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

LANSING TOWNSHIP AND CITY, WITH HISTORY

599

LOCAL MAN, 88, TELLS HOW, WHEN 13, HE CAME TO
NEW HOME IN MICHIGAN.
R. B. Calahan Describes Trip to Okemos Through Forbidding
Forest.
There was a boy of 13 and a dog. Both were of a little party
identified with the covered wagon that had lumbered up the hill
and had paused for a bit at the town of Mason. Mason was then
a very crude and small dot in the Michigan wilderness.
The man of the party cracked his long whip, the horses strained
in their harness, the big covered wagon creaked and moved, the
woman within the wagon grasped her precious belongings to shield
them so far as she might from the jolting, and again the party
was off.
The dog and the boy, perhaps with instincts sensitive beyond
those of the others, somehow divined the situation. It meant a
final and last plunge into the somber, almost trackless depths that
lay just ahead.
DOG PROTESTS.
The dog ran toward the woods, then paused and looking back
towars the oncoming wagon, lifted his nose, and howled.
"Oh, how he howled! I have heard wolves howl many a time
since, but never has a howl struck so inwardly as did that howl of
our dog. It seemed to me that he was making a protest, giving
his last warning as best he could against plunging into those
woods. Oh, how dark they were. It was like driving into the
shadows of night."
So related Russell B. Calahan, now in his eighty-eighth year,
speaking one day this week of his recollections when as a boy with
his parents he came into this county. The Calahan party had
emigrated from Knox county, Ohio, to the wilds of Michigan to
make for themselves a new home. Mr. Calahan, once the boy
who looked with such dread upon the dark forest surrounding
Mason, now lives with his son and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt
Woodman, 1026 East Main street. Mr. Woodman is deputy