The Vermontville Colony - Part 1



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THE PIONEER ERA

Among Michigan towns and villages with an interesting early organization, 
not another one was more unique in its genesis, settlement and history 
than Vermontville. Founded by an organized colony of Vermonters, with 
Michigan, a church and a school in their minds, the land was purchased of 
the government in the names of selected trustees under a written compact, 
which set forth the plans, and purposes of the colonists. Only one person, 
the minister and leader, had ever seen Michigan. It was an ideal town and 
village, with a written constitution duly signed by each of the proposed 
colonists before the land was bought and its location known by any of 
them. They made the venture at random in an entirely unknown region, but 
they were men and women who believed in the guiding hand of Providence, 
and although more work than wealth fell to their lot, they builded even 
better than they knew.

After all, it was not dreams of great wealth, but desire for larger 
opportunities for themselves and their children, that caused these 
Vermonters to seek new homes in this beautiful peninsula of the great 
northwest. It was the era of the pioneers. The money age had scarcely 
dawned. Force was reckoned in terms of horse power; steam had barely 
commenced to haul feeble locomotives over strap rails spiked to stringers 
that were laid lengthwise of the roadbed; cross-ties and tee rails had not 
been thought of, and electricity was an untamed element of nature that 
flashed as lightning athwart the beclouded sky and caused people to say 
their prayers when the thunder pealed. The words oftenest used then were 
home, family, schools, education, churches, religion, virtue and morality; 
not, as now, gold, silver, riches, wealth, capital, interest, bonds, 
mortgages, stocks and dividends. No one expected to get a living without 
working for an earning it. Making money out of the labor of others had not 
become the overtopping ambition, except in the states where slavery 
existed. The atmosphere of life is now pervaded by money considerations. 
Life is not all what it was to those typical pioneers. Their quest was for 
good land. Great cities are busy making and selling goods, and the growing 
villages cluster around large factories as their

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life centers; while the agricultural village becomes smaller and less 
consequential. Nevertheless the best brain and brawn is still born in the 
country. Society is diseased with a feverish craving for money; it is more 
than Heaven, and with it none fear Hell. Big figures with the dollar mark 
before them are the open sesame to social recognition and political 
preferment. Such names as Carnegie and Rockefeller are oftener printed 
than God and Christ. Gold-plating sanctifies moral oftenness; financial 
tanks, loaded with railroad, oil, gas and other stocks, to say nothing 
about the enormous quantity of water injected into them, outrank churches 
and universities in popular estimation. Cash is monarch; character 
secondary. Our great men are monopolists and millionaires. The pioneer age 
had no wealthy ruling class. The money age brings new, if not more 
dangerous, social and political conditions, as unlike those of sixty years 
ago as special privilege, monopoly and inequality are unlike freedom of 
opportunity for all, equal rights for all and special privileges for none. 
The money age means vast accumulations of wealth by a few, created and 
sustained by the toil of the many.

When this band of Vermontville pioneers entered the Thornapple valley 
sixty-one years ago, a new epoch was marked on the dial of progress. Why 
did they locate there? First, because their agents found in town 3 north 
of range 6 west a body of contiguous government land such as they wanted; 
and second, the Clinton and Kalamazoo canal had been surveyed along that 
valley less than a mile from the spot they selected for a village. The 
Erie canal was a great success, and civilization always follows the 
natural or artificial channels of commerce. Their canal was not built, but 
the railroad came thirty-three years--one generation--later. Before that 
time--the land was located in May, 1836--na occasional explorer, trapper 
or hunter may have been there; and, if so, on those few occasions only had 
been heard in the dense wilderness the voices of partly civilized men. But 
even those voices, if they had broken the savage solitude, had died away 
and left no echo. But with the pioneers came a change. They came to 
consecrate that region to civilization, came to build homes, came to build 
the schoolhouse and the church, came to clear away the wilderness, came to 
lay the first foundations of civilized society.


MAKING PROGRESS

Year by year the columns of smoke rising from the stick and mud chimneys 
of humble log houses grew more frequent; year after year more of the 
wilderness was removed, as the stroke of the axe and the crash of falling 
timber echoed through the forest aisles; progress was slow but it was 
steady; every blow that was struck was along the line of improvement and 
stimulated hope and courage; and though one after another of 

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the first comers, worn out, fell into their last sleep; though strong men 
died and gentle women were forced to repress the longings for more 
attractive and refined surrounding--which longings are inherent in the 
nature of true women,--still their patience and their faith triumphed, and 
they accepted their deprivations and the manifold burdens of their hard 
toil without plaint. Year by year more cultivated flowers bloomed; the 
fruit trees they had planted grew and began to bear; one savagery after 
another was driven away, one new comfort after another was secured, until 
early in the fifties, on the discovery of gold in California and 
Australia, and from pouring large supplies of the precious money metal 
into the channels of commerce, better prices for all the products of toil 
were obtained and a new impetus was given to material prosperity; one by 
one the crudities of the early settlements gave way to modern comforts and 
adornments, and under the transformation that has been wrought, that first 
coming of sixty-one years ago seems like ancient history. In this country 
it can never be repeated. Those who did not participate in it can have no 
accurate knowledge of it. The people who do not reverse the pioneers who 
blazed the trail through the wilderness and reared the first log temples 
therein are in sentiment a poor people indeed. We owe all that we have and 
are in this grand State of ours to those who
"Hewed the dark old woods away
And gave the virgin fields today."

