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STORY OF ANOTHER PIONEER BY C. B. STEBBINS
June 7, 1882.
Adrian was commenced about the same time with Toledo, and for some fifteen years kept about up with it in population. But Toledo, where it was said the river was so full of filth that animals could cross on it, bided its time, and is now one of the finest cities of the land.
I met a gentleman in Toledo who said his brother was building a flouring mill at Palmyra, a new village six miles below Adrian, and on his recommendation I decided to give the place a visit. I found it a pleasantly situated village, three years old, with three hundred inhabitants. A large sawmill and a flouring mill on the Raisin were nearly completed, and work was just commencing on the Palmyra and Jacksonburg railroad. The first settlers were people of culture from the Empire state, and the Congregational church was paying its pastor a salary of $600. Here, certainly was evidence of enterprise.
I visited Adrian, which was seven years old and had a population of seven hundred. It had recently got the county seat away from Tecumseh, and was altogether a more important place than Palmyra. But it had its furniture manufacturer well established, and, as I had a limited amount of capital, I decided to stop at Palmyra and "grow up with the place; " for how could a place that had grown from nothing to three hundred inhabitants in three years, was soon to have a second railroad, had a good water power, and a good country yet uncleared around it, fail in a short time to have 3, 000 ? Finding a vacant building I rented it, pulled off my coat, and proceeded to make labor honorable.
The railroad passed through the place to Adrian, and was expected soon to be continued to Kalamazoo. Its one car was modeled after the stage coach, or three coach bodies placed together. There was but one pair of trucks, and the conductor walked on an outside rail, as is still done on the open street cars.
Michigan
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