After getting photos of Elijah and Eliza Goble’s framed portraits (in the back, behind that fancy dress and hat from the 1930s) I eased myself and my camera out of the front room of the Log Cabin Museum in Cassopolis (August 13). But I stopped when I spied a note saying, “Rocking chair owned by Gen. Lewis Cass.” How did an object like that come to this museum, I wondered.

The woman in charge said she didn’t know. She said some museum objects had been at the courthouse, and years later they had been transferred here. But nobody knew how they had come to the courthouse. “Well,” I said, “it’s not impossible that somebody in Detroit might have decided that the Cass County courthouse would be a good place to get Governor Cass’s old chair.” “That’s the way I look at it,” she replied.

So it could very well be Governor Cass’s old chair. It would be even better if we knew how it came to be here.

After visiting the museum, I stopped to take another look at the courthouse. I’m not sure how much county business is still done here. Cass County has recently contributed to the despoilation of the countryside and the loss of small-town community life by building new offices out of town. To get there, just follow the road on the left of the courthouse for about a mile and a half. (I didn’t ask any people from the community what they think about that move, though.)

YTD mileage: 1800.0

From a Spokesrider point of view, the portrait on the left is the most valuable item in the Log Cabin Museum in Cassopolis. I hope it doesn’t get destroyed in another leaky roof incident. I took the photo on our visit there Sunday before last by holding the camera up and aiming it in the general direction. Someday, hopefully while the log cabin is still standing, I’ll go back and try again, this time remembering to turn on the vibration-reduction feature on my lens.

The left portrait is of Orlean Putnam, younger brother of Uzziel Putnam, on the right. (In a previous post, “Riding in the dark to Castalia, Ohio,” there is a different portrait of Orlean, sans hat, taken from one of the county histories.) Someone had mixed up the typewritten labels. The one attached to Orlean’s portrait belongs on Uzziel’s.

I get the impression that Uzziel was the stereotypical eldest son, earnest and dutiful, while Orlean was a stereotypical younger son, sociable and carefree. Uzziel was the first American settler in Cass County. Orlean stayed with him the first winter, but before settling down on a farm of his own worked a few seasons as a chainman on government survey crews.

When he was five years old, Orlean and their mother had been captured by Odawa Indians near present-day Castalia, Ohio. He would have been killed along with the other small children in the party, but a chief apparently saw chief-material in little Orlean, and saved his life. Following up on Orlean’s stories in an attempt to corroborate them has led me to some of my best adventures both in the archives and on my bicycle. And I may not be finished yet. I still haven’t done anything to follow up on his story of what happened at the outbreak of the Black Hawk war.

On my afternoon ride in LaGrange township, I rode past the farm where Orlean eventually settled down and riased a family. It’s the farmstead in the distance on this photo, up on a slight rise on LaGrange Prairie. It’s now the most prosperous-looking place that I know of in the township. Orlean wasn’t so carefree that he didn’t chose an excellent piece of ground for himself.

I thought of stopping to say hello to the owners. Several years ago, after having met them, I sent them photos of the place where Orlean had lived when he was captured by Indians. But I checked my watch and saw that it was dinnertime — a bad time to be knocking on someone’s door. So I kept moving.

YTD mileage: 1791.5

Lately I’ve been jumping back and forth between two topics: 1) The Nichols children who survived the 1832 cholera outbreak in Athens, and 2) The 1832 militia veterans in Volinia Township, Cass County. I didn’t realize until today that the two topics would merge, at least geographically.

Raymond T. Wing provided  some additional information about the Jonathan Nichols who married into his family tree (twice, as it turns out). His first wife is buried, not in Leonidas where I had been looking for their gravestones, but in Volinia Township in Cass County. The Nichols had operated a mill there. In fact, one place in the Cass County histories refers to the Nichols brothers, so maybe two of the children ended up here. There was a village at the place, called Nicholsville (duh).

I knew about Nicholsville. It’s only a couple of miles from Charleston, the village which has completely disappeared except for the cemetery. In August 2006 I rode through Nicholsville. Just north of it, I took the above photo of an old brick barn, hoping to learn more about it later.

