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INCIDENTS IN THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE SAGINAW VALLEY BY JUDGE ALBERT MILLER
I was on board the boat at one time when a vessel at the foot of the rapids hailed her for a tow. The captain of the vessel came on board and gave the captain of the steamboat one hundred dollars for a tow into Lake Huron. Some parties of the vessel stepped on board the steamboat for a ride. The towline had just been made fast when a fresh breeze sprang up, and the vessel hoist sail, cast off from the steamboat and proudly sailed into the lake, leaving the steamboat to struggle with the current, and race with the stump after she got fairly into the lake she lay to and waited for the steamboat to com up, and allow the vessel's passengers to get on board.
THE FIRST VESSEL BUILT ON THE SAGINAW RIVER
In the early days of Saginaw, before any dredging machines were brought to the river, the Carrollton bar was such an obstruction to the navigation of the upper portion of the river, where nearly all the business of the valley was then done, that it was a great detriment to the business interests of the place, and means had to be devised to overcome the difficulty. In the com mon stages of water no craft drawing over four and a half feet of water could pass over the bar.
Nelson Smith, a brother-in-law of the late Norman and Col. William L. I Little, came to Saginaw in 1837. and in 1844 and 1845 was doing a mercan tile business at Saginaw City and owned the little schooner "Mary" a twenty tons burden, which sufficed to do the business of the place at that time. The little schooner made regular trips between Saginaw and Detroit
but in the fall of 1846 she was wrecked on the Canada shore of Lake Huron and became a total loss; so Mr. Smith conceived the idea of building a larger vessel, to supply the demands of the increasing trade of the Saginaw river, that might be adapted to its navigation.
Michigan
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