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

WHITE OAK TOWNSHIP AND ITS HISTORY

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bridge was organized as a township. Even White Oak itself, only
four years after its first settlers came, was made a township.
"I tell you, there wasn't a lazy hair in anyone's head in those
days," said Mrs. Clark the other day at her son's home, relating
how life went with them. "We all worked as hard as we could,
and we had some terrible times-yes, indeed we did-but we were
all as happy as folks are nowadays and I don't know but happier."
HAS SPINNING WHEEL.
Mrs. Clark still possesses the spinning wheel which was a prime
necessity in her frontier home. She not only learned to spin but
she made cloth as well. She remembers with pride how she made
her first husband a full suit of clothes of "black satinette." Our
men folks looked just as well as they do now, though we made their
clothes from the cloth we had made from wool off our sheep's backs,
is Mrs. Clark's belief, whether modern tailors agree or not.
"How were women's dresses made in those days?" Mrs. Clark
was asked. "Well, they 'want' as short as they are now, that's
one thing!" She remembers the wedding dress she wore.
That was when she was a bride of 19. It was a dark wool
delain, with a small white figure. She admits that she and George
Wilson (her first husband) did not have much of a wedding. They
drove over to Howell in Livingston county, were married there,
and then went on for a honeymoon of a week with relatives further
over in Livingston. Coming home the snow was so badly drifted
they were overturned from their sleigh.
Young Wilson and Abby Dutcher met when the young man
came to help build the new Dutcher frame home which was considered quite a mansion. And so these young people, trusting
the future as implicitly as it has been trusted in all ages, were
married, little realizing that the great Civil War was coming on.
But come it did, and it took the life of the young abolitionist husband, who declared the slaves ought to be free if it meant war.
He also declared, "I would rather enlist and be killed than drafted
and escape."
CIVIL WAR VET.
And death did overtake George Wilson in the service of his
country. He was of Company H, 26th Regiment. Its scarred