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

LEROY TOWNSHIP AND ITS HISTORY

615

of living during the summer caused the report to go out that Indians were living there, and visitors from the surrounding country
frequently called on them to learn the truth of the report.
By the next year the house had been made snug and warm, ceiled
on the inside and battened on the outside, and rooms were added
to the original structure until the hilltop was crowned with a nest
of one-storied buildings all connected together, with the granary
at the far end. The one bedstead filled the post of honor in the
best room, while four bed-sinks ranged along one side of the house
with built in beds.
Alice Jones, now Mrs. Alice Chapman, of Mason, was a young
girl at that time, and tells of her great fear of snakes, which were
very plentiful in the woods and swamps. In the afternoons, when
sewing or knitting, she always placed her chair on the top of a
large, white wood stump which stood near the door and where she
felt safe, as she could keep an eye out for hated serpents. Great
tree black snakes, known as "sleepy johns," very harmless but
frightful to meet, were often seen hanging by their tails from the
limbs of trees.
Like all newcomers into the Michigan swamp lands, the Jones
family had its siege of fever and chills. They had no well, but
two of their neighbors did have, and from those places one-half
mile away they procured all their drinking water. One of these
homes was across a swampy place, and there a wind-fall had been
made for a path. Trees were cut in such away that the top of one
overlapped the butt of the other, then the limbs trimmed off so
people could walk on the trunks. All these hardships were undergone after the Civil War, and it was some years after that before
the now thriving village of Webberville was located.
The Jones children in those days took their sleigh rides in a
"gopher," or what is better known as a "pung." a home-made
sleigh where roots or limbs of trees with the right bend were used
for runners. Who will dispute the survivors when they say those
were as happy days as they ever saw?