Michigan historical collections. [Vol. 17]

14

ANNUAL MEETING, 1890.

was a singular combination too. There were there those of foreign birth,
from almost every nation. We had Englishmen, and we had Scotchmen,
and we had Irishmen and Germans, and many other foreign countries
were represented, we had these mingling with the people of Pennsylvania,
New York, Ohio, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, New
Jersey, and many other states; it was a heterogeneous mass. They went
to the land office, and then from the land, office to the forest. They did
not stop to see who would be their neighbors; they were there for
homes, and that was what they gave their first attention to. And when
they secured their papers and undertook to put up their cabins, they
were not dismayed to find a Yankee on one lot adjoining them, and an
Irishman on another; to find a Methodist on one side of them, and a
Catholic on the other, and perhaps an infidel on another; and they all
felt like a lot of hedgehogs that were being pricked on every side. Now
out of that mixed state of affairs grew a peculiarly tolerative class of
people. Soon it became necessary to have help to raise their log cabins.
It was with some dismay that they approached their neighbors, not
knowing what they should find. The Methodist didn't know whether
to go to the Catholic, and vice versa; but necessity compelled intercommunication, and they soon found out that other people were as good as
they were, and as much entitled to hold theirl own opinions; and the
result was a system of toleration in the west that never did exist in
New England, and that does not today exist there. People became
tolerant of other people's opinions and notions; and I am inclined to
believe that some of them discarded a part of their old notions, such is
apt you know to be the result of such intercommunication, and such
toleration. We are quite apt you know, to become one-sided in our
views, and it does us good sometimes to mingle with those of different
views, and learn the other side of the question. It does us good sometimes to discard even some of our old pet ideas. These are some of the
influences which generated the present population of Michigan. And it
was not only in the interchange of opinion, but in the intermarriage
between the English and Irish, and other foreign classes with the
immigrants from Pennsylvania and New York, and the New England
States, it created a new class of society, and surely not a bad class of
society, either. I want to pass a few remarks in relation to our fine
school system. A sturdy class of citizens we had with a lot of girls
and boys that they wanted to see educated. As time passed and the
population grew and multiplied, we formed ourselves into territory with
our legislature, and we came together in legislative halls to legislate
for our new commonwealth. Here we had a heterogeneous mass together