Judging by plat maps, the barn appears to have been on property owned by Richard J. Huyck. Huyck had been a volunteer in the militia, though not in the company that was raised in Volinia Township. He didn’t move here until several years after the Black Hawk war. His militia company was from Schoolcraft, south of Kalamazoo. This barn is located at what was a stopping place on the stagecoach road between Niles and Kalamazoo. (But contrary to what I wrote earlier, it was probably not the route that the militia from Schoolcraft took to get to Niles.)

Walter Romig’s book, “Michigan Place Names” has the following information about it the settlement:

HUYCKSTOWN, Cass County: platted about a store in 1836 and named for John Huyck; it was first called Volinia (after its township) and, about 1859, Little Prairie Ronde (after the prairie on whose edge it stood); Richard J. Huyck became the first postmaster of its post office, named Little Prairie Ronde, on Nov. 1, 1837, but the office and what was left of the village were later moved to Nicholsville, a half mile south.

In his 1875 book, Howard S. Rogers wrote:

Richard J., came to Volinia Township in 1838, and for a number of years sold goods there, but for several years past has followed the life of a farmer.

It looks like he had a better barn than the average farmer would have had.

The same maps that show R.J. Huyck as the owner of this land show Jonathan Nichols owning land a half mile south or so, at Nicholsville. And there is a cemetery at that place that I haven’t yet visited. I must ignored it on that 2006 ride on my way to the Charleston cemetery.

googlemap

The marker shows the location of Nicholsville.  The Huyck barn is a little further north.

YTD mileage: 1783.

On August 16, 2009 I started at Coldwater, stopped at several places east of town, and then headed west to Leonidas, where Ambrose Nichols had lived. Ambrose was the brother of the Warren Nichols who died in the 1832 cholera epidemic, along with his wife and three of his children.

I often stop at the little store behind “Bruces Tack Box” for an ice cream or sandwich, and probably did so that day, but a year later I don’t remember any more. I had had a bite to eat in Colon, so there wasn’t a good reason for me to be very hungry again. On the other hand, they have good hand-dipped ice cream.

This was the first time I had ever stopped to wander through the Leonidas cemetery. Usually when I’m at Leonidas this late in the day I need to keep moving because it’s a 3 hour ride to home — if I don’t go too easy on myself. But this time I was on a quest — to find the gravestone of Ambrose Nichols or any of the Nichols children who had survived.

I thought I had found something here. If this wasn’t the grave of Jonathan, one of the surviving sons, maybe it was one of Ambrose’s children. There were a number of newer Nichols gravestones nearby, with death dates as recent as the 1960s. The 1877 Calhoun County history had said there were no other surviving members other than Ambrose.

Tonight I checked it out. Unfortunately, it appears that this Nichols family isn’t related to that of Warren and Ambrose. The 1850 census says John and Mary Nichols were born in Ireland.

But I also found this rootsweb page. It appears that Jonathan Nichols lived in this area, too, and it wasn’t unreasonable to be looking in this cemetery for his grave. The 1877 Calhoun history said he had married Jane Watkins. This genealogy gives her name as Persis Jane Watkins. The name Persis seems to have been much used in her family, just like the name Mercy was much used throughout the generations of the Nichols family. And sure enough, one of Jonathan and Jane’s daughters was named Mercy.

This genealogy says Persis Jane “died at Leonidas, Cass, MI, on 11 November 1855.” I wonder where it got Cass county, because Leonidas is in St Joseph County, not Cass. I’m guessing that the Leonidas part is right, which means I need to look harder to find the graves of Jonathan and Mercy. And although no birth or death dates are given, I wonder if it can really be that all of the children (Cordelia, Philenia, Marshall, Mercy, and Eliot) had died by 1877.

From Leonidas I rode down MI-60, stopping to take a photo at a farmstead where Ambrose had lived. More on that another time.

]]> http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/08/22/the-nichols-of-leonidas/feed/ 0 http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/08/22/mr-rogers-neighborhood-store/ http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/08/22/mr-rogers-neighborhood-store/#comments Sun, 22 Aug 2010 17:52:43 +0000 Spokesrider http://www.spokesrider.com/2010/08/22/mr-rogers-neighborhood-store/

Howard S. Roger’s “History of Cass County” is notable among county histories. It was a personal project that was written before the production of county histories got to be a regular industry. Not many such histories were written before our country’s 100th anniversary in 1876, an event that triggered much retrospection and the production of county histories on a grand scale.

