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

in athletics. No social gathering was complete unless the Howarth
boys were there to show what could be done in running, jumping
or wrestling. A relative in Ohio won national fame in athletics,
so these boys, if they had been exploited, might have made a record.
West of the post office in the gate house lived Mr. Doyle, the
gatekeeper. He was a Canadian by birth, a Douglas Democrat in
politics, and father of a family of girls, who, when they were all at
home, were never without an escort to the social functions of the
neighborhood. Mr. Doyle was humorist in spite of his age and
gray hair. Many were the jokes he cracked with his neighbors
and the traveling public. I recall two of these. One day in
making a change he gave a man all Canadian pennies, and told
him he paid him in common sense (cents). Another time when a
traveler had to ford an overflowed piece of road east of the bridge
he asked him if he was an antedeluvian, and when the traveler
asked why, he told him "because he came from the other side of
the flood."
When the railroad was completed the Plank Road Company
surrendered its charter and the gate houses were closed, so Mr.
Doyle, with the other gatekeepers, lost his job. He had been
there for years, and was so used to the routine that he could not
accustom himself to the new order. He lived with his married
daughter for a few years and finally died of inertia, just the want
of something to do.
There are others that I might mention, who come to my mind
as I review those early days. The R. F. D. has taken, with its
daily mail, the place of the rural post office and the social center
that it made is gone with the old pioneers. Other social centers
will try to fill its place, but never can do it. The pioneers of that
community are laid away in the Okemos cemetery. Their headstones bear their names, but their deeds and the impressions they
left on their neighborhoods can be written as a memorial of them.
What more appropriate than these words of the poet Gray to
close the story of these pioneers:
"Can storied urn or animated bust
Back to its mansion call the fleeting breath?
Can honor's voice provoke the silent dust
Or flattery soothe the dull cold ear of death?"
FRANK NEAL TURNER, M. D.,
North Lansing, August 1, 1919.