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

WILLIAMSTON TOWNSHIP AND ITS HISTORY

845

the secretary of the Ingham County Pioneer and Historical Society Mr. Heald says that in 1843 he settled just over the line in
Jackson county near where the townships of Henrietta and
Waterloo in that county and the townships of Stockbridge and
Bunkerhill corner on to each other.
For sixty-two years Mr. Heald has voted in Ingham county,
and while he appears to have some doubt about his being acknowledged as a pioneer of this county in all probability no one else
will look at it that way.
The sketch referred to above is this:
Early history as I remember from hearing my father and mother
relate during my early life: My father, an English Yankee, born
in Maine, and my mother, pure blood Irish, born four weeks after
her folks landed in Maine from the old country. With two children, Frances, three years old, born in Bangor, Me., and Charlotte, one year old, born in Woodstock, Province of New Brunswick, they emigrated from Maine and traveled five weeks on the
fastest conveyance known at that time, the Erie canal being a
part, and landed in Dexter, Washtenaw county, Michigan, May,
1836. There my father conducted a blacksmith shop.
The Michigan Central Railroad did not extend much farther
west than Jackson at that time. The rails were wood and strips
of iron 3/2 inches wide and one-half inch thick, spiked on top for
the wheels to run on. Occasionally the iron would get loose at
the end and the wheels run under (car wheels were made very
small in those days) and the iron would break through the bottom
of the car, and people were frequently hurt.
I was born in Dexter, Michigan, May 20, 1837.
The first woman I remember, except my mother, was Mrs.
Mooney, a kind-hearted Irish woman, whose place joined ours.
A. D. Crane, a lawyer, lived the other side of us and had two
children, Martin and Harriet.
May, 1841, myself then four years old, we moved four miles
west to Phelps Corners. My father conducted a blacksmith shop
there. I remember the names of some of the people. On the
south Uncle Isaiah and Aunt Clara Phelps (as all the children in
the neighborhood called them). They had no small children,
but two young men, DeForest and Philo. While we were living
there DeForest was shot and killed in some feud over a mill dam
in Dexter.