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

Doors were made from large basswood logs, split about three
inches thick and hewed as smooth as possible with a common axe
and pinned to wooden hinges. There was a large wooden latch
with a string attached and put through a hole in the door to open
the latch from the outside and to secure the door at night the
latchstring was drawn to the inside. The floor was of the same
material as the doors.
In those days the cattle in summer time were turned out with
one in each bunch wearing a bell. They roamed at will in the
woods and marshes during the day, but were hunted up and yarded
over night. It was usually the smaller children that looked after
the cattle which would sometimes roam so far away that the bell
could not be heard. Then the seeker would look for some elevation of ground and lie down with his ear to the earth and listen
for the tones of the bell. One could hear the bell much farther
in this way than when standing, though it was often difficult to
locate the direction of the sound.
In the winter the cattle were all fed on marsh hay, with no
grain, and many of them would be so poor and weak when turned
out in the spring they would get mired in swampy places and
sometimes die. For a month or more in the spring there would
not be a day that there was not a call to help someone who had a
cow or ox mired, while sometimes they would be missed and not
found until summer and the carcass had begun to decay.
Sayles folks had two of their boys follow the cattle in the spring
to keep them out of the low places. You could buy a cow for $10
and a pair of oxen for $40, but that meant more at that time than
$100 for a cow and $400 for a team does at present.
The people built a little school house in the fall out of rough
boards and had school in the winter. Job Earl lived four miles
northwest and had three boys, Oscar, Robert and Charlie, the
latter considerably younger than the others, and the older boys
carried him to school on their backs when the snow was deep.
Now children use carriages and automobiles when living from one
to three miles from school and think they are having a hard struggle to get an education.
At that time people seemed to think the only way to govern a
school was by brute force, consequently every well regulated
school had a bundle of blue beech whips in the corner and a ruler