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EARLY MICHIGAN MICHIGAN TERRITORY IN 1820
The next day I got home, some seventeen miles, about sundown, with my load of about 1, 200 pounds of much needed things for future use.
FIRST WINTER IN COLDWATER, 1830-31.
After the winter of 1826-7 we spent three more winters in Tecumseh, making improvements on our farms, but in June,. 1830, we sold out our farms there
and in October, 1830, bought that part of your city lying on the east three fourths of section 21. The four winters spent on the Raisin made us cor
elude that the winters of Michigan were much less severe than they were i
Ontario county, N. Y., for they had proved so; but those of 1830-31 and 1831-i
the first we spent in Coldwater, forced us to the conclusion that either a change
from the eastern watershed to the western made harder winters, or that th
Indians were correct in their declaration that the white men brought more snow and colder weather with them to kill off their ponies and the game upon
which they depended for their living, for these first two winters
1830-1 and 1831-2, were much more severe than any we had before met i
Michigan. And these winters we had to bring our provisions for ourselves, at
most of our corn and grain and part of our hay for our stock from Tecumseh
nearly sixty miles, and on such roads as the frontiersmen had opened on the
line of the Indian trail, with not a stream bridged but all to be forded, and
was cheerfully done, for our hearts were strong, our minds determined. On anticipations of good farms, freedom from rents, independence from Ian
lords and from being required to change places at another man's command
and all the future bright and blooming with promise of future fortune, we were willing to work and win, only asking life and health for us and ours, and the results were fully accomplished in all southwestern Michigan.
MICHIGAN
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