LENAWEE COUNTY.

And I have also thought it expedient to lay out the following county, that is to say:

All the country included within the following boundaries; beginning on the principal meridian, where the line between the townships num bered four and five, south of the base line, intersects the same; thence south, to the boundary line between the Territory of Michigan and the State of Ohio; thence with the same east to the line between the fifth and sixth ranges, east of the principal meridian; thence north to the line between the townships numbered four and five, south of the base line; thence west to the place of beginning; shall form a county to be called the county of Lenawe.

The county of Lenawe shall be attached to, and compose a part of the county of Monroe.

Given under my hand, at Detroit this 10th day of September, in the year of our Lord 1822, and of the Independence of the United States, the forty-seventh.

LEW. CASS.

SECTION 1. Be it enacted by the Legislative Council of the Territory of Michigan, That the county of Lenawee shall be organized from and after the taking effect of this act, and the inhabitants thereof entitled to all the rights and privileges, to which, by law, the inhabitants of other counties of this Territory are entitled.

SEC. 2. That the county court of the county of Lenawee shall be held on the first Monday of June, and the first Monday of January in each year.

SEC. 3. That all suits, prosecutions, and other matters now pending before the county court of Monroe county, or before any justice of the peace of said county of Monroe, shall be prosecuted to final judgment and execution, and all taxes heretofore levied and now due, shall be collected in the same manner as though the said county of Lenawee had not been organized.

SEC. 4. That all the country within this Territory to which the Indian title was extinguished by the treaty of Chicago, shall be attached to and compose a part of the county of Lenawee.

SEC. 5. This act shall take effect and be in force from and after the 31st day of December, 1826.

Approved November 20th, 1826.

LENAWEE.-Derived from the Delaware Indian word Lenno, or perhaps from the Shawnee Lenawai "man," the equivalent of the Chippewa inimi. From the same word comes "Illin-ois," and the French name "Lac de Illinois" for Lake Michigan.

County-seat, Adrian, established at this place March 21st, 1836.

LENAWEE COUNTY.

A SKETCH OF ITS EARLY SETTLEMENT BY F. A. DEWEY.

One hundred years ago, before the foot of the white man had pressed the soil of the valley of the Raisin, there dwelt in and about what is now Lenawee county a powerful tribe of Indians-the Pottawattomies

who roamed over the unbounded forests at will. They were feared and respected by the neighboring Indians beyond the western lakes; not so much for their wisdom in government or greatness of character, as for the skill and power they displayed in the savage warfare that was waged between the contending chiefs. Accustomed to danger in every form, and taught to consider themselves invincible, they had learned to regard life as valueless if its price was victory, and that death an honor that was won in the heat of battle, or in contest with a foe. Their braves were strong and fearless, and in battle were like the fierce wind that sweeps everything in its fury. Their wigwams were decorated with the scalps of their enemies, and the sacred beads, too numerous to count, told how many had fallen before their tomahawks. Their hunting grounds were boundless, and game was plentiful from Lake Erie to the Mississippi.

To the beautiful month of June, 1824, we can look back with gratitude to the families who first settled here, to whose resolution and perseverance we are largely indebted for our present prosperity and civiliza

At that time commenced the memorable change of making the vast forest solitude resound with the blows of the pioneer's axe, paving the way for the wealthy and prosperous county that Lenawee has become. The men who began this work were men of talent, education, and active industry.

The first proprietor and settler was Musgrove Evans, a native of Pennsylvania, a member of the society of Friends. He was a farmer, a gentleman, and a scholar, worthy of any station in our civilized land. He was accompanied by his wife (a sister of Gen. J. W. Brown), who was a lady of rare attainments and refined social qualities.

Mr. Evans built the first log house in the county, twenty feet square, no floor but the bare earth, and roofed with bark peeled from elm trees. During 1825 and '26 it furnished shelter for the white settlers of the county, numbering 16. The first saw-mill was erected in 1824 by Brown and Evans. The first pioneer (Evans) laid out the plat of the village of Tecumseh. The first frame house in the town was erected by J. W. Brown in 1825. It was the first and only public house in the Territory west of Monroe. The same year Mr. Knaggs built a store, which proved of great value to both the Indians and white settlers. That year, too, the first grist-mill was built, and Mr. Jesse Osborne carried the first wheat to the mill. In 1831 and '32 the pioneers came from ten to sixty miles to this mill for flour.

Mr. Evans was the first mail contractor and postmaster in the county. The first white child born in the county was George Evans, son of Musgrove and Abi Evans.

