southwest; nearness to the older settlements in Oakland and Washtenaw apparently were the chief influences determining this distribution. Before the census was taken there were formed four new townships;192 but the entire northwestern quarter of the county was left as the township of Howell, which contained the county seat; its population, 442, was probably mainly gathered in its southeastern corner, about the county seat village of Howell. 192. March 11, 18, 20. Session Laws (1837), 39, 42, 43, 141. CHAPTER VIII THE GRAND RIVER REGION THE first attention given to the Grand River re gion after the Indian treaty of 1821 looking toward agricultural settlement, was in 1829, when Eaton, Barry and Ingham counties were established by the same act of the Territorial legislature as the southwestern counties along the Chicago and Territorial roads. Three years later the counties of Ottawa, Kent, Ionia, Clinton, Montcalm and Gratiot received similar attention, but none of these counties had township organization before 1835 except Kent, of which the part south of the Grand River was organized as Kent Township in 1834.3 The first counties of this section were not organized until 1836-37.4 2 The original physical conditions of the section were on the whole the same as now with a few changes of consequence in the timbered lands and in the immediate vicinity of important centers of population. The larger part of the soil of Kent County was of the class found in the oak openings.5 About one-third of the Territorial Laws II, 735. 1. 2. Ibid., III, 871. 3. Ibid., III, 1275. 4. Kent, March 24, 1836, Session Laws, 65. The two present northern tiers of townships were not a part of the county until 1840, Session Laws, 196; Ionia, March 18, 1837, Session Laws, 97; Eaton and Ottawa, December 29, 1837, Session Laws, 9. 5. Blois, Gazetteer, 226. 8 county, mainly the western part, appears to have been heavily forested with black walnut, beech, sugarmaple and white-wood." North of Grand River there was heavy pine which furnished the early supply of tractable wood for the furniture industry at Grand Rapids. The early lumbering industry and the slowness of agricultural settlement there is seen in the growth of the township of Nelson. There appear to have been at least four large Indian clearings in this county, all of them on the Grand River; one at the mouth of the Flat River (Lowell), another at the mouth of the Thornapple (Ada), a third at the rapids of the Grand (Grand Rapids), and a fourth at "Little Prairie" (Grandville). At these points there was early to be found along with the Indian village the trading post of the American Fur Company. 9 The primitive environment of Grand Rapids is quite fully given in a well-known recent account.10 The place presented originally a view that must have been. very attractive to settlers; a valley about a mile and a half in width threaded by the waters of the Grand River was surrounded by forest-clad hills; the heaviest timber was on the bottom lands; on the higher lands lay the oak openings; pine was interspersed among these timbers at intervals, and among bearers of wild fruit flourished the wild plum tree and the grape vine. 6. Ibid., 226. Cf. Everett, Memorials of the Grand River Valley, (1878), 41. 7. Goss, History of Grand Rapids, II, 1036. 8. Memorials of the Grand River Valley, 217. 9. Ibid., 40; Mich. Hist. Colls., I, 215, 216. 10. Goss, History of Grand Rapids, I, 18-24. Productive gardens have now been made of the neighboring swamps. It is a striking illustration of the marked changes often made in the local environment of large population centers that where the post office now is in Grand Rapids, it is said originally there was a swamp covering about an acre.11 The chief geological feature of the valley at the site of Grand Rapids was the exposure of a large area of subcarboniferous limestone, a ledge of which formed the rapids in the river and created an immense water power.12 There is said to have been originally between Pearl and Leonard streets about eighteen feet of descent in these rapids.13 Besides the soil, this water power and the neighboring forests appear to be the strongest factors in the early rapid settlement of Grand Rapids. The topography and soil of Ottawa County was formed by sand drifted in from Lake Michigan and by deposits from the Grand River,14 and this general character of the county seems to have been early known in the East. "The country along the eastern branch of Lake Michigan," says the geographer Melish, writing in 1822, "is generally sandy and barren. On the bank of the Grand River, however, there are some of 11. Ibid., 23. One of the small lakes (Reed's Lake, named for Ezra Reed, a settler of about 1834) is now a well-known pleasure resort for the city. Ibid., 166. 12. 13. Charles A. Whittemore, in Michigan Academy of Science, Goss, History of Grand Rapids, I, 21. 14. Goss, History of Grand Rapids, I, 21; there is a fairly accurate popular account of the geology, surface and soil. of Ottawa County in the History of Ottawa County, 16-17, 26. For a description of the sand dunes of this shore see above, Chapter I. the finest tracts of farming land in the Territory."15 In another report it is observed that the high banks of Grand River disappear a short distance below Grand Rapids, where the country assumes a level sandy surface of from twenty to fifty feet above the lake.16 The same report notes also a rich growth of pine and hemlock; extensive oak openings reached several miles back from the river, favoring land transportationthe trees were far enough apart for wagons or loads of hay to pass among them easily.17 These descriptions correspond to those given by Blois.18 The site of the first important settlement in the county would be expected near the harbor at the mouth of the Grand River. The soil of Ionia County is described as a black rich sandy loam, free from stones, naturally arable and fitted for grazing.19 The points earliest to attract settlers were naturally the Indian clearings at the junctions of tributary streams with the Grand River. A clearing near the mouth of Prairie Creek was destined to be the site of the city of Ionia20 about two miles from the center of the county.21 Its selection seems to. have been partially determined by desire to secure the county seat, for there was comparatively little water power at that point; the first mill was built on Prairie 15. Melish, Geographical Description of the United States, (ed. 1822), p. 389. 16. Michigan House Documents (1837), No. 9 (E), p. 55. 17. History of Ottawa County, 20. 18. Blois, Gazetteer, 235. 19. Ibid., 222. 20. Memorials of the Grand River Valley, 35, 40. 21. History of Ionia and Montcalm Counties, 137. |