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TERRITORIAL ROAD RECOLLECTIONS OF THE "OLD TERRITORIAL ROAD" AND ITS TAVERNS
He came from Virginia. He met Elisha Walker Rumsey at Cleveland. Rumsey came from Bethany, near Batavia, N. Y. His wife's name was Ann Sprague. Allen's wife's name was also Ann. From the circumstance of their abiding for awhile in these arbors, and in honor of their good wives, who had been accustomed to call the little bowers over their sleighs Ann's arbor, they named the place Ann Arbor. Mr. Rumsey is buried in the place he helped to found. His wife died of cholera at Lafayette, Indiana, and John Allen was among the first to go to California, where he died. We passed through the village not yet in its "teens" though quite a large town. We took dinner the fourth day at a tavern a few miles from Ann Arbor. I think it was Pearl's. We were well entertained. Keeping the territorial road, we passed south of Dexter. To this place Sylvester and Nathaniel Noble came, the first settlers, in 1825. Afterward came Samuel Dexter, from whom the place received its name, and who, 'tis said, brought with him from Massachusetts $80, 000. Joseph Arnold kept the first tavern at Dexter. Some miles east of Ann Arbor we had left the timbered land and found the road on the oak openings better; but yet it was cut up so much by the heavily loaded wagons that it was a "strong "pull and a long pull, " from "early morn to dewy eve, " for our oxen. The rail was still the Archimedean lever to free our wagon from its miry difficulties, and where that failed, waiting to "double teams" was yet the dernier resort.
Michigan
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