History of Oakland County, Michigan.

HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

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house, for which preparations had been made at the time of his previous visit.
This was to be his manorial residence; and as he had funds at command he had
no trouble in pushing the structure to an early completion. It stood on the
site now occupied by the neat little frame house of George Richardson, just
east of Black Walnut lake, on the town-line, in the southeast corner of section 24.
When finished, it was so satisfactory to him, and so imposing in appearance, that
he named it " Ellerby Castle." Connected with the main building there was a
wing of large size, and in this wing Michael Skinner had his residence and workshop; one of the first jobs which he performed in the line of his trade being the
manufacture of a coffin for the wife of his fellow-colonist, poor Mrs. Rake, who
died in the wilderness, away from home and friends, in the October succeeding
her arrival.
Ellerby never achieved success in his scheme of colonization, although he afterwards made several trips to England for the purpose; and he did not take his
final departure from West Bloomfield until about 1835. Even then he had not
abandoned the idea of the promotion of emigration from England to the United
States, and it is said that he afterwards arrived in this country with a colony of
considerable size, bound for New Harmony, Indiana (where Mr. R. I. Owen was
similarly engaged), but that he never arrived with them at their destination, as
they all deserted his leadership during the passage through the State of Ohio.
John Ellenwood came to Michigan with his family from Ridgeway, Orleans
county, New York, in 1825, and arrived in Pontiac on the 23d of September.
They were moved up from Detroit by the horse-teams of Diodate Hubbard and
John Hamilton (who, indeed, seem to have " moved" nearly every other family
who came into this and the adjoining townships in those years), and, with but a
short halt in Pontiac, they proceeded without delay to their place of destination
and settlement in the southeast quarter of section 12, on the eastern shore of Pine
lake, to and beyond which point a kind of road had already been cut through,
running to the westward of the present road, and close along the edge of the lake.
The land of Mr. Ellenwood laid immediately north of and adjoining the farm of
the first settler, John Huff, who, at this time, was engaged at work in Pontiac;
and, as there was plenty of room in the large log house already mentioned as
having been built by him upon the lake-shore, the Ellenwood family moved into
it as their home until a house could be reared upon their own farm.
The family of John Ellenwood consisted of his wife, two sons, Eben and John
M., and two daughters, Jane and Ismena. Calvin Ellenwood, another son, had a
family of his own, but camne with his father, and remained with him on the farm
at Pine lake for two years after their arrival. Eben also married in about two
years, and settled just north of his father, upon what is now the Coates farm.
The old log house into which he moved with his bride may still be seen on the
west side of the road, and near the bank of the lake, windowless, dilapidated, and
desolate. John M. Ellenwood, the youngest son, was then but a lad of eleven
years, and he is still living on the same place where they settled fifty-two years
ago. The daughter, Ismena, afterwards married Thomas Irish. Another daughter
was the wife of Nathan Herrick, who came in soon after, and he, too, moved into
the Huff house for a temporary home, as did also Timothy Kennedy's family, all
at the same time that it was occupied by the families of John and Calvin Ellenwood. Nathan Herrick took land upon Pine lake, just south and west of that of
his father-in-law, it being the east half of the northwest quarter of section 13.
As may be supposed, the pecuniary circumstances of Mr. Ellenwood were not
of the best on his arrival in Michigan. It was not convenient for him to purchase a cow, so in the fall he bargained with one of the Bloomfield settlers to
take one of his cows and keep her through the winter, which he could easily do,
as the " blue-joint" grass grew in great abundance all along the lake. In the same
season he harvested a field of fifteen acres of wheat upon shares, and by this
means procured breadstuff for his family, while John, the youngest son, who had
already become an expert deer-slayer, had no trouble in keeping them well sup-. V

