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

,LANSING TOWANSIIIL AND CITY, VITII HISTORY

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mother of the three boys with her. The result of the conversation was that James Gordon Bennett gave $5 to Will McPhee,
the baby, and to Mrs. McPhee he gave sufficient funds to put her
through to Goodrich, Ont., where she was going to visit relatives
before joining her husband. This he did, so that Mrs. McPhee
need not have English funds exchanged into American money until
she was among friends. It does not appear, however, that the
then young Mrs. McPhee lacked self-reliance.
Remembrances of Chester A. Arthur and James Gordon Bennett by Mrs. McPhee accords with what is understood to be the
appearance of those men. Arthur, she says, was a stalwart figure with black eyes and heavy black moustache and beard.
Bennett was markedly the opposite, a man of slight build and
noticeably blonde.
"When I reached Lansing," says Mrs. McPhee, "I remarked,
'Have they brought me to the jumping off place of the world?'
My notion of a Capitol city was vastly different from the aspect
that Lansing then presented. It was nothing but a rambling,
poorly-built, little village, seemingly set in a marsh. Why, I can
remember what we called Third Ward Park (Central Park, Capitol
Avenue and Kalamazoo street) was a veritable swamp with a
hummock of dry ground in the center. I have actually seen men
go in boats along what is now Sycamore street in the spring of
the year.
Mrs. McPhee went on to explain that rents in Lansing in those
days were as high as now. There were no houses to be had by the
veritable army of stone cutters, bricklayers, masons and carpenters
that swarmed in here for the building of the Capitol. "So impossible was it to get a house that we were forced to take rooms over
the Store of Fallon & Isabell, which stood on Washington Avenue
opposite where is now the Hotel Downey."
Something of the difference between city prices and those prevailing here at that time is told by Mrs. McPhee. She followed
her husband here via Chicago and contrasts prices there with those
here. At Chicago she paid $13 a barrel for flour, but upon her
arrival here bought it for $5. Potatoes in Chicago were $1.50 a
bushel, here they were 25 cents. She bought her first potatoes of
John Whiteley, now deceased.
Indicative of the fact that Lansing less than 50 years ago was on