SOME LENAWEE COUNTY HISTORY.

BY JUDGE NORMAN GEDDES.

[Paper read at the County Officers' Reunion at Putman's Grove, Sand Lake, September, 1892.]

MR. PRESIDENT, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN-I have been asked to say something about the early settlement and the early settlers of the neighborhood in which we are met today and comply the more willingly because it takes me back to the time when, as a boy, I knew nearly all the people residing in the neighborhood of the lake.

Coming as I did into this then wilderness, a mere boy, fifty-seven years ago this very month, and here spending my boyhood and early manhood, this, to me, is classic ground. This lake, still beautiful, then seemed like a gem, encased in a setting of the rarest beauty. Upon the surrounding lands were large oaks, standing isolated from each other as in a park, planted by a skilled landscape gardener. The forest fires which every year swept over the oak openings, burned up the fallen timber, kept back the growth of all underbrush and removed everything that could obstruct the view or passage, leaving the surface very like a well kept lawn. The wild deer, of which there were great numbers, could be seen as far as the eye could reach and one could ride or drive over these lands in almost any direction he chose. In fact there were no roads of any account with two exceptions. In 1825 the United States government had caused to be surveyed and laid out a military road from Detroit to Chicago. This road, afterwards called the Chicago turnpike, runs through the northern part of this county near the north shore of the lake.

Twelve years later, in 1833, the government caused to be surveyed and laid out the La Plaisance Bay turnpike, starting at Monroe and intersecting the Chicago road at what is familiarly known as the Junction, some five miles west of where we are met today. Both these roads were constructed before Michigan was admitted into the Union as a State and it was owing to their being located as they were that

the lands through southern Michigan bordering upon, or in proximity to these great highways, were settled at the time they were.

In 1833 my father (I think within one week after the survey of the La Plaisance Bay or Monroe turnpike, as it is oftener named) purchased from the government the farm, a part of which is now owned by Mr. Edgar Hubbard, a little over one mile south and west of this lake.

It was upon this farm that I spent my boyhood and upon which my father, mother and brother lived and died. To me the old farm was marvelously attractive so long as the log house-built by my father in 1835 and one of the best and most comfortable I have ever seen-was permitted to remain, but when that was torn down to give place to the more elegant and commodious farm house which has been erected in its place, it has never seemed like home and has had very little attractiveness for me.

But, beautiful as was this lake region at its early settlement, my recollection of some of its early settlers, the mere mention of whose names justify, as it seems to me, my claim that this is classic ground, has a far more roseate hue.

Of those early settlers, who ever deserve to be held in grateful remembrance, I have only time to name Rev. Henry Tripp, Rev. Wm. N. Lyster, James King, Benjamin Workman, Deacon Giles Hubbard, Major Philo Mills, Leander Kimball, N. S. Wheeler, Abram Butterfield, Isaac Powers, John Brears, William and Joseph Camburn, Isaac and James Miller, Thomas, John and Samuel Pawson, Andrew and Benjamin Ayers, Samuel, Paul, James and William Geddes, John Monaghan and John Stephenson, all of whom, having acted well their part here, have crossed the dark river.

Among those I have named there were four men, living upon the southern shore of this lake, for whom I conceived a very great admiration an admiration that has increased rather than diminished with my advancing years-and it is more particularly of these men that I shall speak.

The earliest of these settlers was the Rev. Henry Tripp, an Englishman by birth and a minister of the Baptist church. In early life he had been a sailor and was for a time in the naval service of the United States, serving under Commodore Decatur in the war with Tripoli, and was afterwards a missionary in Jamaica. But in 1831, when all this part of the county was a wilderness, when the territories of Michigan and Wisconsin combined contained only 32,000 inhabitants or a little more than half of what Lenawee county alone now has, he

located the land upon which Dr. Lyster's cottage now stands, built him a log house, and with his estimable wife, one of the most refined and cultured women I have ever known, lived here for many years. He raised a large family, of whom his two sons, Doctors Joseph Tripp, of Adrian, and John Tripp, of Franklin, are honored and well known citizens of the county. He told me that when he came in sight of this lake and its surrounding hills he felt that he had found what was for him the promised land, the most beautiful spot he had ever seen, and made haste to secure for himself and family a home on its southern border.

As illustrative of the hardships incident to the settlement of a new country he told me this story: Needing flour and corn meal, having neither wheat nor corn, he started from home with a yoke of steers hitched to a sled, expecting to purchase wheat and corn in Clinton, but finding none for sale there went to Tecumseh, but was unable to obtain anything there, and went thence to the valley in Raisin, where he succeeded in purchasing five bushels of wheat and seven bushels of corn from Darius Comstock, which he took to what was formerly called the Red Mill in Adrian. There he found people from Coldwater, from Jonesville, and other parts of the State waiting to have their grinding done, each having to take his turn. He waited in this mill three days and nights, living upon cakes which he himself mixed and baked upon the stove in the mill, before he could get his grinding done and start for home, where he arrived after just a week's absence, his family meanwhile not knowing what had become of him, whether he had been killed by the Indians or had met with some fatal accident. Time will not allow me to say more of this good old man.

