began to appear at numerous points, and gristmills very soon followed. A carding mill is said to have been started on a branch of the St Joseph in Cass County as early as 1830.7 Small lakes similar to those in Oakland and Washtenaw were very numerous in this section, especially in the eastern part, and the excellent fish which came up the streams from the Great Lakes were a welcome addition to the food supply of the early settlers. Again, the beauty of the environment is said frequently to have been one of the motives of settlement, as at Lake Gilead in Branch County There were a few extensive marshes, the largest of which were in southern Branch County east of Lake Gilead, and in St Joseph County above Middle Lake, also along Dowagiac Creek in Cass County and in the western part of Berrien.10 9 The soil, with very few exceptions, was uniformly fertile. There was one extensive tract of comparatively poor sandy land along the shore of Lake Michigan in the northwestern part of Berrien, and narrow bands of heavy lake clay along the shore south of this sandy tract made a soil like that so characteristic of Monroe and Wayne counties. The level clay loam, of the kind predominating in western Lenawee, formed the soil of large areas in parts of Berrien, and in Branch and Hillsdale, but the prevailing soil of the section was a rich gravelly or sandy loam, comparatively open and easy to cultivate. The early settlers seem to have considered the yellow sandy loam of the white and 7. Glover, History of Cass County, 154. 8. 9. Reynolds, History of Hillsdale County, 20. Collin, History of Branch County, 70. 10. Mich. Geol. Survey Rep. (1907), map in pocket. yellow oak-openings sterile." Doubtless their preference for the darker loam of the prairies was partly due to greater familiarity with that kind of soil in Ohio and Indiana.12 In 1838 Blois reported for Berrien County "exuberant crops,"13 which appear to have grown mainly on the prairies. He says that the soil of St. Joseph County, where the first settlements were largely upon the prairies, was "formerly considered the best in the State."'14 Large portions of the section were unusually free from dense forest. The only large continuous areas presenting this obstruction to settlement were on the clay land in southern Hillsdale and Branch counties, and in the southwestern part of Berrien. The northern part of Hillsdale is said to have been like a succession of orchards, and it was probably in these openings the "strawberries were so plentiful that the cows often came home with their feet stained with the juice of the delicious fruit "15 Northern Branch County, excepting in small areas, as in Union Township, was equally inviting to the early settler. Estimates of the amount of heavily timbered land in Branch vary from one-half to one-third of the county's area.1 There 11. Blois, Gazetteer, 215. 12. Glover, History of Cass County, 113. 13. Blois, Gazetteer, 214. 14. Ibid., 241. 15. Collin, History of Branch County, 19, 22; Blois, Gazetteer, 220-221; Mich. Hist. Colls., I, 181. 16. Mich. Hist. Colls., VI, 216; Blois, Gazetteer, 214. The first articles appearing in the newspapers calling attention to Branch County mention the "extensive forests of fine maple" in the southeast, and the open lands and prairies of the north and northwest. See for example the Detroit Journal and Michigan Advertiser for June 1, 1831, and May 2, 1832. were scattered openings in Berrien, and some prairie land, but dense forest covered the greater portion of its area.17 In fact the larger portion of the entire section was covered with oak openings, burr-oak plains, and small prairies, the former being specially valued by settlers from the East, the latter by settlers from the South. Cass and St. Joseph counties were the most open of all in the section, having the most numerous and the largest prairies, and it was these counties that early gained most rapidly in population 18 Of the prairie land, there were two important areas in Berrien, one south of Niles and one about Berrien Springs.19 Branch County had several small prairies, in the vicinity of Bronson, Girard and Coldwater. Hillsdale was the least favored with prairie land, and the fact that its first settlements were made upon what it contained of this land shows that it was a natural advantage strongly preferred by settlers. The general effect of the relative position of the open and forested lands in the section can easily be made to appear. The belt of dense forest observed in Lenawee County to have been unfavorable to the rapid extension of the frontier, continued its northern border in a southwesterly direction across Hillsdale and Branch, and passed into Indiana before reaching St. Joseph County. On the north of this line, oak open17. Coolidge, History of Berrien County, 166, 192; Blois, Gazetteer, 214. 18. The relative slowness with which the more heavily forested lands in these counties were settled, is illustrated by the vicinity of Marcellus in Cass County. Glover, History of Cass County, 117. It received its first settlers in 1836, and had in 1843 but eighteen voters. 19. Coolidge, History of Berrien County, 198, 208. ings and burr-oak plains interspersed with patches of heavy timber and fertile prairie land extended westward to Lake Michigan. The relation of these two areas helped to determine the position of the Chicago Trail and hence of the national turnpike, which was the main axis of settlement in the section. Approaching the section in a westerly direction from northern Lenawee, this trail entered Hillsdale County near the northeast corner, continued its direction across the north of Hillsdale, whence, proceeding southwestward across Branch, it entered St. Joseph County near the southeast corner; from there it continued almost straight west across the southern part of St. Joseph and Cass counties, passing out of the Territory across the southeast corner of Berrien.20 Its general course suggests that the Indians sought to avoid the heavy timber of Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties; its minor windings seem to have been partly determined by the prairies, which the Indians crossed where convenient, and on the edges of whose fertile open areas they established their villages. The surveyors of the national turnpike, the ear'y exploring parties, and the first settlers, were thus at once brought into direct contact with these prairies and their natural advantages for transportation and agriculture. The direct effect of the prairies on settlement is abundantly attested in every county of the section, but especially in the southwest. It was to be expected that immigration, seeking the lines of least resistance, would early move along the Chicago Road, but the first settlements in the section were not made from 20. Lanman, Michigan, map in front. the east; they were made from Ohio and Indiana, and by settlers who reached the Territory over a branch of the Chicago Trail leading from Fort Wayne who had heard of the prairie lands in St. Joseph and Cass counties and had come to occupy them. The early settlement of the section was the result of a combined movement of population, of which before 1830 the immigration from the south to the southwestern prairies was by far the more important. This southwestern settlement undoubtedly was one factor in determining the general relative rate of settlement of different parts of this section throughout this period. It appears to explain, in part, why the counties of Hilsdale and Branch, which were farthest east, and whose lands came onto the market first, were settled latest and least rapidly. The population of Cass and St. Joseph had each passed the three thousand mark by 1834, and Berrien was approaching eighteen hundred;21 Branch county had not at that time reached a population of eight hundred, and Hillsdale numbered but a little over five hundred.22 The comparative backwardness of Hillsdale and Branch counties had three principal causes. There was first the tendency of Tecumseh, Adrian and the other older settlements in the eastern part of the Territory to assimilate those immigrants, who, while wishing to get good lands, preferred a comparatively close neighborhood; secondly, there was the forest barrier against immigration from the south into the lower parts of these counties, combined with the presence of inviting prairies in the open 21. Blois, Gazetteer, 151. 22. Reynolds, History of Hillsdale County, 28. |