However slight the respect men may have for the live, throbbing, pushing 
present in which the prick of a pin causes pain and a cruel word brings 
anguish, they have occasion for a good deal of reverence for the past. Out 
of the past came the present. Old aches and pains and struggles are 
forgotten in the glamour of enchantment that distance lends. Individual 
lives, social conditions, civic institutions, financial experiences, 
religious beliefs, home and country, immediate environment, and the 
broader sweep of world movements and national and racial destinies, are 
not present creations, but products of a long and prolific past. Former 
lives and ancestral types are merged in present personalities, and find 
expression in moral, social and political conditions, and in civic 
institutions. It has taken all of the past in every realm of nature, in 
every human love and thought and act to evolve the present. We are what we 
are in part because of the Mayflower, of Bunker Hill and Yorktown, and of 
the Erie canal which formed the first connecting water link between the 
east and the west along the parallel of New England and New York, as well 
as because of the immediate environments with which we are familiar. It is 
safe to say that but for the Erie canal, opened in 1826, there would have 
been no Vermont colony established at Vermontville in 1836; and I for one 
am here today as the 

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narrator of its birth and history, because such a colony had its beginning 
in the wilderness of Eaton county sixty-one years ago. Thus the past 
shapes the present, as the present moulds the future.


PAST AND PRESENT

The heroic men who cut loose from old-world moorings near the beginning of 
the seventeenth century to plant new institutions in America because they 
had ideals that could not find expression in the stifling tyrannies that 
prevailed, did not separate themselves wholly from the past--they brought 
all they wanted of it with them--and used it in laying the foundations for 
a larger liberty, civil and religious, than the world had ever before 
known; nor did the New Englanders who came as pioneers to Michigan, here 
to make homes, settle towns, found villages and cities, build school 
houses and organize churches, divorce themselves from the habits of 
thought and social aims and customs of their immediate ancestors. They 
brought New England and New York with them to the west; into their 
statutes they copied the laws of the states they came from, with which 
they were familiar; and the Vermonters brought Vermont ideas and customs 
with them and planted them in an unbroken wilderness at Vermontville in 
1836, for in May of that year the land was located for the colonists. The 
larger growth of freedom and independence in thought and action came from 
the transplanting to a new and broader arena of struggle and effort.

Fortunately for the spread of American ideas and institutions the pioneers 
have always been a hopeful, up-looking and on-looking people, desiring 
something better and willing to make the effort to find it, and they 
always found enough that was evil in the present to inspire them with hope 
and courage to work and fight for improved conditions for themselves and 
their children. If they denied freedom for others, because certain that 
their political methods and religious beliefs were the best for all, yet 
they claimed a large allowance of liberty for themselves, and would endure 
martyrdom rather than surrender the right to worship God according to the 
dictates of their own consciences, though not unwilling to compel others 
to worship as they worshipped. They were sincere, and the sentiment that 
led them to turn away from the tyrannies of the past and work out larger 
problems of civil and religious liberty was rooted in those fundamental 
ideas of equal rights and equal privileges for all before the law, which 
are yet to find fruition in that brotherhood of humanity which is the 
basic principle of christianity and the corner stone of American 
institutions, and holds men back on this continent from arrogating to 
themselves the right to rule others because of the accident of birth or 
the possession of wealth. He who worships at the shrine of wealth is not a 
true American, and though a 

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bastard aristocracy of proud flesh may rob the people of the fruits of 
their labor, yet it never founded a commonwealth or changed a savage 
wilderness into the homes of a civilized and prosperous community. This is 
the work of pioneers. Vice born to the purple is not worthy of human 
worship. The grandest crown ever worn on earth was a crown of thorns.


THE PIONEERS WE HONOR

We honor true manhood and womanhood in recounting the deeds of our 
pioneers. This laudable pride of American ancestry should grow stronger 
with the lapse of years. To preserve in permanent records the names and 
efforts of the early settlers of Michigan is the commendable purpose of 
this society. We bring them together in one place, enroll them in the 
archives of the State, and make this the Valhalla of our heroes--not slain 
in battle, but who achieved the greater victories of peace--and in 
literature instead of architectural monuments, preserve the names of our 
pioneers. It is not a narration of the deeds of blood-stained and crime-
stained rulers, but of the common people who settled a state and set in 
operation the forces that made it in sixty years the eighth in rank as to 
population and foremost in loyalty and enterprise in this American 
sisterhood. Such ancestral price as that of the New Englander, one of 
whose ancestors had taken part in checking the tyranny of Andros' colonial 
government, is entirely justifiable. "The time will come, sir," he 
remarked, "when it will be accounted honorable to have descended from the 
men who settled this country."

