Cyrenius Thompson was credited as being the first settler in Plainwell, MI. The town is now reaching out to take over his farm, but there are a couple of fields it hasn’t yet overtaken. This photo was taken on Saturday, from the edge of the cemetery where Cyrenius and Anna are buried.

The man riding the rake was encouraging his “girls” as they made their way from one of the fields to the next. I wonder if he puts the hay up loose, like in olden times, or if he bales it. Maybe another time I’ll get a chance to ask him. I’ve seen gas-powered balers drawn by horses on Amish farms. Maybe he has one of those.

A great-uncle of mine used horses to rake hay on his North Dakota farm up until he died in 1962. I think he used an older-fashioned dump rake, though. He used modern farm equipment for most things, but he liked to use his horses for some tasks. It may have been partly for the nostalgia of it, but I’m not really sure.

YTD mileage: 1728.5

Yesterday I finally got in a ride, the first since August 31. I had missed some of the best time of the year for riding. I picked a modest destination, not sure how out of condition I had got in those 18 days. The wind was from the east, so I went west, to Plainwell where Dr. Cyrenius Thompson had started farming in 1832. He and his wife Anna are buried in the cemetery shown here. I almost didn’t find their graves, though. I had visited this cemetery many years ago, on a cold, runny-nose kind of day. I don’t recall whether I found the gravestone that time, but this time I did.

The following sketch of Dr. Thompson is from the Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, volume 4 (1883) pages 171-172.

Dr. Cyrenius Thompson was born in the town of Hudson, Summit county, Ohio, in January, 1802. Early in life he studied medicine and graduated at Middlebury College, in Vermont. In 1828 he married Miss Anna Pelton of Euclid, Cuyahoga county, Ohio. He came to Michigan in 1830, bought a farm and settled on Gull Prairie in the spring of 1831. He practiced medicine but little, his time being devoted to farming. He soon became dissatisfied with his prairie farm because of a scarcity of water there, and sold it. He then purchased the east half of the northwest quarter of section 20, in town 1 north, range 11 west, and I think he was the first settler in range 11, Allegan county. He built a board shanty on his land, fastening the boards to the frame with wooden pins. Mr. Thompson was a very worthy citizen, always foremost in the cause of religion and education; he died April 17th, 1853, aged 51 years. His widow, Mrs. Anna P. Thompson, still resides on the farm first occupied in 1832. She had three children, two sons and one daughter. The oldest son died in 1854, the other still lives on the old homestead. The daughter, Myra E., widow of the late Dr. Erastes Upjohn, lives in Nebraska, where her husband died. The farm and residence of Mr. Thompson is in the town of Gun Plain.

This snippet from the 1873 atlas of Allegan County shows the Thompson farm in Section 20. (I’ve drawn a border around it, as well as around land belonging to another person who I’ll save for another blog entry.)

Although Thompson was in Michigan in time to have served in the militia during the Black Hawk war, he is not one of those listed on the rosters. On the other hand, the C.C. White who owned property to the north of his farm did serve in the militia. So I’m not quite sure why I was looking for Thompson’s place, except that he is said in some places to be the first settler in Gun Plain Township.

This is the present farmstead. There is a house behind the trees. Maybe I can get a ride-by photo after the leaves are off the trees.

I don’t know if the hay field still belongs to that farmstead. As I pulled up to the cemetery a man had just finished raking it with a horse-drawn rake. It appeared to be a hobby-farm operation. He then moved on to another field to the south. I would have liked to wait until he got back so I could ask him questions and get a better photo than I did, but after hanging around a while I realized I had better get going if I was going to finish my ride before dark.

The sketch quoted above says that Thompson’s daughter Myra married an Erastus Upjohn. That caught my attention because Upjohn is an important name around here. A little poking around on the web finally gave me the connection between this Erastus Upjohn and the William Erastus Upjohn who founded the Upjohn Corporation. (The Upjohn company was merged with Pharmacia in 2000 1995, and that company was bought by Pfizer in 2002. The local economy still hasn’t gotten over the trauma.) Anyhow, it turns out that this Erastus N. Upjohn was an uncle of the founder of the company.

Erastus N. and his wife went to Nebraska, the sketch says. Google Books contains a Nebraska history that includes a sketch of her:

Throughout the history of civilization, people have often wanted to get away from small towns and the prying eyes of neighbors. Not that Bellevue, Nebraska is a big town, but little did Erastus and Myra know that by going there they couldn’t get away from the prying eyes of the Internet and The Spokesrider.

The 1850 census has Erastus and Myra listed listed next to the entry for Cyrenius Thompson, which almost certainly means they were close neighbors, given the way census takers did their work. In fact, their placement among the entries for other neighbors suggest that they lived to the north of the Thompsons. The 1873 atlas shows a residence not only on the south side of the road but across the road on the north as well. Did the young couple live near the parents, on the parents’ property?

But then I found another county history that showed Erastus as a taxpayer in 1843, in section 18, to the northeast. It was a place of less than two acres, but that was probably enough for a practicing physician, as opposed to his father-in-law who seems to have preferred farming to medicine. I don’t know where in the section he lived. He lived close enough to be a neighbor of the Thompsons, but it wasn’t right across the road.

But the 1850 census has more. It says Erastus was 32 years old and Myra 16. The date for Myra squares with other information, but it seems that Erastus may not have given his correct age. (Or there was some mistake about it.) According to this genealogy site, he was more like 39 at the time. It also tells us that Myra was his 2nd wife. It appears that his first wife was about 32 that year, but she died in 1850. It looks like it didn’t take Erastus long to rob the neighbor’s cradle and marry his 16-year-old schoolteacher/daughter. They were married on May 15 of the same year.