The Rev. William N. Lyster, an Irishman by birth and a clergyman of the Episcopal church, was in personal appearance and in his general make-up the very opposite of Elder Tripp. Delicately formed, brought up in luxury and wealth, he was educated for the ministry in one of the colleges of the old world and was for a time rector of Christ church in Detroit and of the church at Tecumseh. But, like Elder Tripp, he became fascinated with the beauty of Sand lake and its surroundings, purchased and at one time owned nearly all the land around the lake.

The early settlers will recollect him. His Utopian schemes for improvement, his log fence to surround his entire land-commenced but never finished-his rope fence, his French cart without springs, upon which he jolted about the country, preaching in the log farm and school houses. With culture, education and ability, fitting him for

what is termed the best society in any country, he was in his manner and in all his life as unpretentious and simple as a child. While he could have occupied a prominent pulpit and received a large salary in a city, he preferred the simple, unostentatious life that he led here to that of any other in the world. His sermons were models of persuasive eloquence and his reading of the Episcopal service as impressive as it was faultless.

James King was an Englishman, a graduate of one of the famous universities of that country. Becoming fascinated with the lake, he purchased from the government in 1835 (a part of the farm now owned by Mr. Jesse Penticost), and built a log house, upon an eminence commanding a magnificent view. He was a man of fine presence, of culture and learning, and had mingled with the best society in his native England, and in knowledge of poetry, literature and art, had no peer in all this region. But in that most useful of all arts and acquirements, especially for a man, with a wife and children dependent upon him, the art of making a living on a new farm, in a new country he was a failure. His accomplished wife, reared as she had been in luxury and wealth, knew absolutely nothing of domestic life, or of its requirements, especially as the wife of a farmer. Spending, as she did, much of her time in her boat upon the lake, sketching its lovely bank and surroundings, she doubtless drank in lessons which her more practical sisters would have been incapable of receiving. But, while feeding her soul with visions of beauty and deriving pleasure from the study of nature, the children became ragged and Mr. King was finally compelled to abandon what he had designed to make an ideal home. I have been informed that he subsequently obtained an appointment as a professor in a Canadian college and became prosperous under different circumstances and in a calling for which he was better fitted.

The last of this group of whom I shall speak was Dr. Benjamin Workman. He, too, was an industrious, a thoroughly educated man, having had the advantage in early life of the best schools of his own country and of England. Like Elder Tripp, Rev. Lyster and Mr. King, he had become infatuated with the beauty of the lake and in 1835 settled upon its shores.

Although a thorough classical and scientific scholar, and blessed with a magnificent physique, he, too, found himself at fault trying to make a living in an occupation for which he had never been trained. But such a man could not well hide himself, even in the then wilds of the lake region, and it was not long before the proprietors of the Constitutionalist (the first whig paper ever published in this county) sought

him out and employed him as editor. I was too young to know about his success as an editor and cannot state how long he remained in that position, but from the fact that I have been wholly unable to find a single copy of the paper I infer that it was short-lived. He afterwards taught school in Tecumseh and at Springville, and among the most delightful memories I have of school life is that of attending his school. But like Mr. King he found it difficult to make a living upon a farm and after a struggle of a few years removed to Canada, where he engaged in the drug business and became prosperous, and was finally appointed medical superintendent of the Asylum for the Insane, at Toronto. Some eighteen years ago I spent two delightful days with him at the asylum. He was then a hale old man of eighty, with a clear and vivid recollection of his life at the lake, and of his old neighbors and friends. He soon after resigned his position in the asylum and died at Uxbridge, in Canada, at the age of 85, honored and esteemed by all who knew him. It would be with me a labor of love to speak of these men and of the early settlement and settlers here more at length, did time permit. In giving prominence to the names of these men it has been far from my purpose to ignore or disparage any of the other early settlers of this county, many of whom deserve to be held in honorable remembrance so long as courage, enterprise, strict integrity and faithful discharge of the duties of citizenship shall be regarded among the virtues. But I have selected from the names of those early settlers these, first, because it is impracticable to speak of all, but mainly because I knew these men at a time when education and culture above and higher than that afforded by our own common schools was rarely met with in the country. A graduate of a college was regarded quite differently then and now, and my boyish imagination invested them with a sort of halo which, as I have already said, advancing years has tended to increase rather than diminish.

May their names and deeds ever be cherished as having been the pioneers in discovery of one of the most attractive and beautiful lakes of this great State of Michigan.

BY A. L. MILLARD, ESQ, OF ADRIAN.

[Paper read at the County Officers' Reunion, September, 1892.]

FELLOW CITIZENS AND FELLOW MEMBERS OF THIS ASSOCIATION OF COUNTY OFFICERS AND SUPERVISORS OF THE COUNTY, PRESENT AND PAST-I am happy to meet you here on this pleasant reunion occasion,