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EARLY MICHIGAN MICHIGAN TERRITORY IN 1820
It was in the house of the pioneer Jabez Bronson where the first election of the great town of Green was held—a town that embraced several counties and somewhat over. These large towns existed in the days when Michigan territory reached to the Mississippi and shortly after to the Missouri—as Michigan has always been a growing state. * Counties sometimes were very large. Brown and Michilimackinac counties once reached across the lake into what is now Wisconsin. The people were few and could not fill the land, and so the land reached out and took in the people.
Wayne was the first great county. In 1796 it was all of lower Michigan, part of upper Michigan, part of Indiana and Ohio, and extended over into Wisconsin. * It had subsequently reductions and enlargements by proclamations or statutes until it took its present form in 1826. Brown, Crawford and Michilimackinac counties were striking examples of this reaching out to take In all the people. By the proclamation of Gov. Cass in October, 1818, they comprised the entire Michigan territory, to which the Indian title had been extinguished, reaching to the Mississippi, excepting the counties of Wayne, Monroe and Macomb, which were then about their present dimensions.
The changes in the geography of this state, from its French occupation ¦over two hundred and fifty years ago, would form an interesting study. And the maps showing the English settlements and control, the extinguishment of, the Indian titles by treaty after our government ascendancy, would be very valuable. That Massachusetts and Connecticut once projected through southern Michigan is an interesting fact, and like many others relative to •our early history, is little known.
MICHIGAN
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