This map was drawn by Orange Risdon of Detroit, surveyor of the Chicago Road.

The

scale is four miles to an inch. An original copy is in the office of the Historical Commission at Lansing. See pp. 95-243.

Though it had five stores in 1838 its settlement was apparently not much, if any, in advance of that at Saline, being, as there, overshadowed by the larger villages, 167

Manchester was located on the Raisin, at a point where that river crossed one of the largest burroak plains of the county.168 In 1832 an inn and a sawmill were built there by a prominent settler of Ypsilanti, and from that time it began to be a nucleus of settlement. By 1834 enough settlers had gathered in the neighborhood to warrant the building of a schoolhouse.169 Blois does not mention the village.

In Lenawee County, population increased slowly before 1830. According to General Brown, one of the founders of Tecumseh, the.e were in January of 1827 six hundred people in the county.170 By 1830 the population had grown to 1491,171 and to 7,911172 by 1834. There as elsewhere in the section the increase was the most rapid in the years beginning with 1833. It is reflected in the increase of the number of townships from four in 1833 to nine in 1834.173 The bulk of this

167. Blois, Gazetteer, 281.

168. 169.

170.

Beakes, Past and Present of Washtenaw County, 1313.
Ibid., 1315. Risdon's map (1825) shows a village of Dix-
boro, above Ypsilanti. This settlement was promoted
by a speculator from Boston, who appears to have won
the disfavor of settlers, and early gave up the experi-
ment. See Beakes, Past and Present of Washtenaw
County, 568.

Mich. Hist. Colls., I, 229-230; Territorial Laws, II, 292. 171. U. S. Census (1830), 153.

172. Blois, Gazetteer, 151. The figures for 1830 and 1834 probably include Hillsdale County, as Hillsdale was attached to Lenawee until its organization in 1835, and the separate figures do not appear for it in the censuses.

173. Territorial Laws, II, 478, 587; III, 998, 1275.

population was in the northeast, in the vicinity of Tecumseh and Adrian. These were the starting points for the numerous "land-lookers" that followed closely in the wake of the first settlers, where the houses of settlers served temporarily as inns, and where guides could be obtained to show the way to the best Government lands. In 1835-36 settlement went hand in hand with speculation in the lands of this county, and is marked by the organization of new townships.174 By 1837 the checker-board appearance of townships prevailed in all parts of the county excepting the eastern. range, where Ridgeway and Riga had not yet been separated from Macon and Blissfield, a region of heavy timber. 175 The sparseness of population in the southern townships, shown in the census of 1837, also indicates this impediment to settlement. The filling-in process about the older settlements and the very gradual extension of the frontier is reflected in the large numbers in the townships about Tecumseh and Adrian and the decreasing population towards the west. There were in the entire county in 1837 less than fifteen thousand people.176

Tecumseh owed its early rapid growth largely to the enterprise of its founders, who were able business men of means, but appear to have had ulterior motives. Austin E. Wing is quoted as saying to Mus174. Territorial Laws, III, 1367; Session Laws (1835-36), 69, 70. 175. Session Laws (1837), 44. The townships in the southern tier were not quite square, because of the addition of a narrow strip on the south to each by the adjustment of the Ohio boundary dispute.

176. Michigan Legislative Manual (1838), 72. Hudson township appears not to have been returned.

9177

grove Evans: "If we go into milling and farming, and establish a mill, settlers will know that I am interested, and will vote to send me to Congress. If I am elected, with the aid of Gen. Jacob Brown, you can be appointed government surveyor. The fruition of these hopes appeared to require the cooperation of Joseph W. Brown, who was a brother of Gen. Brown, and happily also a miller as well as a practical farmer. These men provided very early all that they could of the essential institutions of village life on the frontier. In the first year they platted the village and secured for it recognition as a post village and county seat.178 A sawmill, a gristmill, and a store soon followed.179 Lumber sawed there was used to build the first frame house in 1825. A contemporary writer in the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, over the signature "Truth," reflects the impulse to growth received by the village in the early thirties, crediting the village in 1832 with two schoolhouses, a gristmill, a sawmill, a tannery and a furniture factory.180 The latter industry appears to have become early somewhat of a specialty, according to Harriet Martineau, who observed in 1836, "We reached Tecumseh at half-past nine, and perceived that its characteristic was chair-making. Every other house seemed to be a chair manufactory."181 177. Mich. Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 479.

178. Ibid., I, 227.

179. Ibid., I, 222, 228; Historical and Biographical Record of Lenawee County, I, 41, 43. See early mention of the progress of the village and its advantages in the Detroit Gazette for August 6, 1824; Oct. 1, 1824; Dec. 13, 1825. Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser, Jan. 4, 1832. 181. Society in America, I, 320.