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FORTY YEARS AGO (1833) BY REV. ELIJAH H. PILCHER
CHOLERA IN 1832.
The first advent of the cholera to this State was while I was on this circuit, in 1832, and well do I remember when Colonel Clark called out the military at Ann Arbor and marched out of the village to the east to stop the stage coach to prevent the introduction of the disease. Notwithstanding this precaution, it came and carried off many, and the new village of Marshall was nearly depopulated. This was also the year of the Black-hawk war, and well do I remember the panic and of meeting the soldiers on their march eastward—"Who marched up the hill, and then marched down again. "
HOUGHING IT.
So many of the marshes were unbridged, that sometimes my horse would mire down several times in a day. It was often necessary to dismount and assist him out. In this way the water often came over the top of the boots, and I had to ride with wet feet and limbs, and the latter would become so chafed that it was necessary to wind them with a silk handkerchief to ride with any comfort. The people of this day can form no idea of the labor, inconvenience and suffering incident to traveling a circuit "here in 1831-32. What was the pecuniary compensation? One hundred dollars a year and board around. We had to share with the people in the coarseness and scantiness of their fare, and sleep in their cabins. It is difficult for even myself to realize the change which has come over the face of the country; that where, so few years ago, it was a wilderness, there are now teeming thousands, with beautiful farms and thriving villages and cities; that in the very midst of the city of Jackson my horse was swamped among rolling logs; that the best hotel in the same city was a double log house, that our best Christian chapel
was a bar-room in the same hotel.
MICHIGAN
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