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Early Michigan Oliver Williams
My father purchased several, either five or seven, from the Indians and squaws, and in 1828, was paid on this account by the government of the U. S., the sum of $28 apiece for two of those Ken-tuckeyans, being the sum paid the Indians for their ransom, and this .sum was not paid until after the affidavits of those living soldiers were duly appended to the military papers properly made out at the time of purchase in Detroit. Those who had died or whose affidavits could not be obtained were never paid for, and these two small sums, thus apparently reluctantly repaid, was the only remuneration he or any of his family ever received from the general government or any other source, for all his losses during the war. His invoices in Boston the year before the war, amounted to $64,000. At the close of the war nearly all had
been swept away.
In 1835, upon settling the estate of my father, I found one bundle of dead notes, and mostly against men then dead, amounting to over $30,000. My mother, upon my handing them to her, raked open the coals and threw them into the fire at our old homestead, saying that she did not wish to be reminded by seeing them again of the horrors she
had passed through.
Michigan
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