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

GILLETT JONES.
Told by MRS. ALICE CHAPMAN, Daughter of Gillett Jones.
In 1848 Gillett Jones, of Cato, Cayuga county, N. Y., contracted
for 80 acres of school lands on section 14, in what is now Leroy
Township. IIe was to pay about $1.25 per acre, and remained
in Cato working on a farm at $11 a month, until he had paid for
his land. Each year he paid the taxes, coming occasionally to
Michigan to view his holdings; in time he married and raised a
family, still living in the east on rented farms. In 1865 he again
visited his land in Ingham county to decide whether he should
keep it or trade it for property in New York.
The township of Leroy was still at that time an unbroken forest, but as he made his way through the undergrowth to a small
hill in the middle of his land, and considered the outlook and the
possibilities for making a fertile farm and a comfortable home, he
decided to go back east and try and persuade his family to come
back with him. That he was successful is shown by the fact
that a little later they started for their new home in the wilderness. For some reason their household goods were sent from
Oswego to Saginaw by boat, then brought overland by ox team to
Leroy. On July 3, 1865, the family reached their new home,
where Mr. Jones had felled trees and made a clearing sufficiently
large for the house he intended to build. He first put up some
poles and made a tent of a carpet, and put up their one bedstead
under this. The cook stove was set up out of doors, and here
they lived until fall. Mrs. Jones had strong objections to living
in a log house, so under great difficulties logs were taken to the
nearest mill and the lumber brought back by way of a winding
trail through the woods and underbrush, and a house 12x12 feet
in size erected, with a flat shanty roof of boards. They were
able to move into this in November, though it had no doors or
windows, only carpets and blankets at the openings. Over the
stove set in the open Mrs. Jones had done her preserving and
pickling, putting up wild plums, wild grapes and cucumbers from
four hills which she planted on the Fourth of July. Their mode