After posting the previous article about Volinia, I learned that Howard S. Rogers not only lived in the neighborhood, but built a store there. This information is from the 1882 county history, on page 289:

Mr. H.S. Rogers, who perhaps is as well knonw in Cass County, because of his History of the same, which was issued in 1875, as any other person, has been a resident of this township since 1852. In 1866 or 1867, he erected a store at Volinia, and followed merchandising for nearly twelve years, and it was while thus engaged that he first conceived the project of writing the history of the county. Mr. Rogers is fully alive to agricultural interests, he being now engaged in that avocation, and has performed the laborious duties of Secretary of the Volinia Farmers’ Club, with the exception of one or two years, since its organization, and has assisted very materially in its success.

Was his store one of those two that are still standing? The one shown in the photo above is on the south side of the east-west road. The style of trim and the stone foundation would keep one from ruling out the possibility. But the 1882 atlas (snippet above, taken from the county history and atlas collection at the University of Michigan web site) doesn’t show any stores on the south side; almost all buildings were on the north. That is not to say that the map-maker didn’t miss it, though.

The 1872 atlas shows H.S. Rogers as a property owner in two places near Volinia. One is lot 5, on the east side of the road along the creek. The other is harder to decipher. It may be referring to the lot on the northwest corner of the intersection, or it may be referring to the residence between the main intersection and the stream.

But to me it looks like that one on the northwest corner (photo above) is a more likely possibility, given what the map is trying to tell us. It’s hard to tell from the photo whether the building is old enough, but it might be.

Perhaps some local historian has done research in the county land ownership records to figure these things out. If not, it would seem to me to be a worthy project for someone. (I do some archival research myself, but generally draw the line at going into courthouses to look at records of deeds, for fear it wouldn’t leave me with time for bicycle rides. But maybe someone else will find it an interesting question someday, if it hasn’t already been researched.)

Whichever location was his, and whether or not his store is still standing, it seems like Mr. Roger’s timing wasn’t good for building a store in this town. As he himself told us in his 1875 book, Volinia and Charleston had already passed their peaks of population and activity by then. But maybe it’s good for us that his business wasn’t extremely successful, or he might not have taken time to write his book.

It looks like the church in Volinia is no longer in use. The sign in front is empty, and the roof is in bad shape. I think I could find a photo somewhere in my collection from when it was still active. This one is from last Saturday’s ride.

Charleston is on the north end of the two prairies in Volinia township, and Volinia is on the south end. From reading the county histories I got the impression that Charleston got an early start as the biggest village in the township, and that Volinia caught up later. But Howard S. Rogers, author of the 1875 county history, says they both got their legal start about the same time.

In 1836 Charleston, on Little Prairie Ronde, was laid out by Jacob Morelan, Jacob Charles, Alexander and Samuel Fulton, and David Fenton, comprising thirty-two lots.

In September of the same year Volinia was laid out by Levi Lawrence, David Hopkins, Obed Bunker, and John Shaw, and comprised fifty-five lots and a public square. Charleston, for a number of years previous to the completion of the Central Railroad, flourished with all the splendor of a Western metropolis. A line of stages passed through daily from Kalamazoo to Niles, and everything seemed to indicate that it was the coming town; but alas for human foresight, she and her sister, Volinia, only remain in the memory of their citizens, and a few scattered houses mark the places where formerly all was hurry and bustle.

One of the names on each of those lists was that of a Black Hawk militia veteran of 1832.

Rogers said that already in 1875 all that was left in either place but a few scattered houses. (His own residence was one of them.) But while the site of Charleston now consists nothing but farm fields and a small cemetery, Volinia still has a few houses.

There are even a couple of business establishments, one of them being this store across from the church. It was closed when I was there, but it was already past normal closing hours. There are a couple of chairs out front, I suppose for watching the cars go by on Marcellus Road. That is a busy enough county road that I usually try to avoid it for bicycling, but most of the traffic drives right on through without slowing down.

The store on the north side of the street, kitty-corner across from the church, appeared to be a little more active. It looked like one could buy vegteables on the honor system. Here, too, were chairs for people to sit and visit. But nobody was around. I wouldn’t have minded a sandwich and a cold drink, but that would have to wait until I got to Cassopolis.

YTD mileage: 1774.5

googlemap

I almost forgot the googlemap

Before starting my Sunday afternoon ride, we visited the Pioneer Log Cabin museum in Cassopolis. We had been there once before, twelve years ago.

