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

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PIONEER HISTORY OF INGHAM COUNTY

tered many thrilling experiences in the journey of four weeks bad
weather, with roads almost impassable, where now the luxurious
trains make the trip in less than twenty-four hours.
They sometimes stopped by the roadside to cook their noonday meals and were glad after the weary day of traveling to reach
a settlement at nightfall. Everywhere they met with the kindest
hospitality.
The family finally settled in 1841 in Ingham county, taking up
200 acres of land from the government in the township of Delhi,
one mile east of where the village of Holt now stands. They were
accompanied from New Jersey by Mrs. Stanton's sister, who
later became the wife of John Ferguson, another early pioneer of
the county.
The father, Daniel Stanton, was a builder by trade and when the
State Capital was located in the woods eight miles north of his
clearing he helped to build many of the first houses in Lansing.
Of the family of eight children who were born to Mr. and Mrs.
Stanton, only one, Mrs. George W. Bristol, of Mason, survives.
Lewis being the oldest of this group of children he, at an early
age, became a helper in the home as all boys of those pioneer days
were expected to do, and passed through a boyhood filled with
interesting incidents.
When he was six years old, and the nearest neighbor lived a
mile away, one day at night fall the boy was missing. How the
news traveled so rapidly through the surrounding country seems
a mystery to us of today, but they soon gathered from many miles
around, bearing torches, bells and guns, for there were bears and
wolves in the forest, and all realized the danger the child was in.
Special anxiety was felt because only a few nights before bears
had come to a neighboring homestead and carried off a couple of
pigs from the pen. The searching party organized and started in
every direction to look for the lost child. The women had gathered as well as the men, and they waited with the grief-stricken
mother in the log cabin, eagerly listening for the report of a gun,
which was to be the signal when the boy was found, but not until
about one o'clock in the morning did they hear this welcome
sound. Little Lewis had wandered four miles from home and was
so badly frightened by the darkness and the strange sounds of the
forest that he had crawled into a hollow log, and though he heard