Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

RIEPORTS OF PIIONEER HISTORICAL MIEETINGS

99

Sunday morning we had one roasted potato apiece, then started
for Jackson. We thought when we got to Elijah Woodworth's
we would get something to cat, but lie had not a mouthful of anything for us. You may judge that we were pretty hungry when
we got to Jackson.
The next morning we packed our goods and started for our new
home in Ingham county. When we got there the women went to
work and got dinner. They had to cook over a Dutch fireplace
with a stick chimney, for we had no stove. When they got dinner ready there came up a thunder shower. The rain came
down through the shrunken bark roof as it would through a sieve,
so you can see we were in a pickle.
We went to work chopping and clearing, but it was so late we
could not raise anything the first year, so we had to buy all our provisions. We had to pay $20 a barrel for flour, $24 a hundred for
pork, 50 cents a pound for butter, and everything else in proportion. Wildcat money was what we had to buy with. Good money
was hard to get hold of. We had to let our letters lay in the postoffice for weeks at a time for lack of 25 cents to pay the postage.
That was the price in those days.
The family of Benjamin Rolfe settled in Vevay township.
There were nine of us, now all dead but Orinel and myself. The
first to go was my sister Fannie. She was taken sick on the road
while moving. As there was no lumber in this section, we had
to go back to Jackson and get black walnut lumber to make a
coffin for her. She died the 7th day of April, 1837, and was the
first white person who died in Ingham county. She was 19 years
of age.
In 1830 my wife's father, Joab Page, moved from Fairfield,
Franklin county, Vt., to Medina, N. Y. In 1832 they came to
Jackson, Mich. They came with an ox team and were 22 days on
the road, a distance that can be traveled now in as many hours.
They traveled one day on Lake Erie on the ice because of an ice
storm which made it dangerous to travel on the land.
Mr. Page put up the first sawmill in Jackson county. In 1844
he, with his son Chauncey, his three sons-in-law, Whitney Smith,
Alvin Rolfe and George Pease, moved to Lansing where he took
the job of repairing the dam and putting up a sawmill for Mr.
Seymour after John W. Burchard was drowned. It took us two