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EARLY SETTLEMENT OF SOUTHWESTERN
MICHIGAN BY A. B. COPLEY.
June 7, 1882.
While at school, Detroit east, Fort Dearborn west, and Fort Wayne south were the nearest settlements. What changes in her experience! yet she is in full possession of her powers of mind and body, only sixty-nine years old, with hardly a gray hair in her head, and yet a school-girl in western Michigan within ten years from the Chicago massacre, and not one hundred miles from the place of its occurrence.
To go back again to the first settlements of southwestern Michigan, other than traders and missionaries. In 1822, Esquire Thompson, a Virginian by birth, was the pioneer farmer of the St. Joseph valley. He followed McCoy in 1822, before the mission buildings were completed, coming from Union county, Indiana, and after spending a few days, returned.
In the spring of 1823 he returned, and after a few days' examination, located on the east bank of the river, just above Mies city, built a cabin, planted a few acres of corn, and returned for his family, consisting of a wife and four children. The Indians objected to his raising corn, 'stating that their ponies would destroy it, and that he had no right there; but he discussed the treaty with them, knowing that he had rights and claiming them; said that he would raise corn or die. They said: "Much brave, " and left. His first crop was ^ destroyed, however, and he was under the necessity of going to Indiana for ??5>V1S1°I1SJ but persevered, and had no further trouble. His daughter Rachel (Mrs. Rachel Weed, of Niles), was born in 1825, being the first white child born in the valley.
MICHIGAN
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