I imagine that could have given the other neighbors something to talk about, especially since there is no indication that he had any children from his first marriage who would have needed a mother as quickly as possible.

But they raised a family out in Nebraska, and one of their boys became a physician, too. After Erastus N. died, Myra remarried eight years later, at age 55. I don’t suppose an interval like that gave the neighbors much to talk about. But maybe there were things to talk about, anyway Maybe Myra inherited her mother’s genes for aging well. One of the county history writers (in 1880?) made a point of telling how the widow Anna Thompson was still a remarkably youthful looking woman in her old age. She would have been about 75 years old then.

Her gravestone hasn’t aged so well, though. Here is what’s left of it. At least we can still read this much: “Cyrenius & Anna P. Thompson”. Others of their family are buried nearby. Here’s the googlemap.

googlemap

Yesterday’s mileage: 45.5. YTD: 1720.0

My last post was from a ride in Allegan County on July 31, 2006. I was near Hopkins, on my way to Martin for a photo stop before riding the remaining 30 miles to home. This library is in downtown Martin.

Mumford Eldred, brother of Caleb Eldred of Climax Prairie (two posts back) was the original buyer of the land pictured here. He bought the northwest quarter of the northwest quarter of section 29 in Martin Township. And at the extreme northwest corner of that 40 acre parcel is the intersection and former grocery store pictured below. The library is next to it the once-grocery store. A few weeks after buying this parcel Mumford bought the 40 acres immediately to the south. So he owned all of what is now the east side of Main Street south of the stoplight.

This was oak savanna when he came here in 1836 — almost as good as prairie for farming, and the best land in this township.

Native people were still living here when Mumford moved in. It may have been a mixed group of Potawatomi and Ottawa. The Potawatomi had signed a treaty three years earlier by which they agreed to give up their remaining small amounts of land in Michigan and to leave at some then-indefinite time. The Ottawa had signed a treaty earlier in 1836 by which they would give up the land north of the Grand River. They were all living here on borrowed time — allowed to use the land only until white buyers came and took over. They had homes here and had already planted crops here when Eldred came, and were unable to negotiate any kind of arrangement with him. The situation became unpleasant. In 1880 a local history writer told about what happened:

Yet had Mumford Eldred been less austere and more gracious in his bearing towards them, this would not have been one of the exceptional cases in the history of the settlement of Southern Michigan in which the white settler and his Indian neighbors were at enmity. But Mr. Eldred chose a different course; he considered the land his own, the Indians as interlopers, and ordered them away. They demurred, and moved not. He plowed their little patches of loose soil and planted his crops. Upon their appearance above the surface the corn and potatoes were pulled up and the stalks scattered. –History of Allegan and Barry Counties (1880), pages 270-271

The conflict escalated from there. It was not to the point of a violence, unless you count Eldred’s attempt to fell a tree to land on their houses. But even after the Native people moved away from this piece of ground, Eldred’s crops and stock were not safe for several years to come.

Usually the county history writers were not harshly critical of settlers in their communities who were still living in the area at the time of writing, but Eldred was dead by 1880. His wife was still living, though. It would be interesting to know how much of this story came from her, but unfortunately, the county history writers of that time did not often cite their sources very clearly.

Susan E. Gray used this incident as the introduction and centerpiece of an article that was published in 1994 in the Michigan Historical Review. It’s titled “Limits and possibilities: White-Indian relations in western Michigan in the era of removal.” I just now pulled it out of my files and re-read it. I am finding it even more useful than I had remembered. She cites some references I need to check out, including some that may give me more information about the Ottawa leader Noonday and the Slater mission that I blogged about here in an article titled “Theology of the Grave“.

I had hopes the roads would be clear enough for a bike ride tomorrow (well, I guess tomorrow is today already) but I just now drove home on new snow.

This scene is of weather just the opposite of what we’re having now. On the last day of July 2006 I rode home from Holland, making a ride of around 90 miles out of it. The temperature was in the mid 90s, even though it doesn’t look it in this photo.

I was pleasantly surprised when I came to this place. I didn’t know any terrain like it existed in Allegan County. I think it was somewhere east of Hopkins. Or maybe it was west. In any case, it made a good impression on me.

I was on my way to Martin, where Mumford Eldred, a brother of the Caleb Eldred of Climax Prairie, had settled. More about that next time.

This afternoon (Saturday) I rode 63 miles to the Plummerville cemetery south of Saugatuck, very near the shore of Lake Michigan.

A Daniel Plummer, who lived in Saugatuck for a time, had served in the Michigan militia during the Black Hawk war. He was said to have later moved to California, perhaps during the Gold Rush.

In this cemetery a whole bunch of Plummers are buried, starting with a Benjamin Plummer who was the patriarch of the clan, up to the present time. (At the cemetery I learned that Plummers are still being buried there in the 21st century.)

Are these Plummers related to Daniel Plummer? I’m not sure. The biographical sketch of Benjamin Plummer in the 1880 county history doesn’t mention him. Then again, it’s surprising how many of these biographical sketches do NOT mention family members who were also pioneers in the same area.

Maybe someday I’ll hear what the present-day descendants (assuming there are any) think about the connection.

The riding was good today. There was a slight wind out of the northeast, which meant it was at my back most of the time. I ended up riding quite a few miles on gravel, and that slowed me down. But I made pretty good time just the same, mainly by not stopping much to take photos, and by pushing a little harder than usual.