In the year 1826 Mr. Evans received an appointment from Washington as one of the officers to survey and lay out a military road from Detroit to Chicago, which proved to be a great and general benefit to the new settlers. In 1832 he was appointed to assist in surveying and laying out a military road from La Plaisance Bay, Monroe, to intersect the Chicago turnpike in the north-west part of Lenawee county.

In 1830 the United States census was taken. Mr. Evans was marshal of this district, which included this county and west to Lake Michigan. By the marshal's record the whole number of persons in Lenawee and Hillsdale counties was as follows: Tecumseh-including several townships-to Lake Michigan was 771; Logan and a number of townships south to the Ohio line, 500; Blissfield, with a few townships, 145; Hillsdale, no townships named, 75; making a total of 1.491 west of Washte naw and Monroe counties.

As no one is more worthy of special notice we will not omit to name in the catalogue of pioneers our late esteemed friend, Darius Comstock. He located his beautiful plantation at the valley four miles south of Tecumesh, and, with his ample means, made large improvements, and was the main builder of the first meeting-house in the county, where it now stands a monument to his memory. There thousands of the Society of Friends yearly congregate to worship the true and only God.

In 1829 the court house was built at Tecumseh. For a number of years court was opened and adjourned the same day, as there were no suits to be tried. The people of this county, even in our earliest days, were noticeable for their intelligence. Robbers and plunderers at that time had no foothold with us. Prosperity, friendship, and good will beamed for all from our brightly-blazing hearth-fires. Clearings were rapidly made, roads were opened, cheerful looking log houses sprang up in all directions. Wheat and all other desirable crops yielded a bountiful harvest with little cultivation.

With pleasure and generous satisfaction many of us can look back to scenes of pioneer life and contrast them with the present. Well do we remember when it was a seven days' journey from Tecumseh to Monroe and return by the old Indian trial through dense forests and miry swamps, without a bridge over any stream, and thirty miles without a house. The best and most reliable team was a pair of oxen. In this way transportation was carried on between frontier settlements. Sacks of flour were brought when the new settler was reduced to his last loaf. In process of time there were zealous ministers of the gospel, who preached from the Bible without introducing politics. Rev. Mr. Darwin was sent among us as a Presbyterian missionary. Daniel Smith and Elijah Brownell were the main speakers among the Friends. One of our earliest settlers in this forest land was a farmer and preacher, Rev. Mr. Bangs, of the Methodist denomination. A man kind and generous, always ready and willing to aid in all good undertakings. Even now he comes up before the mind's eye with his kindly beaming face and broad shoulders, delivering his oral discourse to the listening congregation in the little school house.

In 1832 came the Black Hawk war. This was a hard and fatiguing campaign for the veteran soldiers of Lenawee county who marched from Tecumseh to Niles. The commanding officers of the regiment were Gen. J. W. Brown, Col. Wm. McNair, Major Davis Smith, Lieut.-Col. Daniel Pittman.

In the year 1834 came the contest for the disputed territory between Ohio and Michigan. Gen. J. W. Brown, commander, and Stevens T. Mason, Governor of the Territory, marched their brigades to and formed their battalions on the banks of the Maumee river, where, on that day, the Michigan regiments conquered the armies of the Ohio, and in a bloodless contest won the Upper Peninsula with its inexhaustible mines of iron, silver, copper, and lead.

As we look over the roll of the pioneers of Lenawee county, a large share of them have departed to the land whence there is no return. There are many still living in Tecumseh who well remember Mrs. Abi Evans, wife of Musgrove Evans, a truly noble woman, whose memory will be venerated and cherished by every immigrant to this vicinity till the last one has gone to his final rest. No one ever solicited her advice without being deeply impressed with the intellectual strength and gentleness of her nature. When she left us the whole community wept and mourned like children who had lost a dearly beloved mother.

Musgrove Evans, the first white inhabitant and leader of the first band of pioneers, has passed away, and his ashes rest in a southern clime. He has left to the people of Lenawee county the legacy of a bright example which forcibly addresses itself to the rising generation, for it tells them of a path to the highest respect and veneration. His unimpeachable honesty and purety of life will never cease to be cherished in grateful remembrance by just and true-hearted men.

HISTORICAL SKETCH OF LENAWEE COUNTY.

BY HON. A. L. MILLARD.

[An address delivered at Adrian, Lenawee County, July 4, 1876.]

FELLOW CITIZENS: For the last ninety-nine years our countrymen have been wont to celebrate this day,-to hail its annual return with demonstrations of rejoicing, with the ringing of bells, with bonfires and illuminations, and the roar of artillery, with gatherings of the people, processions and orations, and with songs of thanksgiving and praise. We meet to-day as we have so often before, to observe the day in the time-honored way. But the one-hundredth anniversary; the very words suggest a high distinction, a wide difference between this and its pred ecessors. It tells us that our experiment of self-government is no longer an experiment but a success; sets the seal of stability and permanence on our institutions and our Republic, and proves that our union and government are not ephemeral as was in the beginning prophesied by their enemies and feared even by their friends.

