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

LESLIE TOWNSHIP AND ITS HISTORY

645

Stephen, is known throughout America as the greatest marine
engineer of the age. He designed the largest passenger boats
on the Great Lakes, among then the Tashmoo, the Eastern
States, the Western States, the See and the Bee. Washington
Irving, the superb passenger steamboat from Albany to New
York, with a capacity of 6,000 people, was also designed by him.
He has represented the United States in many important marine
conferences, and went to Europe as one of the delegates from the
United States to the International Marine Safety Conference.
HOMER KING
and his wife, Asenith Giles, came to Leslie in 1836. Mrs. King
said that the wolves would at times come so near the cabin that
she could see their eyelashes. Mr. King was a well known hunter,
and received a ten dollar bounty for the first wolf killed in the
township. When out at night he was often obliged to carry a
burning faggot to scare away the wolves that would follow him.
Indians would come and beg for buttermilk, and it was the custom at the King home to set out a stone churn full of this beverage when a band of Indians came.
ISAAC HUNTOON
Came from Vermont to Michigan in 1841 and settled in Leslie.
This family of father, mother and nine children, came with an ox
team by way of the Erie canal and Lake Erie to Detroit, then to
Leslie by the way of Ann Arbor and Jackson. IHuntoon Lake
and creek were named after this early settler. R. B. Huntoon
was the seventh son in this family and was familiarly known as
"Uncle Doc." He was always much interested in the children of
Leslie, especially at Christmas time, and when he died the school
was closed during the funeral that the children might thus honor
their friend.
In 1840 we find that Theodore Clark and his wife, Delia Parish,
and Thomas Peach and his wife, Clarissa tIarlow, were among the
newcomers.
In 1841 Orange Barlow and wife, Elizabeth Whaley, Hiram
Austin and wife, Mary Jared, and T. J. Blake are mentioned as
having settled in Leslie.