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EARLY MICHIGAN MICHIGAN TERRITORY IN 1820
BY ALFRED L, DRIGGS, OP CONSTANTINE
[From the St. Joseph County Advertiser, July 9, 1885. ]
There are few persons now living, who, from personal experience, have any idea of the trials, adventures and hardships of those who, over 50 years ago went into the wilderness of Michigan to carve out homes for themselves. It must be hard for the present inhabitants of this densely populated, highly cultivated and prosperous state to realize that but little more than 50 years ago it was really and truly a howling wilderness-the home of wild animals and Indians, more savage and more dreaded than the wild animals It seems almost like a dream that all this growth and improvement had so recent a beginning. While enjoying the bountiful present, a knowledge of the past and of the early days in Michigan will not be unprofitable, and trust not uninteresting. By request of some of my friends, I will give a partial sketch of events, and my experience the first five years in Michigan. At the age of 21 I left my parents' home in Middleburgh, Schohane county. N. Y., on the first day of May, 1831, for Michigan. I arrived in Detroit, I think, on the 13th. and three days later at Jackson. The county seat had just been located there. I soon rented the only saw mill in the county, near the village, which I ran until the middle of July, when I was taken*with the ague, and had it on and off until the first of October. I then left Jackson for White Pigeon in company with Daniel Hogan, then a merchant at Jackson, who had a horse and buggy. At that time there was not a bridge over any river, creek, or marsh between Jackson and White Pigeon.
There were only two rough board houses at Marshall; only two buildings at Kalamazoo, a log house by Bronson, the first settler in the town, and a board shanty by an Indian trader, named Austin. I left Kalamazoo for White Pigeon, at that time the only place of trade, except Niles, in southwest . Michigan.
MICHIGAN
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