Grand Rapids and Kent County, Michigan : historical account of their progress from first settlement to the present time / Ernest B. Fisher, editor.

72 HISTORY OF KENT COUNTY, MICHIGAN

perfect diagram of the canal and lines adjacent and drawn by John
Almy, the engineer, from which you will be able to form a tolerably
correct notion of the situation of the place and works). The length
of the canal as at present projected is something over a mile. It now
is intended to terminate above the mill which you see laid down, but
as soon as we make any satisfactory arrangement with Mr. Campau,
who is a jealous, selfish, and troublesome Frenchman, we design to
construct a dam across from the lower end of the islands of his land.
I allude to the foot of the two upper islands. To this point steamboats of light draught can at all times come up, and if we should
not succeed in making an arrangement with him we shall excavate a
channel between or around the islands to our work. The whole fall
below the mill dam in low water is about three feet-in high water,
nothing. This dam, with a saw-mill and about a third of an acre
of ground where the mill stands, Mr. Sargeant and myself have lately
purchased from Wadsworth, Frost and James H. Hatch, of your city,
for $5,500. We deem it better to buy than to have a law-suit with
Wadsworth, who, by raising his dam near our line, had flowed the
water about three and a half feet deep in front of our land. Beside, I
think the property can easily be made to pay double the interest on
the money. * * * We mean to excavate a tail race' along the
margin of the river above, so as to use the water from the canal
under a head of twelve feet, all of the way along the bank from the
place marked 'first privilege' down to the lower lock, as the canal is
60 feet wide on the water line and the water in it at its lowest stage
will never be less than four feet deep. This will afford sites and
power for a great many mills, as there is an inexhaustible quantity of
pine up the river on the north side, and an excellent grain growing
country on the south; a great many will be needed. Nearly all the
water power will be used on the fraction owned jointly and wholly by
you and myself. We also own an undivided third part of the long
fraction of 135 acres above it and a third of the fraction of 48 acres
below Campau's. N. O. Sargeant owns the other two-thirds of the
last named fractions, or rather did own them, but his partners were
reluctant to make the improvements which we are now doing unless
they have a joint and equal interest in the whole. Please advise me
whether you consent to this.
"Mr. Almy has concluded to wait till the leaves fall before he
finishes the survey of the village plat, and that is the reason I do not
send you a more complete map. In the winter he is to superintend
the building of a steam-boat at the rapids to run on the river. I have
agreed to take $500, and we hope you will subscribe that sum or more.
The boat will cost about $6,000. Another such boat must be built
next year to form a daily line with stages from Detroit across the
peninsula. * * *
"P. S.: I had forgotten to mention that we design to erect next
spring a large and commodious public house on the corner where the
site is marked in pencil on the north side of the 100-foot street leading
down to the canal. Such a house is much needed. I ought also to
inform you that the wife of Louis Campau, Jr., of whom I purchased
the fraction which we own together, has never relinquished her right
of dower in said land and refuses to do so. I am about to commence