The building was constructed in the 1920s from logs contributed by some of the old pioneer families. Each family was supposed to contribute one log. We didn’t find out if there is a numbering system to identify which logs came from which families.

It’s probable that some of the families were descendants of some of the militia men from the Black Hawk war. In the township where this museum is located it’s hard to turn around without running into the gravesite or farmsite of a Black Hawk veteran. I visited four cemeteries in the afternoon, three of which I had never visited before. In all four I found graves of Black Hawk militiamen, some of which I had not particularly been looking for.

The roof of the museum is not in good shape now, which makes me nervous about some of the old photos in the building. I imagine some of them are irreplaceable.

Something I hadn’t remembered seeing last time were these portraits of Elijah and Elizah Goble. Maybe they weren’t yet on my search list 12 years ago. I asked if I could step across the barrier and take photos. There weren’t a lot of places to put my feet among all the artifacts, but I managed to squeeze in closer, hold my camera up above my head and point it in the general direction.

Elijah and Elizah lived on Little Prairie Ronde, just north of the one-time village of Charleston. The 1875 county history has this brief biographical sketch:

Elijah Goble was born eight miles north of Cincinnati, in the year 1805. His parents were Holland Dutch, and moved from Morristown, New Jersey, to Ohio in 1801. In 1818 his parents again moved to Preble County, in the same State, and in 1820 they moved to Franklin County, Indiana, where Elijah remained until he came to Michigan in 1828. He first came on a tour of inspection, in company with Jonathan Gard and a man named Tony, and in the spring of 1829 returned and made a location on the northwest corner of Little Prairie Ronde. In September, 1834, he was married to Eliza Tittle, with whom he still lives. Mr. Goble kept hotel at Charleston for over twenty years, ten years of which it was a stage station, and his fund of pioneer information is almost sufficient for a book of itself.

Back in winter 1998 I got caught up in reading this 1875 history book. I had bought my own hardcover copy the day we visited the museum. When I came to this page with the sentence about a “fund of pioneer information,” I told myself I was going to look up Elijah Goble’s phone number and give him a call. It took me a few minutes to realize that that probably wouldn’t work, that he was dead by now.

Elijah Goble was 1st Lieutenant in the small militia company that was organized on Little Prairie Ronde in 1832. In the 1882 county history (page 60) his name is mentioned in a statement describing Elizah’s activities at the time:

In the Volinia settlment–upon the farm of Elijah Goble or possibly that of Jacob Charles, the women began to erect a fortification, but had not made much progress with their work when Samuel Morris and the Rev. Mr. Pettit arrived with information which allayed their fears.

The above photo was from my first photo stop of the day. I had already ridden a couple miles past the site of Charleston, but didn’t go there because I had been there before and there wasn’t time. I had ridden well over 50 miles by this time. My last break had been at the 33 mile mark at Schoolcraft. I stopped in some roadside shade to take a break from the heat and take a long look at Gard Prairie and Little Prairie Ronde. Charleston is way back towards the horizon, toward the left end of the photo, nearly two miles from where I was standing.

There is nothing left of Charleston, where the Gobles had kept tavern, except an old cemetery. There are not even any houses or farmsteads. Aside from the cemetery, it’s just open field. There is a modern farmstead on the location of the Gobles old home, a half mile north of Charleston. Maybe that was the actual tavern site, though if it was, it was located well over a mile away from the old road that used to run from Cassopolis to Little Prairie Ronde to big Prairie Ronde. There are hardly any traces left of that road, which had cut diagonally across the prairie across the scene in the photo, across a point from the right of where I was standing, behind the white barn, to Charleston in the far left background.

That was almost certainly the trail that the militia had taken in 1832 when they marched from Schoolcraft to Niles, and then back home again. If it still existed, it would probably be a great bike route from Schoolcraft to some of my favorite places in Cass County.

googlemap

The site of Charleston is shown by the yellow marker. My route is shown by a red line. One can still see the praries in Google’s satellite view, where they show as a brownish color. Up near the Goble’s old place, Little Prairie Ronde is an especially appropriate name, given that the edges of the prairie have been rounded by center pivot irrigation systems.

