The Spokesrider

An old barn with a stone foundation is a good enough excuse to stop for a photo break. This one is in Eckford Township, Calhoun County, Michigan, on a road I had never ridden before when I came through here last May. Tonight I looked for information about the original owner. It seems this was [...]

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.

She told of one of the practical jokes that was played during the Black Hawk war — one that was played on her by a local Anishinabe man. Her husband Andrew was a physician, not a farmer, and would have bought this land for investment purposes.

Moscow would look even more like Sleepy Hollow if the decrepit general store building down at the bottom, on the right. was still standing. It was a building that crowded the road, and somehow made the place seem like it was of a different time. But it burned down 5 years ago, and has been replaced by a little convenience store back from the road. This was the first time I had been there since the old store was gone. I missed it, but do have a photo of it somewhere.

Yesterday I speculated that the homeowner I met on last Saturday’s ride may have, when he was a boy, met the grandchildren of Reuben White, who had served in the militia during the 1832 Black Hawk war. There’s a good chance that I now know the names of those old people who would come to [...]

Saturday on my way to Moscow I stopped here, across the road from the Convis township hall. It’s a place where I had stopped once before, on a Thanksgiving Day ride in 2006. I couldn’t remember the name of the person, a militia veteran of the Black Hawk war, who had farmed here years afterward, [...]