Girard neighbors

The 1879 history of Branch County, Michigan tells about the first settlers at Girard. The Americans weren’t the first people living at Girard, though.

It’s a common enough story. Many of the first settlers in southern Michigan told how they wouldn’t have made it through the first winter without the assistance of their Potawatomi neighbors — the people who in 1821 had ceded the land the Americans were now occupying, and who would be deported from Michigan in 1840.

Early in the spring of 1829, Richard W. Corbus, a young, unmarried man, accompanied by his mother and his niece, Sarah Ann Corbus, then a child of about seven years of age, removed to the territory now known as Girard. They located temporarily near the northwest corner of section 22, and thereby became the first white residents in the township. The Pottawatamie Indians had a small village on the prairie, about one-fourth of a mile east of the corners, and here for the first six weeks Corbus, his mother, and niece lived in an unoccupied wigwam in the Indian village. During this time young Corbus had prepared a sufficient quantity of logs to build a log house, which was finally erected with the assistance of his Indian neighbors and his brother Joseph, who came over from Allen Prairie for that purpose. Mrs. Smith relates that the Indians were very friendly to the early settlers, and freely divided their store of provisions with their newly-arrived white neighbors, who, but for this timely aid, would many times have suffered for the most common necessaries of life. On the south side of the road, or near the northwest corner of section 22, was an Indian village of some twenty huts, and a large dancehouse…

The Girard Country Store is on the southwest corner of the “corners” spoken above in the above quotation.

Here is the country store shown from further away. The Potawatomi village of “twenty huts, and a large dancehouse” that is spoken of was on the same side of the street where I was standing to take this photo. The house to the right of the utility pole is probably about as close to the northwest corner of section 22 as building codes would allow.

The anecdote about the apple trees that I alluded to in an early blog article took place just a little further down the road, to the north. I’ll get to that later.