have been a continuous causeway over mud until within a few miles of Ypsilanti.55 The need for river transportation to supplement the Chicago Road is reflected in the action of Ypsilanti citizens, who in 1833 built by subscription a large pole-boat at a cost of about $1,300;56 and it is apparently this boat the arrival of which at Detroit is noted by the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser of May 21, 1834, and which carried one hundred and twenty-five pounds of flour for thirty-eight cents per barrel, while the usual price by land was from sixty-three to seventy-five cents.57 Still earlier, in the Detroit Gazette for April 25, 1826, is mentioned the boat of Colonel Allen, of Ann Arbor, just arrived at Detroit, apparently a flat-bottomed boat built on the plan of the James River boats in Virginia, of which State Allen was a native; the boat carried one hundred barrels of flour. The Territorial Road, authorized in 1829 and surveyed in 1830, indicates a demand for a more direct route into the counties lying directly west of Washtenaw, and appears to have been due in part to the purpose of land owners in those counties to compete for immigration with the southern tier of counties.58 The early settler who wished to get to Lenawee County could choose, besides the Chicago Trail from Detroit, either of two others which led from the vicinity of Monroe. The main trail from Monroe branched 55. Ibid., XXII, 529. 56. History of Washtenaw County (1881), 125-126; Beakes, Past and Present of Washtenaw County, 595. 57. See also the Detroit Courier for March 6, 1833. 58. Beakes, Past and Present of Washtenaw County, 597-598; at the Macon reservation, the southern branch following the Raisin past Adrian to near Tecumseh, the northern the Macon River.59 If the point of departure were Monroe, the earliest settlers would take one or the other of these two routes; settlers who left from Detroit went either by way of Monroe along these trails or by the Chicago Trail. The time required varied with circumstances. In 1824 the party which founded Tecumseh required a week to make their way through from Monroe;62 in 1834 a settler walked in twenty-four hours from Adrian to Monroe, a distance of thirty miles.63 There was a slight improvement made in the southern route about 1827 by cutting a road through from Blissfield to Petersborough.64 The northern trail was the line, approximately, over which the La Plaisance Bay Road was surveyed in 1832. The position of the Chicago Road through Lenawee County is reflected in a description (1834) by a pioneer, who represents it as "stretching itself by devious and irregular windings east and west like a huge serpent lazily pursuing its onward course, utterly unconcerned 59. Bureau of American Ethnology, 18th Annual Report, plate CXXXVIII. 60. Mich. Hist. Colls., XII, 407; Historical and Biographical Record of Lenawee County, I, 63, 64; II, 9, 24; Hogaboam, The Bean Creek Valley, 13. 61. Historical and Biographical Record of Lenawee County, I, 40; II, 31; Wing, History of Monroe County, 149. Both the Risdon map (1825) and the Farmer map (1826) show a road running from the Chicago Road from a point a little west of Ypsilanti to Tecumseh. 62. 63. 64. Mich. Hist. Colls., XII, 407. Ibid., XVII, 512. However, it does not appear that these trips were made by the same trails. Combination Atlas Map of Lenawee County, 15. as to its destination."65 Active preparations for the construction of a railroad from Adrian to Port Lawrence (Toledo) began in 1833.66 The interrelations of transportation improvement with the general physical influences of settlement in this section are illustrated by the manner in which the frontier was extended. In determining the location of the first settlements, which were to be points of departure for settlement in each county, no causes were more influential than the relative position of river and trail. The general directions in which settlement spread out from these centers, and the rate of its movement, varied somewhat in different parts of the section, but in general the movement of the frontier was westward, with a northwest and southwest trend respectively at the two extremities. Although settlement received an earlier start at the north, the rate of frontier extension was more rapid at the south, partly because it began about the time of the rapid increase of immigration to the Territory as a whole. In all of the counties the frontier reached the western boundary of the section at about the same time, and at those points which were most easily reached-near the great western trails.67 Southwest was the direction in which the frontier extended the most rapidly in Oakland up to the time when the first settlements were made in Washtenaw and Lenawee. By 1825 all of the townships in the 65. Historical and Biographical Record of Lenawee County, II, 21. 66. Mich. Hist. Colls., I, 231. 67. History of Oakland County (1876), 106, 193; History of Washtenaw County (1881), 752, 1296; Hist. and Biog. Rec. of Lenawee County, II, 9, 22, 39. two southern tiers in Oakland, excepting the westernmost, had received their first settlers.68 A few settlements had by that time been made in Waterford Township west of Pontiac, and a few north of the Clinton River in the eastern part of the county; also land had been purchased in all of the townships east of a northeast-to-southwest69 diagonal line drawn through the center of the county, comprising fifteen of its thirtysix surveyed townships. For five years following 1825 there was a pause in the extension of the frontier. In this interval land had been purchased in all of the remaining townships except Brandon in the extreme north and Highland and Rose in the extreme west. The time which elapsed between the dates of first purchase and first settlement in the north-central and northeastern townships varied from four to eight years; but it was shorter in the northwest, where though the buying began from three to seven years later, the first settlements followed the first purchases within a year. In the southern tier of townships settlement generally began within two years after the first purchase, and in the central townships within a year. By 1830 only seven townships had not yet received their first settlers, all in the extreme north and west except White Lake;70 Brandon and Rose had no settlers until 1835.7! The dominating influence which checked the extension of the frontier, especially in the period before 68. History of Oakland County (1876), 106, 158, 166, 221, 231, 237, 267, 285, 312, 320. 70. History of Oakland County (1876), 105, 106, 124, 153, 175, 183, 193, 201, 221, 243, 261, 250, 275. 71. Ibid., 243, 261. 1830, was desire to be near the older settlements. The townships first settled were those bordering on the townships of Pontiac and Avon, and the first settlements made above the Clinton were in the very southern parts, near Pontiac and Rochester, and made from six to nine years afterward.72 Though Waterford, which was just west of Pontiac, was first settled in 1819 the townships adjoining it north and west had no settlers for a decade.73 The position of the first land purchases reflect the same desire. In the south and southwest the settlements came apparently from the same impulse which brought immigration to the interior and northern parts of Wayne County upon which they bordered; but the impulse seems to have spent itself in the filling-in process before settlers reached the extreme southwest. There seem to have been no unfavorable physical contrasts between the southwestern townships and their eastern neighbors sufficient to warrant the difference of from five to seven years in the dates of settlement;74 the contrasts of environment were greater in the townships north and west of Waterford." In White Lake Township directly west of Waterford there was little water power, and much swamp and inferior soil. The availability of land near the older settlements, appears sufficient reason for the pause in the extension of the frontier from 1825 to 1830. The strength of the impulse of 1830 extended settlement during that and the following year into the farthest corners of the county. Speculation had an 72. Ibid., 70, 130. 73. Ibid., 105, 175, 183. 74. Ibid., 158, 214, 221, 230. 75. Ibid., 183, 207, 274, 299. |