plied with venison, having sometimes as many as six carcasses hung up In reserve at
one time. The next spring he bargained with Ezra Rood and Asa B. Hadseil, of
Bloomfield, to break and prepare four acres of ground for an orchard, Rood having a horse-team and Hadsell a yoke of oxen. This he set out with trees, many
of which he procured from the Indian reservation at Orchard island, and he also
sowed the ground among them with wheat.
Pomeroy Stiles came in the spring of 1826, and entered on the northeastern
section of the township, but did not settle upon it for three years, during which
time he boarded in the family of Mr. Ellenwood, with whom, during the first
season, he joined purses for the purpose of procuring a yoke of oxen, which with
their united funds they succeeded in purchasing of Harvey Seeley, the price being
forty dollars. To feed them they bought two stacks of wheat of Thomas J.
Drake (afterwards Judge Drake), administrator of the estate of Rufus R. Robinson, who had died the previous autumn, and this wheat they had ground into
feed at the Pontiac mill, less than four miles distant. Wheat in this section and
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at that time was so plenty, and the means of transportation so limited, that it
absolutely could not be sold, no matter how fine the quality, and it was therefore
used as food for cattle. The muskrat-skins which an expert trapper like Uncle
Laban or Stephen Smith could take from the lake in a season would then be of
far more commercial value than the wheat crop of the best farm in the township.
THE LATER SETTLEMENTS.
Among those who came in the year 1827 was Ebenezer F. Smith, who settled
in the northeast corner of section 33. Mr. -- Colby also came in that year,
and purchased the east half of the northeast quarter of section 26, which he
afterwards sold to Andrew Simpson. Daniel Powell settled about the same time
at Black Walnut lake, and John Powell (not a brother of Daniel) on the Herrington tract.
The Indian reservations were sold at auction by the government in September,
1827, and were purchased, at the price of eleven shillings per acre, by George
Galloway, of Palmyra, New York, an uncle of Captain Joshua Terry, who afterwards kept the public-house between Orchard and Cass lakes. These reservations
were one hundred and seven acres at the southern end of Orchard lake,-now the
farm of R. W. Cummings, —and Orchard island, in Orchard lake, about thirtyeight acres,-now the property of Colin Campbell, of Detroit.
One of the earliest settlers in the western portion of the township was Eldad
Smith, from Camden, Oneida county, New York, who, on arriving in Michigan,
had stopped for a time in Bloomfield, but came into West Bloomfield soon after
1828, and settled in the southwest quarter of section 30, on lands at present
owned by T. C. Severance. Henry Dodge came in about the same time, and settled in the northeast quarter of section 30, and Henry Allen, a cabinet-maker,
from Seneca county, New York, purchased and settled on the southeast quarter of
section 32. Mr. Simpson and his sons, Robert, Andrew, and James, came
in the year 1829, and bought from Colby, as mentioned above; the'tract being
the same now owned by Robert Kyle. Nelson Rosevelt was another who came
near the same time, and he located his log dwelling on the north line of section
27, in its northeast quarter.
In the fall of the year 1829, William Durkee came firom Vermont, and settled
on one hundred and sixty acres of land purchased of Charles Kelly, this being
the Hoff tract at Pine lake, on which the first house was built in the township.
Erastus Durkee, a son of William, also came at the same time, and settled at the
west end of Long lake, in the northeast quarter of section 12. Jcdediah Durkee,
another son of William, came in 1830, and settled on the southwest quarter of
section 13, —the Douglas Harger farm. Mr. Durkee is now a residentof Pontiac.
In his "' Reminiscences from an Old Pioneer," recounted to the Society of Oakland County Pioneers, he says: "I built a log house, and to aid those who had
no dwelling, I took about twenty new-comers in the one new house. To pay expenses I used to go four or five miles a day to work, and had one dollar per day
with oxen, and fifty cents for self. I wanted then, as ever since, to keep out of
debt. I was often without meat, but occasionally killed a deer or a bear. I have
seen as many as three wolves cross on the ice of Pine lake at one time. After
three years I built a good frame barn. To get one thousand feet of lumber I
worked a week with oxen to pay for the same.... For a quarter of a pound of
tea I worked about one day.... Then my wife used to be left alone for a week
at a time with three small children. Wolves were so numerous that I had to
build hi-h inclosures to save my sheep from their ravages. After they had killed
forty sheep near our place, a hundred men turned out in pursuit of them. I used
to go three or four miles and split rails at four shillings per hundred, and went
often a number of miles to help at a raising.... Esquire Ellenwood lost, by fire,
his house and all its contents, and I took him and his family of twelve persons
into my house, making twenty-four inmates. They lived with us about two

months, till he could build."
From about the year 1530 the immigration became much more rapid. The
following were among those who came in near that time: Wm. A. McAlpine settled on the northwest quarter of section 36; Robert Carhart, on the northeast
quarter of same section; Henry Keyser, on the north side of Pine lake (lands at
present owned by O. C. Morris); -- Case, also on north side of Pine lake, now
called Lakeland place, and owned by G. W. Howard; John Case, in the southwest
quarter of section 26; Thomas Beatty, from Orange county, New York, on the
southeast quarter of section 25; David Kyle, northeast quarter of section 26;
Morgan L. Wisner, northwest quarter of section 36; Wm. Harris, a machinist,
in the southeast and southwest quarters of 23; Halsey Whitehead settled near
David Kyle; -- Dickinson, in the southwest quarter of section 27, now Hosner's place; Laban Jenks purchased the lands of Rial Irish; Bachelor settled in southeast quarter of section 28; James Stoughton, on the Herringto
tract, and near him Bentley Sabin, southeast quarter of section 36; Joseph Griffin, northwest quarter of section 26; John Williams, in the southeast quarter of