YTD mileage: 1766

This Hicks Cemetery is about a quarter-mile up the road from the place where I surmised that Solomon and Mercy Nichols Hicks had lived. The brown obelisk across the road, on the right, may be where Mercy’s father-in-law and mother-in-law are buried.

But I should back up and explain a little better why Dave and I are interested in Mercy Nichols Hicks. Dave is interested because she is part of his relation. My interest is because the cholera epidemic that killed her parents and siblings was an indirect result of the Black Hawk war. The cholera was a worldwide epidemic that had just reached North America in 1832. It was brought west by the soldiers under the command of Winfield Scott, who had been sent west to subdue Black Hawk. They didn’t get involved in the fighting, though. As Scott had feared, the epidemic broke out among his soldiers when they were on the transport ship. So he kept them holed up in Chicago, out of action until the cholera dissipated.

But Scott had stopped briefly in Detroit on his way to Chicago, and from there the cholera spread west to Marshall and Athens in Calhoun County.

The 1877 history of Calhoun County, page 116, has this passage about what happened in Athens:

The victims of the malady were Warren Nichols and wife, and three children, — Margaret, Philena, and Phoebe,– and Isaac Crossett. The Nichols family were interred on the farm now the property of A. C. Waterman, in the village of Athens; and Mr. Crossett was buried by Messrs. Alfred Holcomb and Benjamin F. Ferris, on the place now owned by the widow of the latter, also within the limits of the village.

In speaking of these times, Mr. Holcomb says, “The first prayer-meeting held in Athens was during the cholera period, at our house. Those present were Benjamin F. Ferris and wife, myself and wife, and Lot Whitcomb, nearly all the well persons in town. All knelt down, and Lot Whitcomb offered a fervent, heartfelt prayer, and one can imagine far better than I can describe the need each of that little band felt for the comfort and consolation of prayer. After the prayer-meeting was over we agreed that those who survived the night should go around in the morning and visit those who were sick.”

The children of Mr. Nichols who survived the cholera married as follows: Mary, the eldest, married Robert McCamly; Lydia married Milton McCamly, then of Burlington township, and subsequently of Battle Creek; Jonathan married Jane Watkins; Albert, Belinda Lee; and Mercy, the youngest, married Solomon Hicks, of Pennfield township.

I’ve located the gravesites and homesites of some of these people, but for now I’m concentrating on Mercy, the youngest survivor.

This photo was taken closer-up to the obelisk. An inscription on the north side gives the names as William and Nabby Hicks, born in 1792 and 1797, respectively. (Census records give her name as Abby instead of Nabby.)

But I’m not positive this is really the in-laws’ grave. I haven’t seen any records that say for sure that Solomon was the son of William and Nabby. So far I’m just guessing they are the parents because they had their farms in close proximity to each other.

I didn’t see any gravestones for Solomon or Mercy on my quick walk-through last year — though there are several other Hicks gravestones.

Marriage records indicate that Mercy W Nichols and Solomon S. Hicks were married on 14 February 1844. There is no Solomon Hicks listed in the 1850 or 1860 federal censuses for Pennfield Township. The 1870 census lists Solomon S. Hicks who was then 50 years old. But his wife is listed as Charlotte, age 48, born in Virginia. No children are listed for their household. One possibility is that Mercy had died by then and Solomon had remarried — a common enough occurrence in those days. But more information is needed to pin this down.

In the meantime, Dave has spotted some fascinating genealogical information on this page and is making inquiries about it. It looks like our Mercy Nichols from Athens had an aunt Mercy back in Rhode Island who lived to an old age. And she had had a great-grandmother named Mary Mercy Gorton, who had been born in Rhode Island in 1739.

There are two parts to that name that are interesting. Mercy seems to have been a name much used in the family over several generations. And Gorton is a famous name in the history of Warwick, Rhode Island, which is the town where grandfather Jonathan continued to live after three of his sons moved to Michigan.

Mercy’s g-g-g-g-g-g-grandfather was the Samuel Gorton who founded the town of Warwick. In reading the wikipedia page about Warwick, I got the idea that Samuel Gorton had bought land from Indians who sold it without checking with all the others who also might have some claim to it, and that this dispute was a factor leading to King Philip’s War. That would have been a story to compare with the one in which William Henry Harrison induced some of the Sauk people to sell land where Potawatomi and other people also lived. This 1804 treaty was one of the factors leading eventually to the Black Hawk war.

