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WATERTOWN THIRTY YEARS AGO 1854 by the Hon. Enos Goodrich
RETROSPECTION
It was late in September 1854, when in company with Nathaniel M. Berry, the first settler of Watertown, and nearly a dozen other adventurers I came clambering and blundering through windfalls and cedar swamps, from the old Farrell saw mill in Marathon to the quarter post between sections 26 and, 25, and one half mile west from the present village of Fostoria. Several of the company after making choice selections of land left them never more to return, with a solemn conviction that town 10 north, range 9 east, was too far from paradise; and of the whole company Squire Berry was the only one that ever perfected his claim and made a home of it, myself expected. Between that late September evening and the close of the year, so far as the best date can be gathered, there was but one more actual settlement perfected in Watertown and that by a genius known as "Trait Crosby, " who staked his claim where Henry Kincaid now lives, on the southeast corner of section 25, one mile east of Fostoria. He remained but a short time and like the wind that "bloweth where it listeth, " no one knew when e'er he came or whither he went.
Several cabins were erected in October. Franklin Wright and Alphant Glynn who came together from Ohio, and Samuel McNeil and his son "Perry" from Genesee county in this state, were among the very first beginners, but their cabins remained empty until the following spring. The advent of 1855 brought with it a swarm of settlers and from that period onward Watertown has been getting out of the woods. If her citizens are worthy of their opportunity, health and prosperity, wealth and happiness lie along their future pathway. As to myself, I feel that my earthly journey is drawing to its close. One week ago last Monday I passed my seventy first mile stone. My life was begun and my youth spent in the wilds of western New York. Emigrating to Michigan in 1836. when it was a territory, the years of my mature manhood were spent in the county of Genesee, and for the last quarter of a century I have looked upon Watertown as my home. And as I look back over my past life my greatest satisfaction is derived from the thought that I have helped to cause the wilderness of three new counties to bud and blossom as the rose, " and my greatest regrets for the future arise from the fact that it is not for me to settle and improve a few more counties.
Michigan
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