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

l Z - " 1 -

___

HISTORY OF OTTAWA COUNTY.

The story of the rise and progress of Ottawa County is full of E
interesting incidents, and is by no means tame or commonplace.
Standing as it does at the western gateway of a great and rising
State, with less than half a century of occupation by the whites, its i
possibilities are hardly yet perceived by its own people. Judging from
the brief history of the past, its destiny is full of promise, replete
with hope. With the decadence of its great lumber interest, which
will take many years yet to effect, other interests more important, |
more beneficial, will arise. The husbandlman will garner bountiful
harvests of Mother Eartlh; on the plains and along the courses of I
its numerous streams, orchards and vineyards will flourish. Its i
clay beds will furnish brick enough to satisfy the demands of Chicago and other distant cities. Its valuable mineral springs already
testify that it lies in the line of the salt strata. Its noble harbors I
will be white with the winged messengers of commerce. Its principal city, with its adjoining villages along the great bayou of Spring
Lake, will yearly attract the tourist from the sultry South and West.
The country is only in its infancy; statistics show that but
one acre out of eleven is under any sort of cultivation, and what I
little has been redeemed from the wilderness is capable of producing many fold what it now does.
In the coming history we shall have to treat of the gradual preparation of the soil for man, of its rescue from the deep by natural
forces still at work, of at least two prehistoric races, ot the modern
Indian, of the Jesuit Missionaries, of French and British adventurers, of explorers, of the Indian traders, of early pioneer settlers, of
the lumberer's operations, and so down to the present day,
with its infinity of particulars, the complex of civilized life. If it
were for nothing more than for the settlement of the Holland Colony, the history of Ottawa would be an interesting theme. How,
in one generation, a few hundred Hollanders, generally poor, and
entirely inexperienced, have become a great band of nearly 20,000
thriving American citizens. Settling in a dense forest, they had to
learn to chop or die. And well did they learn the lesson, so that
now, although tlleir chief city was wasted by forest fires, they are
generally prosperous and happy, worshiping every man as his conscience dictates.
On the threshold of our task, we see in 1812 Jean Baptiste
Recollet, a trader with the Indians landing at the mouth of Muskegon
Lake, "threading the brake like questing hound." In 1825 we find
Rix Robinson canoeing up the Grand River, Louis Campau about the
same time comes in from the east. A mission station rises on the
banks of the river at Grand Rapids. Zenas Winsor, in 1833,is a young
clerk for Robinson at Grand Haven. Robert Stewart buys a half
interest in Robinson's pre-enption at the mouth of the river; the
Rev. W. M. Ferry, for years an Indian Missionary at Mackinaw, is
commissioned by his friend and convert, Stewart, to attend to his
interests at Grand Haven, and in 1834 he came in, his family and
relatives coming in by lake from Mackinaw, twenty-two souls,
arriving on Sabbath morning, November 22d. We seem to hear

them on that memorable Sabbath morning, "rolling the psalm to
the wintry skies," and the preacher-now silent in the grave
preaching from Zachariah iv., 10, "Who hath despised the day of
small things." Thus the first act was an act of prayer and praise,
and thus they consecrated the future village and city to God.
Think what must have been the condition of these early settlers; no white neighbors nearer than thirty miles. To the south.
tell miles up the Kalamazoo River, lived a family named Butler. To
the east no whites in Ottawa County, but a family or two at Grandville and Grand Rapids; to the north none nearer than Mackinaw.
On all sides an impenetrable forest, given up to the Indians and the
beasts of the chase.
Then come in settlers here and there; the rebellion in Canada
sends over some noble and enterprising spirits, Benjamin Hopkins,
Jabez Barber, Richard Mason, Henry Griffin, Amos Norton, and
others. Dr. Eastman and his family enter in from Maine. The
Jenisons cross over from Grandville. The period of inflation follows,
and grand schemes are inaugurated, and hope beams on every countenance, only to be succeeded by years of hard times, when real
estate reaches its lowest ebb. Since 1847, when the Hollanders
arrived, there has been a gradual rise, until the wonderful impetus to
the lumber trade of the last few years, and the rise of the fruit and
farming interests has placed Ottawa and Muskegon on the highway
to prosperity and success.
GEOLOGICAL.
Geology teaches that all the dry land was once submerged
under the ocean, which had like the land, its inequalities, its
mountain ranges, its hills, its valleys. Islands are but the tops of
submerged mountains. Some of the sea mountains are steeper and
more abrupt than any on the land. In the British Channel within
ten miles the depth changes from 600 to 10,000 feet. At the close
of the corniferous period a great upheaval formed a line of land
across the southern part of Michigan, which extended to the older
and wider formation in southern Ohio. The land now comprising
Kent and Ottawa was still submerged, but the belt rose higher and
higher, extending northward and westward, until the era of coal
deposits, at the close of which Kent and its adjoining counties
formed the highlands of lower Michigan. It is thought that lakes
Michigan, Huron, Erie and 'Ontario did not then exist, their place
being supplied by a swift river, with here and there expansions.
Then began the mesozoic age, characterized by intense activity
of animal and vegetable life, myriads of reptiles crawling in the
rivers. This era is only known in Ottawa by its fossils. The tertiary age succeeded, when vegetation was rank, and mighty mammoths and mastodons roamed over the earth.
Then comes a change of scene; the glacial period-the ice age
-buries animal and vegetable. Perhaps thousands of years
may have elapsed before God removed the earth from the embrace
of the ice king. At last spring came, the sea of ice a mile in thick

11s

-I

T

s-T lp

II -I N - e 9
toE