There is reason in view of this that in the annual discourse which is usual on the occasion we should depart somewhat from the beaten track. The Congress of the United States has recommended that the discourse on this centennial anniversary should be a historical sketch of the county or town from its formation.

This recommendation has been supported by the President and the executive of our own State, and a compliance with it, if general, will be both appropriate and useful.

To this duty which has been assigned to me, that of the historian rather than the orator, I now address myself for the brief half hour allotted, assured that however inadequately and imperfectly it may be performed, the subject and the facts will not fail to interest the citizens at least of our own county, and will not, I trust, be entirely without interest to our fellow-citizens from other counties who join with us to-day. And in behalf, too, of those who shall come after us it is well, while the witnesses and actors in the earlier scenes and struggles incident to the settlement of a new country are a portion of them still living, to secure from their lips and rescue from the oblivion which a few more years would otherwise throw over them, an authentic history of those early times.

Our history is not a long one. He who sketches it has not to go back to a remote antiquity. Our beautiful and cherished county, with its population to-day of 47,000, its central city of 10,000, its 26 townships and wards, and in each of these townships its highly cultivated and productive farms, its numerous and populous and thriving villages, its schools and colleges, its churches and railroads, and its abundant evi

dence of wealth and comfort and refinement on every hand,-what was it at the beginning of 1824? An unbroken wilderness. Not a white inhabitant within its bounds. But as it then was, all in its native beauty, untouched by the hand of civilization, unmarred by cultivation, a fairer, more beautiful and attractive region the sun ne'er shone on. A portion of it, most of the northern, and a part of the southern portion, consisting of "openings," as they were called in the language of the country, sparsely timbered with tall and beautiful oaks, and for the most part, in consequence of the annual fires passing over it, free from underbrush, the ground carpeted with a profusion of wild flowers,the whole like a beautiful park, through which without track or path the immigrant could drive with horses or oxen and wagon for miles in any direction, the remainder a dense forest of various kinds of trees. The surface is generally undulating, well watered by the Raisin, the Tiffin, and a multitude of smaller streams, and gemmed here and there, especially the northern portion, with beautiful small, clear lakes, it is no wonder that the earlier settlers were enchanted with the scene, and in their letters to their friends spoke in glowing terms of its beauty and its loveliness.

But the time had come when this fair region was no longer to be left to the wild men and wild beasts of the forest, hitherto its sole possessors. By a treaty concluded at Detroit on the 17th day of November, 1807, between the United States and the Ottawa, Chippewa, Wyandotte, and the Pottawattomie nations of Indians the Indians ceded to the United States a large tract of country in northern Ohio and southeastern Michigan, including the present county of Lenawee; and by another treaty, concluded at Chicago on the 29th of August, 1821, between the United States and the Ottawa, Chippewa, and Pottawattomie tribes, the Indian title to another extensive tract in Michigan, west of the tract first mentioned and extending to Lake Michigan, was also extinguished, and the territory in both cases acquired by the United States by fair purchase. In the summer of 1823 Musgrove Evans, of Brownsville, Jefferson county, N. Y., came into the territory to explore, with a view to settlement, and found his way to the site of the present village of Tecumseh. The tract had, before this, been surveyed, and put into market by the United States. Mr. Evans, impressed with the beauty of the country, and the advantages of that particular locality, particularly the hydrau lic power afforded by the river Raisin and Evans' Creek at that point, determined to settle and lay out a village there, and to secure and improve this water power. Returning to his home in New York, he enlisted in his enterprise his brother-in-law, Joseph W. Brown, of the same place, afterwards Gen. Brown, now of Cleveland, O., who subsequently played a prominent part in the affairs of the Territory and State, both civil and military, and who still survives in a hale and green old age to see and rejoice over the wonderful development and advance in all the elements of prosperity and greatness of this new county and commonwealth in which while yet in the unbroken solitude of its wilderness he made his home, and to the development and growth of which he devoted the prime of his manhood, and in no small degree contributed. Mr. Evans returned in the spring of 1824 with Mr. Brown and some ten or twelve others, coming from Buffalo in a schooner, and landing at Detroit, where for the time being he left his family. From thence with packs on their backs containing provisions and such necessaries as were required for their journey, they made their way on foot through the forest to the place previously selected by Evans where the village of Tecumseh now stands.