This is a view of the section of land I wrote about in the last post. Andrew Hays bought the entire section to the right of the road as an investment. According to the reminiscences in the county histories, Hays frequently would go out on horseback from his Marshall home, land-looking. What he was looking for was good agricultural land. After he’d identify some good parcels for agricultural purposes, he’d go to the land office in White Pigeon to make his purchases. This is one of them. How long he had to hold on to his investment before selling, I don’t know.

Hays did his own land-looking, but sometimes investors would hire others to do this field work for them. And maybe some actual settlers would hire a land-looker, but I’m not so sure about that part. If so, it would probably be as a guide. Most settlers would want to see the land in person before they’d buy. But investors back east would often need the services of a land-looker.

A few days ago, while looking for other things, I came across an instance of a person who hired himself out as a land-looker, and then a few years later became a settler-farmer himself in Calhoun County, Michigan. I’ve ridden past his homestead at least a couple of times without knowing anything about it. It’s only 10-12 miles from home. And I learned that practically next door there were neighbors who had out-of-the-ordinary interactions with the Native people, and that a militia veteran from the Black Hawk war also settled nearby. (Just a mile to the south of the sign in the above photo was the home of a woman who had what I would call rather “ordinary” interactions with Indians. She thought of them as beggars and a nuisance. But occasionally there were people who seemed to develop a better cross-cultural relationship than that.)

Most of these are places I’ve ridden past many times, without realizing the significance. But now I have reasons to go there again and stop for photos. All I need is warmer weather. It’s supposed to get cold tonight — maybe even close to zero F — but by the end of the week it’s supposed to get warmer. If I get out, it’ll be my first ride to the homestead of a professional land-looker. I have reason to believe I’ll find the gravesite, but maybe the home still exists, too.