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 INGIIAM COUNTY

The men followed on, found the bear and killed him just west of
where the School for the Blind is now. In the bear's hide they
found two holes made by father's pistol shots.
One night John North, Dr. E. P. North's father, was on his way
home from an evening spent with Miss Eliza Skinner, who later
became his wife. When he reached a little flat which was known
as "Grovenburg's prairie" he was overtaken by a pack of wolves.
He shinned up a tree just in time to escape the leader's jaws.
There he was forced to cling and shiver while the pack camped
underneath. At last, when daylight came, the brutes withdrew
deeper into the forest, and cramped and half-frozen he was able to
scramble down and go home.
CLAN THORBURN.
The history of Delhi Township would not be complete without
a sketch of the Thorburn family.
It was in 1848 that John and Robert Thorburn sailed from
Glasgow, Scotland, in an old wooden sailing vessel, leaving their
native land for the new world. The fact that land could not be
bought in Scotland, and the desire to own homes of their own, and
having heard of the cheap lands in America, were the chief reasons
for their making the change. The desire had been growing for
several years, as such things usually grow.
Leaving Glasgow, they turned their faces westward, the old
vessel slowly moving before the wind down the river Clyde toward
the ocean. When in mid-ocean they were taken in a calm and
lay rocking in the cradle of the deep for nearly four weeks. Food
and water became about exhausted and had to be rationed out.
At length a breeze arose and the vessel began to move, finally
reaching New York harbor, where our wanderers were welcomed to
the new world at Castle Garden, after a three months' voyage on
the briny deep.
Upon reaching New York they left at once for Pittsburgh, Pa.,
where each of the Thorburn brothers found work at his respective
trade, one as a blacksmith and the other as a stonecutter. They
did not stay long in Pittsburgh, however, but soon came to Michigan to the home of a former friend and acquaintance in Scotland,