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STORY OF ANOTHER PIONEER BY C. B. STEBBINS
June 7, 1882.
here were no vacant houses, and after boarding awhile, with a room in a half-story, under the roof, and suffering sometimes from short rations—flour being fourteen dollars a barrel, and meat hardly to be had at any price—we secured a chamber in Father Warner's new house. The room had a fire-place and a large closet adjoining. There we enjoyed our first housekeeping through the winter; my wife doing her work at the fire-place, the one room being kitchen, bedroom, and parlor. In the spring—1838—we had the good fortune to secure a house.
I had heard that people in Michigan had a disease called fever and ague; but I was like the sinner who. knows that misery is the usual result of sin, but hopes himself to be an exception to the rule; and I took the risk with little thought. Had I known what was in fact before us, I would about as soon have taken my bride by the hand and walked into the lake -as to bring her to suffer what we did. It is said we should give the devil his due; and so we must admit that this horrible disease was not an unmixed evil. Consumption was in those days almost unknown in Michigan; and I knew of some whom doctors at the east told they would in all probability die of consumption, fully cured of that disease by a change in their ailment to a less dangerous bilious tendency. We passed two years without serious suffering; but in July, 1839, the plague that walked in darkness and wasted at noonday, began to prevail; and by the close of the month more than half of the population were on the sick list. My family consisted of my wife, myself, and a widow whose husband was mate of an armed merchant vessel, and had both hands shot off in an engagement with pirates.
Michigan
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