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EARLY SETTLEMENT OF SOUTHWESTERN
MICHIGAN BY A. B. COPLEY.
June 7, 1882.
Every aid was offered him by the officials to recover his family, —-he went alone and at last found them, two with one family of the Pottawattomies and one with another by whom they were adopted. When the children learned who he was, and his purpose of coming, they ran and hid, and it was with difficulty they could be persuaded to accompany him, or their foster parents to give them up; the children having forgotten even their native tongue. This transpired certainly, —so writes a son of Mrs. McCoy— within a few miles of the site of Carey Mission where years after, another sister of the captives went through trials, toil, and tempest to repay the same people, some of whom were still living, with richer and more enduring blessings.
Before closing the history of Carey mission school, a brief account of one
of its pupils should not be omitted. Solicia Nimham was born at Stock-bridge, N. Y., in 1813, and came with her parents about the year 1820 to Fairville, Ohio In 1821 she accompanied her cousin, Elizabeth Slommer— the only relation her mother had—west, to school, she being a pupil in Mr. McCoy's school at Fort Wayne. Solicia was eight years old at the time of leaving home, and never saw her parents afterwards, but heard that her mother died the next year after she left. She has no recollection of the trip to Ohio, except the wagon stopping to let her cough, for the reason that she had at the time the whooping-cough.
MICHIGAN
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