|
|
EARLY SETTLEMENT OF SOUTHWESTERN
MICHIGAN BY A. B. COPLEY.
June 7, 1882.
In 1825 the Chicago road was laid out and built as a military measure leading from Detroit to Fort Dearborn, Chicago, by the IT. S" Government a' an expense of $250, 000. The Erie canal had just been completed, steam boat navigation had been successfully inaugurated on the great lakes, and the descendants of the Puritans and followers of Hendric Hudson came hand ii hand by aid of these improved facilities for migration. Landing at Detroit they divided; one party following the Chicago road, peopled the southern tie] of counties; the other stream went directly west on the line of "the Territorial road, established at about the year 1834, and settled the second tier of counties; but when they reached the counties of St. Joseph, Cass, Berrien, Kalamazoo, and Van Buren, they found themselves preceded, by the adventurous successors of Daniel Boone and his coadjutors, who having crossed the Cumberland and Alleghany mountains, had spread them sieves over Kentucky Tennessee, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and following in the track of Gen Wayne, this advance army of civilization had established their pickets in these counties, picking out the choicest portions of the country. All honor to these daring spirits whose habits and disposition were such that they waited not for canals, steamboats, roads, saw-mills, grist-mills, or stores, hardly for the extinguishment of the Indian title, but came with their teams, stock, a"no implements, with their wives and little ones, camping out by the wayside—no base of supplies to fall back on, their resources the forests around them— exchanging the comforts of civilized life for the privations of the wilderness the security of towns and villages for the dangers of ravenous beasts of prey venomous reptiles and the deadly miasma incident to the opening up of a new country. Instead of friends and neighbors, their companions were the descendants of the followers of Pontiac, the warriors of Tecumseh, whose heir-looms were, perchance, the scalp-locks of their ancestors. All honor again to these brave men and women who cut roads, built bridges, and spent weary days in toilsome marches to lay the foundations of our present prosperity.
MICHIGAN
Page 18
|
|
|
|
|
|