But in reading more about Gorton himself, I get a different picture — of a man who maintained good relations with the Indians and recommended that the authorities in Massachusetts not treat them all as enemies — or they could easily become enemies.

But Gorton himself didn’t get along well with the Massachusetts colony. An article published in the New England Quarterly in 1934, titled, “Samuell Gorton : New England Firebrand” begins thusly:

Samuell Gorton could probably have boasted that he caused the ruling element of the Massachusetts Bay Colony more trouble over a greater period of time than any other single colonist, not including those more famous heresiarchs, Ann Hutchinson and Roger Williams.

I should also announce that this story has inspired me to get my first-ever Kindle book — something I thought I might never care to do. The book is “The History and Future of Narragansett Bay” by Capers Jones. It has some information about Gorton that I haven’t run into elsewhere. I’m reading it on my Droid X, using the Kindle app. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve decided that it’s surprisingly easy to read books on my new phone, so I took the plunge.

YTD mileage: 1749.0

This Jesuit priest re-enactor was the first constumed interpreter we talked to at the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Open House in Niles. (Today is the 2nd day of the event.) He had a wicked-looking tomahawk (not shown) in his holster, which was an opening for him to describe some non-traditional career paths for 18th century Jesuits in North America.

Dr. Michael Nassaney of Western Michigan University is the chief archaeologist of the project and (as far as I can tell) organizer of the open house. Here he is explaining the global significance of the location and how the archaeological project got started 12 years ago.

No bike rides yesterday. We mostly hung out at the open house.

At this point, late in yesterday’s bike ride, the sun was just about right for photos. But I was running late, so had to leave most of my planned photo destinations for another time. This was the last photo of the day, on MI-62 where it intersects with Brick Church Road. I presume the structure is the brick church, but I don’t know anything about its history.

This was at approximately the 70 mile mark in my ride. I was running late because I hadn’t left home until noon, due to having to work till 4 a.m. the night before and then having to deal with a recalcitrant lawn mower at home. The wind was slightly against me yesterday, but it was no big deal, especially because I had a 700×28c tire on the back of my bike.

I had forgotten how much difference that size tire could make. I had meant to have ordered a 700×32c tire when I ordered one from Harris Cyclery a few weeks ago. I had quit using the 28c size several years ago in favor of something that would be better on gravel. Now my rear tire was developing a split such that I wouldn’t have trusted it to get me home from work, much less take me on an all-day ride. So I pulled out the new Schwalbe Marathon I had ordered, and was dismayed to see it was a 28c. Oh, well, I had to have a new tire, so I put it on and pumped it up almost to 100psi.

That made a nice ride. Out on the road it made me feel 10 years younger, almost. And I did a couple of miles on gravel with no problem. And to think I was considering going to a fatter tire. Maybe I’ll put that plan off for a while.

I don’t think I would have made it all the way to Mishawaka without the skinnier tire. The high temperature for the day was around 90F. I had started taking frequent rest breaks around the 50 mile work, and at this point south of Cassapolis was forcing myself to stop every 3 miles for a breather to keep from getting too woozy. As it got dark the temperature dropped, so towards the end didn’t feel a need for so many breaks. I rode the last several miles with my lights and reflective vest on.

The total was 87 miles, a half mile short of my longest ride of 2010. The temperature was a lot higher this time, I had started MUCH later in the day, and the wind was against me, but that tire made up for it, I thought.

A couple of hours later, while lying in my hotel bed, my legs started to cramp up. That’s not an uncommon phenomenon for me, but this was the worst I ever had. I jumped out of bed to stand up and relieve the cramps, but it felt like I might never take another step again. Then Myra came back into the room, wondering why I was standing there. The cramps were letting up, but while I was asking if she had any ibuprofin or something to relax muscles, I think I went into shock a bit. I started shivering violently. I dove back into bed, but even with blankets over me it was a while before before I got over it.

Probably I should have been more careful to get calcium, salt, etc. during a day when I had been sweating profusely. As I think back through how I felt during the day’s ride, there probably were warning signs.

I had no bike ride planned for today, and was glad for a rest day. Instead we went to the Open House at the archaeological site at Fort St Joseph in Niles. More about that in the next post.

YTD mileage: 1701.0 Maybe I should have ridden ten miles less so my total would have matched the year of the founding of Fort St Joseph rather than the founding of Detroit.