henry in his upper lake enterprises. Practical operations were in the hands of Mr. Henry, who may have been a very good Indian trader but was far from being a mining expert. A vessel was purchased and loaded with supplies and a number of miners were employed. They sought out a location on the Ontonagon river with which Henry was evidently familiar, as it was there he had secured with no other tool than an axe a considerable mass of native copper which he sent to London and which is still displayed in the British Museum. They blasted thirty
feet into the solid rock. But it was soon found that the blasting was expensive and they had very little copper to show as a result. The project was, therefore, soon abandoned, the miners discharged and the vessel sold. So this enterprise came to a disastrous end and it was many a long day before another like it was started.
MICHIGAN
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