History of Lapeer County, Michigan : with illustrations and biographical sketches of some of its prominent men and pioneers.

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HISTORY OF LAPEER COUNTY.

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as there were a few children in a neighborhood, some person was
found to teach them. Schools were kept before school buildings
were built. The first school in Lapeer was kept in a building
erected for a shop.
The first school-houses were rude log buildings erected by subscription, and the teachers were frequently paid in a like manner.
Wages were very low. If a teacher was paid $2 a week with board
it was considered a good salary.
The first schools in the county were taught in Lapeer village;
in 1833, a select school by a Miss White, and in the fall of that
year Captain N. H. Hart taught in a little building on the ground
where White's Opera House now stands.
The first school in Almont Township was taught at the present
village of Almont, by a Miss Freeman, who received a salary of 75
cents a week. In the winter of 1836-'37 Elijah C. Bostwick taught
a school in the Deneen neighborhood.
Mr. H. M. Look also taught a private school at Farmers
Creek, at the house of J. B. Morse, in the winter of 1836-'37. But
as soon as the townships were organized and school inspectors
elected, as provided by statute, the work of organizing districts
began, and these private schools were superseded at once by the
district primary school. Still the academies held their place, for
no one expected to gain anything more than the rudiments of an
education at these primitive district schools. After the county was
organized and the two court-houses built, and the "lower town
house" had been accepted as the "seat of jurisprudence," the upper town court-house was occupied as an academy building, and
while from its rival, human beings were sent forth to the shame of
jail and prison, from the other, young men and women were being
educated for lives of honor and usefulness. When a union school
district was formed in the city, this building became the high school
building, and was used as such until replaced by the present elegant
and commodious brick structure. The old house, soon after its removal from the old site, was destroyed by fire. Like many other
things it had survived its usefulness; but we fancy all who had been
educated within those old walls regretted its fall. In 1844 an
academy was established at Almont by Rev. E. Parker, which was
for years a successful institution. Some years afterward a house
was built there for an academy, which was taught for a time by
Mr. Charles Kellogg. This building afterward became the property of the district, and was the high school up to 1867, when it
was superseded by an excellent brick school-house.
When the University of Michigan was being established it was
proposed to establish preparatory schools, as auxiliaries to that institution, at convenient points throughout the State. What was
then known as the northeastern portion of the State, consisting of
the counties of Oakland, Macomb, Lapeer and St. Clair, would be
entitled to such a school. These institutions were to be known as
branches of the University of Michigan, and there was quite a strife
among the new formed settlements to secure the establishment of
such an institution in their midst. Farmers Creek, among others,
sent in a bid for the school; and to assist in the laudable enterprise an academy was started under the auspices of Mr. James R.
Taylor, aman of liberal education. His school was for a time a
flourishing institution, and pupils gathered there from almost all
the settlements in the county, but this academy did not succeed in

gaining the expected aid from the State and soon died a natural
death, as did also the system, whose aid it invoked, not many years
after.
Many of the teachers of these early seminaries of learning
have died, and the very names of some have perhaps been forgotten, but the influence they exerted over the minds of the generation then coming on the stage will not soon pass away. It is to

those labors in the early history of our State that we owe our
magnificent high school buildings and those neat and commodious
primary school-houses which may be found in every country
neighborhood throughout the Peninsular State.

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CHAPTER V.
EARLY LUMBERING-LAPEER COUNTY SOCIETIES —STATISTICAL INFORMATION.
The subject of lumbering finds a very proper introduction in
the language of Judge Albert Miller, of Bay City, as follows:
"The pioneers of Michigan, who settled in the northern part
of the State fifty years ago, were fully aware that there were vast
forests of pine timber lying around their settlements and to the
north of them, but could not have anticipated the great value which
the rapid improvement of our whole country, and especially the
western portion of it, has found those forests to possess. The
early settlers of that portion of Michigan of which I am writing
were principally from the New England States and from New York,
and when they looked back to the large amount of pine timber they
had left behind them, they did not suppose that in their life-time
it would be exhausted, and that large amounts would have to be
transported from a thousand miles interior to supply the Atlantic
States. -At that time Maine was of itself considered a 'world of
pine forests,' and its proximity to Boston gave that city and the
State of Massachusetts a supply of cheap lumber; and passing
along farther west and south we find the Connecticut River reaching far up into the region of pine forests in northern Vermont and
New Hampshire, and large quantities of pine in every shape, from
the tall spar used in fitting out our Atlantic marine, down to
manufactured clap-boards and shingles annually floated down its
rapid current to supply western Massachusetts and the State which
adopted the name of the said river, without a thought on the part
of the consumers that the supply was ever to be exhausted. The
supply of pine timber on the banks of the Connecticut River was
considered by the early settlers in that region as inexhaustible.
The, writer has seen large quantities of pine logs near the banks of
the river, not over one hundred miles from its mouth, which had
been hauled from the land by the early settlers while clearing it for
cultivation, rolled into a ravine and suffered to decay, which, if
they were now sound, would be worth more than the farm from
which they were cut. If the man is not now living, he has but
recently passed away, who was hired by the proprietor of this same
farm to fell the pine trees on a certain tract of land for no other
purpose than that they should not draw sustenance from the soil
and thereby impoverish it and lessen its value for future cultivation. It must be admitted that said proprietor was not a skillful
woodsman, nor an experienced agriculturist, he being an English
sea captain. I mention this reckless destruction of a commodity
which time and circumstances have made so valuable, as a warning
to prevent the proprietors of Michigan forests from permitting any
waste of their timber; for in less time than has passed away since
the circumstance transpired that I have related above, a good pine
lumber tree will be as great a rarity in Michigan as it is now in
that part of Vermont. I believe that every sound forest tree in
Michigan, of whatever kind, is of more value to the proprietor than
the ashes it will make, after bestowing much labor to convert it
into that commodity. If more land is required for cultivation, let
it be supplied by the boundless prairies of the West, but let our
Michigan forests remain till the timber is required for some useful
purpose, and then let the land be put into the highest state of

cultivation. But to return to the pine forests of the Eastern States
forty years ago. Passing over the Green Mountains we come to
the pine region of Lake Champlain and the waters emptying into

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