The Michigan Territory

1809

With the passing of the fur trade to other and more remote fields, the French voyageur and "wood-ranger" and to a considerable extent the trader also, moved on to the yet unsettled wilderness, especially to Canada where they could continue the old life and enjoy the freedom, abandon, and conviviality of the frontier. The settlement of public lands opens in 1819.

The days from 1835 to 1850 are times of struggle, of trial, of temporary failure, but of ultimate success. The greater part of the state was still a wilderness, well nigh impenetrable. It was a period of strenuous endeavor and of high expectations.

The tide of immigration (principally from New England and New York) was, in 1836, settling into Michigan more strongly than ever before. The very fact that she had so long been kept back in her development by false reports in regard to her lands, resulted in her having more public lands for sale at government price. The consequence was an emmense rush to secure these lands. Speculators and land-grabbers were thronging to Michigan to locate her virgin lands, and returning with such alluring accounts of her beautiful forests, oak openings, and prairies, that they stimulated many more to follow. These early speculators had yet to learn the lesson that many others, both before and since, have been fain to learn through much disappiontment and sorrow, that putting an imaginary price on a thing does not increase its real value.

-Michigan as a Province, Territory, and State, 1906

The settlement of Jefferson Township was typical of those in surrounding areas of Hillsdale County. Geographically, it is the most hilly of any of the townships. In the earliest period there was a two-mile wide strip of land known as “oak openings” which crossed diagonally from northwest to southwest of the township. Its soil was generally poorer in quality than the lands northeast and southwest. A large area of the township was covered by tamarack swamp—giving the name to Tamarack Rd. One homesteader recalled that you could travel a whole day without finding cleared land. However, the wild game was abundant and the many Pottawatomie Indians who roamed the area were friendly.

The earliest settlers were a hardy lot—even so death and illnesses took their toll and few families escaped the loss of a child or a mother or father early in their settling in the new Territory. Numbering among Jefferson Township’s first residents in 1835.

-hillsdalecounty.info