History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests / compiled from the official records of the county, the newspapers and data of personal interviews, under the editorial supervision of Thaddeus D. Seeley.

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HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY

was disused as a highway, for nature has a fashion of taking the discarded things of man, whether it be a deserted house and garden, or a
forsaken highway, and clothing them with a peculiar beauty; so here
the turf grew thick and soft, clumps of hazel brush sprang up, now at
one side, now in the middle of the green road. Birds found here plenty
of safe resting places; robin and bluebird, thrush and catbird were all
at home. With one such remnant of the old road I was especially familiar, that between Doctor Parke's house and the sawmill road, so near
the turnpike that the rumbling of the wagons and crack of driver's
whip could be heard, and yet it had an air of perfect seclusion.
"Here there was once a famous picnic; how heartily Doctor and
Mrs. Parke entered into the spirit of the occasion. Rowland Trowbridge, fresh from college, or possibly home at vacation, was there.
The Berkshire pig, which formed part of the repast, was much mixed
up with quotations from Shakespeare, and it seemed to be a question
with the elders that day which they really liked best, the poet or the
pig. For the younger portion of the company, besides the delight of
eating out of doors and being in the way generally, was the added excitement of finding a nest of young rabbits.
"Few are left now of that pleasant gathering. Rowland Trowbridge,
our teacher, Miss Elizabeth Clark, Doctor and Mrs. Parke, Cornelia,
Frank and Ira Parke, are all gone. Of those that were the children
then, more than half have found homes on the Pacific coast, and two
have found their last resting place there.
"Another section of the Indian trail was on the old Blackington
place, and was just such another path of beauty. I think it is all gone
now, and many a road that went winding through the woods in delightful fashion, turning out now for a stump and now for a mud hole, has
been straightened out and compelled to abandon the curve of beauty
for the law of right angles.
"No doubt every old resident can remember some such road fraught
with beauty and full of pleasant associations. If in any mind I have
called up such memories, my object is attained.
"The children of this generation will remember Oakland county
as one of the thriving ones, with interesting railway, and telegraph and
telephone wires on every hand; of comfortable and even elegant farm
houses, of orchards, grain fields, pastures and meadow lands. Here
have come not only people from our own eastern states, but those across
the wide Atlantic, many of whom brought with them little save sturdy
frames and willing hands, and have found here as a reward of their
labors, an old age surrounded by every comfort, and have left to their
children a goodly heritage of broad acres; but I am not sorry that my
memory carries me so far back that I can form some idea of its look
to the first settlers.
"I have been asked to say something of the life of my father, the
late Elijah S. Fish; especially that part of it relating to his settlement
in Michigan. I can only give such incidents as I remember to have
heard mentioned. What memoranda there are in the family are out of
my reach at present; but as those early days were not an unfrequent
topic of conversation, while my parents lived, I am quite familiar with