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SETTLEMENT IN MICHIGAN BY HON. G. V. N. LOTHROP
Edwin Howard Lothrop was born at Easton, Bristol county, Mass., in the Old Plymouth Colony, on March 22, 1806, and was the oldest son of Howard Lothrop and Sally Williams Lothrop. He was of Pilgrim lineage, his ancestors having settled in the old colony as early as 1656, from which time the family had continuously lived there.
Howard Lothrop was a farmer of intelligence and" influence, a good specimen of the old New England school, and for many years one of the prominent citizens of his locality.
Edwin grew up on his father's farmland during all his earliest years, he was actively engaged in the labors of the farm. He thus acquired the tastes and practical knowledge which determined the pursuits of his maturer years. In 1824 he entered Amherst college, where he graduated in 1828. For a short time thereafter he lived in Albany, N. Y., engaged in commercial business. While there his attention was drawn to the then little known terri-, tory of Michigan, but just beginning to draw to itself a part of the tide of western emigration. He resolved to go with it.
He reached Detroit early in the summer of 1830. Detroit was then a frontier outpost, with only the population of a large village. The interior of Michigan was mostly a wilderness, known only to hunters and trappers, and occupied by the scanty remnants of the Pottawattomies. But he had heard of the fertile soil and beautiful prairies of southwestern Michigan, and he was drawn thither. Procuring saddle horses, with only one companion, he set out on his journey. West of Ann Arbor there were hardly any settlements, or roads, and his way was principally by old Indian trails.
MICHIGAN
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