ston County and near there became one with the northern fork of the Grand River Trail.136 Frequent mention is found in pioneer records of a trail leading from Owosso to Saginaw, apparently that traversed by the trader Williams and Chief Wasso in 1833.137 The State projects of the "Northern Railroad" and "Northern Wagon Road" marked the beginnings of an attempt to secure direct travel between Flint and Corunna.138

139

The main line of the Grand River Trail ran northwestward from Detroit almost diagonally through the center of Livingston County. Its northern fork, above mentioned as meeting the trail from Pontiac, branched off near Howell, while the main trail became approximately the line of the national turnpike known as the "Grand River Road," by which the earliest settlers came to Livingston County from Detroit.140 The last money appropriated by the National Government to improve this line of travel was spent just before the admission of the State in clearing its course a little west of Howell.141 In 1838 a primitive. 136. Apparently this was the route taken by the founders of Ionia in 1833. History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, 25.

138. Ibid., 32. The State expended some $60,000 on this work, which was suspended during the hard times following the panic of 1837.

139. History of Livingston County, 51.

140. Crittenden, History of Howell, 9; History of Livingston County, 19.

141. Ibid., 51. By 1840 little if any of it was graded west of Brighton, but the abandonment of the "Northern Wagon Road" about that time turned the aid of the State towards it. Shortly afterwards a primitive stage line of lumber wagons is said to have been started between Howell and the vicinity of Lansing.

stage line began to run between Howell and Detroit, the trip one way apparently requiring the better part of a week.142

The rivers of the Saginaw country furnished an abundance of water power, and they aided in the rafting of logs and lumber; but excepting the main channel of the Saginaw they appear to have been little help to the settler in the transportation of goods and supplies. There are many reports of early attempts to use them. Efforts were made by the State and by private companies to improve their navigability, but without much success. 143 The apparent prospect of success undoubtedly helped to secure settlers in many localities in days when resources seemed abundant and the spirit of enterprize was at high tide, particularly as much was hoped from the plan to unite by canal the main streams of the Saginaw and the Grand River 142. Crittenden, History of Howell, 50; History of Livingston County, 22; Mich. Hist. Colls., XXXVIII, 179. A plank road appears to have been completed between Howell and Detroit in 1850. Crittenden, History of Howell, 79. Howell seems to have had early connections with Kensington in Oakland County by a mail route (1836) and by dependence upon the physician there. Later the route by way of Lyon or Royal Oak seems to have been commonly taken between Howell and Detroit. History of Livingston County, 19, 138.

143. Several thousand dollars spent on the Shiawassee River made it sufficiently navigable for a cargo of 200 bbls. of flour to be floated at favorable stages of water from Owosso to Saginaw about 1837-39. Mich. Hist. Colls., II, 486; History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, 31; Session Laws (1837), 171. Projects for navigating the Flint began about 1839. History of Genesee County, 41. A note (Ibid., 133) quotes from a Flint paper of March 27, 1852, "Port of Flint-Arrivals and Departures.— Departed, scow, 'Kate Hayes,' Captain Charles Mather."

valleys.144 In 1837 shipbuilding appears to have made a slight beginning at Saginaw.145

The accounts of the early mills of the Saginaw country are as numerous as the mills were important to the settlers. When transportation was so difficult and flour and lumber were products of prime necessity it was the desire of settlers to be near a mill, and the founders of villages naturally chose mill sites that furnished the most abundant and cheapest power. Especially was this true in a region where it was foreseen that lumbering would be a chief future industry. The nearest mills for the earliest settlers were in the vicinity of Pontiac and Ann Arbor, but by 1837 mills had been built at all of the chief villages. The first saw mills in the region, on the Thread River in the Grand Blanc settlement south of Flint, are said to have been built as early as 1828 and 1830.146 In 1832 ten thousand feet of pine lumber bought at one of these mills is said to have been floated down the Flint River to the vicinity of Saginaw to build a frame house, apparently the first in that region.147 The first gristmill of the region, also on the Thread (1834), appears to have made that site for several years an objective point for a wide circle of country.148 The first mill built at Saginaw, about 1835, appears to have been 144. This project was abandoned in 1839 after an expenditure of over $20,000, but its possibilities led a private company to contemplate it a decade later. Session Laws (1849),

196.

145. History of Saginaw County, 451.

146. History of Genesee County; 117. Mich. Hist. Colls., VII, 242. 147. Ibid., 117, note. Purchased by Eleazer Jewett at Stev

ens' mill.

148. Ibid., 132.

run by steam.149 But the days of profitable lumbering were distant; it is said that there were not by 1850 a half dozen sawmills in Saginaw County;1 .150 lumbering had perforce to await the era of the railroad and an eastern market.

153

Besides "going to mill," there were other pioneer trade relations between the larger and smaller settlements. Naturally these relations were determined. mainly by the easiest routes of travel. Saginaw and Flint obtained supplies from Pontiac, though Saginaw got them sometimes from Detroit directly by water.151 The settlements on the Shiawassee traded first with Howell, Ann Arbor and Detroit and later with Pontiac.152 Considering the difficulties of transportation, prices were in general not high before the panic;1 stock had to be driven in from Ohio;154 wheat sold in Livingston County before 1838 at $2 per bushel.155 But actual suffering existed in 1837 in that county, and panic prices prevailed; according to the reminiscences. 149. The "Emerson Mill," built by the Williams brothers. Mich. Hist. Colls., I, 25; VII, 243; see History of Saginaw County, 383-85 for an account of the early mills and lumbering of that county. See also History of Genesee County, 132-133; History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, 151; History of Livingston County, 21, 141; Crittenden, History of Howell, 28, 61.

150. Mich. Hist. Colls., XXVIII, 498.

151. Ibid., II, 485; VII, 388, 393.

152. Ibid., II, 486. The supplies of the Rochester company at Owosso (1837) were sent by the water route to Saginaw. Ibid., II, 485.

153. A long list of store prices for 1831-32 at Saginaw is given in the History of Saginaw County (p. 236). Flour was $7.31 per bbl.

154. Mich. Hist. Colls., VII, 393.

155. History of Livingston County, 23. Conditions were changed

by the abundant harvest of 1838.

of a contemporary there were families that lived for days on boiled acorns and fish cooked and eaten without salt or fat.156

The extravagant speculation and "frenzied finance" which heralded the panic of 1837 made almost all conditions of life in the Saginaw country as elsewhere in the Territory abnormal. Much of the most desirable land was taken up by speculators without any intention to settle upon it. In the History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties examples are given of properties which these "land sharks" would buy one day at the Government price of $1.25 per acre and hold the next day at $5.157 It is said that at Howell in Livingston County the high-priced holdings of nonresident speculators in 1847 were so extensive as to cause the new courthouse to be built on an addition.158 A counterpart of the land speculations was the so called "wildcat" banking, of which a typical description is given in the History of Genesee County.159 The panic is said. to have reduced the population of Saginaw from nine hundred to about four hundred and fifty, and it was 1841 before a favorable reaction began to be felt in that county.

160

The distribution of population in the Saginaw country bore undoubtedly some relation to the organiza156. Ibid., 22.

157. Mich. Hist. Colls., II, 483; History of Shiawassee and Clinton Counties, 121.

158. Crittenden, History of Howell, 58. It became the village center and shifted the principal part of the village away from the original site.

159. p. 137. See also Mich. Hist. Colls., VII, 396-398.

160. History of Saginaw County, 605, 607. See also Mich. Hist. Colls., VII, 240.