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 part of 120 acres that was purchased from the government by an Alfred Arnold of Rhode Island back in the mid 1830s. In addition to the land patent records, there is also some information about him in a collection of local biographies published in 1891.

It’s possible that this was not where his farmstead was located, because Arnold also bought 40 acres elsewhere in the township at the same time that he bought this land. I would wager a small amount that this was the place, though. And according to the biography provided by his son, Jared, after farming here for 20 years he left it for a new farm 6 miles away in a neighboring township.

Farmers seem not to have been very rooted to the land in those days — it’s not all that uncommon that one would pick up and move. Alfred had not been a farmer before he came to Michigan, though. He had worked in a cotton mill. It’s different than in the 20th century, when you’d have farmers leaving the farm for a factory job. It was part of the process of the industrialization and urbanization of America. That process had already been underway by 1830, but back then it wasn’t a one-way street. Back then there were opportunities for a person to leave other employment to begin life as a farmer out in the western country.

Why Arnold would have left 120 acres of good farmland after 20 years to move to a smaller, undeveloped farm six miles away is not clear. (I see from the map that the location of that 2nd farm is one I’ve ridden past, but I confess to having no recollection at all of what the land there is like. I’ll pay closer attention next time I go there, though!)

It may be that the published biography is somewhat garbled as to what happened. It says that the son, too, farmed in Eckford township for some years before moving to the farm in the neighboring township. But according to the county atlases, in 1873 the new farm was owned by Jared, the son, while the 1894 atlas shows it as being owned by Alfred, the father. Usually ownership would pass from father to son, not vice versa. (Actually, the 1894 atlas just says A. Alfred, but it seems there was no other A. Alfred than the father.)

Not that it matters a lot. It’s just that I get snoopy about the things I see while out on the road, and like to look for clues about what was going on in peoples’ lives.

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.

My usual route to Hillsdale County takes first takes me to Marshall.

There are several ways to ride to Marshall. This road is not one of the usual ones I’ve taken, but I may use it more often from now on. To get here I have to cross the Battle Creek river. (Yes, that’s what we call it.) I then go through a relatively wooded area, then over a little hill to this T-intersection where the land opens up onto a broad, flat valley.

I don’t know the name of the little creek that drains this valley. Whatever it is, it’s a small one.

On my March 17, 2008 ride to Moscow I took these photos just to document my route. Today was too cold and snowy for more bike riding, so instead I looked on the old atlases and in the county histories to see if if there was any information about this place from settlement-era days.

It turns out that the entire section of land across from the intersection was originally purchased by Andrew Hays of Marshall. I’ve already written about him in these articles:

• Black Hawk and John McCain
• Andrew Hays’ land is up for sale again
• Making it difficult to buy land from the government

I hope to get around to writing several other articles about him and his wife, Clarissa. 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. In fact, he took advantage of the war scare to purchase more land — when his millitia duties took him in the general direction of the land office, anyway. He often went out land-looking, and bought up some of the best farmland around. I can believe that this land fell into that category.

If I had turned south at this intersection, about a mile from here I would have come to a place of settlement-era anecdotes told by a woman who lived long enough to be able to tell them to the writers of the county histories. On the previous times I came this way, I did ride south. Unfortunately, I didn’t take photos those times (at least, none that I remember) so I’ll have to save it for another time, after the weather gets a little less wintery.

More from two Saturdays ago.

I was tired enough after setting up camp, but there was still daylight and rain was forecast for the next day. Time to go get some photos while the weather was suitable. So I had a nice five-mile ride unencumbered by all that weight in my panniers.

The sun had already set on the east-facing slope of the valley.

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.

James Fowle served in a militia company from Blissfield, and probably came through here in 1832. I don’t know of any marks he left on the landscape, here or near Blissfield. But two of his brothers settled here near Moscow. One of them even owned the old tavern for a while. The brothers left several marks on the landscape, including the name for “Fowle Road.”

This is at the top of the valley, just west of Moscow. There was still sunlight up here.

Fowle Road is a gravel road, easy enough to ride on. It was also a road I had never taken before. It was a good enough excuse for a ride.

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 look at the old house. The 1916 History of Calhoun County tells about four generations of the White family. I’ll bet those were great-grandchildren, not grandchildren, and that they were three of the following: Thera, Guy, Glenn, and Esther. And they probably would have been born too late to know their great-grandfather, Reuben.

In 1916, the landowners were Gilbert B. White and his wife, Mattie. They were married in 1891, and had the four above-named children, who were in school at the time of writing. If the homeowner had seen them when he was a boy, say, in 1960, I suppose they would have seemed very old to him.

The 1880 census says Reuben White was then 73 years old, and in the column for “sicknesses or disabilities” is written, “Softening of brain.” I understand that to mean he had had a stroke or some ailment that left him similarly incapacitated.

He and his wife Cloe are buried to the right of the big White monument in the above photo (taken on a Thanksgiving Day ride in November 2006). But their individual markers are barely legible, and don’t give dates of death as far as I was able to tell. Still, it is unlikely that he lived long enough to have known his great-grandchildren.

This photo is taken next to the cemetery, looking in the direction of Reuben White’s old farmstead which is down the road a half mile away.

I haven’t ruled out the possibility that those old people who used to stop at the same place I did on a couple of my rides were not from the White family after all. But there is a good possibility that they were. It would be interesting to find out if there are still any descendents.

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, but it never hurts to get another photo.

I took my photo and headed back to my bike on the other side of the road. A man came out of the house, yelling at me, asking why I was taking pictures. I went back to explain and ask if it was OK with him. He was an older man, in overalls, with a big white beard somewhat stained with yellow. It took some time to explain. It didn’t help that I couldn’t even remember the name of the man who made me interested in his place.

We ended up talking for a while about this and that — our gardens, woodchucks, deer, the township hall, old houses, roads we both knew about. He explained that his parents had bought this place in 1949 and that he grew up here. Later in life he came back and bought the place from his parents. He recalled that when he was a little boy, sometimes a car would stop along the road and three old people would get out to look around. They would look at some of the trees (still standing in the yard) and point to this or that one, saying they had planted it. His mother would go out and talk to them and invite them into the house. They would talk about how this room had been for the hired man, that wall didn’t used to be there before, and so on.

He didn’t know their names, but later, I got to wondering whether they were descendents of Reuben White, the old militia veteran, who had lived here. (I remember his name now, because I looked it up.) Perhaps the house had even been built by him.

According to a county atlas of 1916, a White (R.G. White) still owned the place at that time. The land could have been sold to another family in the 33 years between 1916 and 1949, but it could very well have been the same family, too, especially given that elderly people of the appropriate age apparently remembered living there when young.

Usually I look for old county atlases, the older the better. But now I need to find some newer ones, for the period between 1916 and 1949, to see if this land was still in the White family.

I told the gentleman I was talking to that I could come back some time on another ride, with the information and maps I had about the old owners of this property. Now that I’ve thought about it some more, I definitely want to do that this summer. It’s less than 20 miles away, just right for a Sunday afternoon ride.

I thought of asking to take his photo while I was there, but didn’t. I hadn’t brought any of my release forms with me, anyway. Maybe next time.

Who knows, I may have been talking to someone who remembered seeing the grandchildren of Reuben White, who had served in the militia during the Black Hawk war. They may have been people who were old enough to have remembered their grandfather. I get a kick out of connections like that, so find it worth looking into further.

Before I took off to continue my ride, the man asked me a lot of questions about my bicycle touring, the gear I carried, and so on. It was a good roadside visit.