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EARLY MICHIGAN MICHIGAN TERRITORY IN 1820
Through the month of December we got our house up, a. building of 16x18 feet inside, with a shingle roof, two floors, a glass window, and board doors; a decidedly aristocratic mansion for those days, for it had a stick chimney above the edge of the roof. About the middle of January our stock of corn, on which we depended for our corn meal for bread and for feeding a team of oxen, had got so low that it became necessary for one of us to go to Monroe, thirty five miles, for that and other
needed supplies for winter and spring. I was not strong enough to chop
but thought I could go, and left with my oxen and sled, the snow being nearly
a foot deep. The first day I went about twenty miles to the mouth of the
Saline river, the next day to Monroe, and traded some deer skins and peltries
we had got of the Indians, and with a little money bought a barrel of Ohio
flour, a barrel of salt, a few groceries, nails and other needed indispensable
things for cabin use, and, with what corn I could haul, got back seven miles
toward home. Next day I got to what was known as the Big Prairie, where
were some stacks of hay, put up by Mr. Evans, of Tecumseh. As I neared
the prairie, I cut a number of logs of beech and maple wood, loaded them on
my sled to make a fire with when I got to the hay stacks, and just at dusk
got there, when I took the cattle from the sled, turned them in their yoke
to the side of the stacks and let them help themselves, and I made a fire with my wood, then thawed out some bread and pork I had with me, which was hard frozen, made my supper, and creeping into the hay stack as far as
could, with my blankets, made myself as comfortable as I could for that
severely cold night, being eight miles from a settler's cabin, that being my first night in the woods alone.
MICHIGAN
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