Already such a time has come in Michigan. My purpose in presenting these 
thoughts is to stimulate the historic spirit among our people and awaken a 
livelier interest in the events of the past. In Europe family history is 
largely devoted to the record of inherited titles and landed property, but 
here there is nothing of the sort. We take no interest in the conferment 
of royal distinction upon some court favorite, worthy or unworthy, but in 
the founders of towns, villages and cities--the makers of Michigan--the 
builders of states and of the nation. A titled lineage is not an American 
inheritance, much as our snobs may ape the ways of old-world aristocracy, 
but an ancestry that kings despised and bigots persecuted. American 
history is the story of a people. We see as we study the past the pioneers 
as they walk the streets, sit with them at their frugal meals, hear them 
talk over the affairs of state and nation, note the firmness of their 
political and religious convictions, admire their assent to the rule of 
the majority without surrendering an iota of their own opinions, yet 
combined with a sense of social order in working out, by mutual action and 
reaction, the great problem of human liberty and religious toleration. To 
produce an orderly society out of all the conflict that abounds in nature 
and life required the discipline of centuries.

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SETTLEMENTS IN MICHIGAN

In Michigan except at a few points, such as Detroit, Monroe, Mt. Clemens, 
Mackinac and Sault Ste. Marie, we go back less than three-quarters of a 
century for the commencement of its settlement and civilization. An 
official list of the post offices in the Unite States of June 1, 1828, 
when John McLean, afterwards an eminent justice of the United States 
supreme court, was postmaster general, shows that there were only nine 
offices in that part of Michigan territory comprising the present State, 
namely: Ann Arbor, John Allen, postmaster; Detroit, James Abbott, 
postmaster; Monroe, Thomas M. Lumkin, postmaster; Mount Clemens, Alfred 
Ashley, postmaster; Mackinac, Jonathan N. Bailey, postmaster; Pontiac, 
Olmsted Chamberlin, postmaster; Sault de Ste. Marie, John Hulbert, 
postmaster; Tecumseh, Musgrove Evans, postmaster.

In 1831, on the first of April, according to a later official table, 
issued when William T. Barry was postmaster general, the number of post 
offices in Michigan had increased to sixty, and such present cities as 
Jackson (then called Jacksonopolis), with Isaiah W. Bennett, postmaster; 
Niles, Isaac Gray, postmaster, and Adrian, Addison J. Comstock, 
postmaster, appear in the list. Oakland county came to the front of that 
time with twelve post office, Wayne following next with nine, Washtenaw 
and Lenawee six each, Macomb and Monroe five each, St. Clair four, Cass 
St. Joseph three each, Berrien, Branch, Chippewa, Jackson, Hillsdale, 
Kalamazoo and Mackinac one each.

In the third tier of counties west of Oakland not a post office had been 
established seventy-six years ago. About the time a number of the southern 
counties of the State were named after members of President Jackson's 
administration, to wit: Jackson, Van Buren, Calhoun, Livingston, Ingham, 
Eaton, Cass, Branch, Barry and Berrien--Jackson receiving its name from 
the president, Calhoun from the vice president during his first term; Van 
Buren, secretary of state in the first and vice president the second term; 
Livingston, secretary of state; Ingham, secretary of the treasury; Eaton 
and Cass, secretaries of war; Branch, secretary of the navy; Barry, 
postmaster general; Berrien, attorney general.

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PREPARATORY

The surveyor antedated the pioneers, though first in the order of 
transition from savagery to civilization was the extinguishment of the 
Indian title, which was effected for Eaton county by the treaty of Saginaw 
in 1819, whereby, a appears in an exhaustive paper on the subject of the 
Indians of Michigan and the cession of their lands to the United States by 
treaties prepared by the late eminent President of this Society, Hon. 
Alpheus Felch, and printed in volume 26 of its "Collections," was 
negotiated 

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by Gen. Lewis Cass as commissioner with the Chippewas. The initial point 
or southeast corner of this cession is in the meridian line six miles 
south of the north line of Jackson county, thence west sixty miles to a 
point about four miles northeast of the present city of Kalamazoo, and 
thence northeasterly through the counties of Barry, Ionia, Montcalm and 
Isabella to the headwaters of Thunder Bay river in Montmorency county, and 
embracing all the land east of it not ceded by previous treaties. This 
cession included all of Eaton county. In 1825 the east, north and west 
boundaries of the county were surveyed by Lucius Lyon, one of Michigan's 
first two United States senators; the south boundary was surveyed by John 
Mullett in 1826, and the subdivisions during the same year by Orange 
Risden, who lived at Saline and was a representative from Washtenaw county 
in the legislature of 1838.


GENESIS OF "THE UNION COLONY"

In the fall of 1835 Rev. Sylvester Cochrane, a Congregational minister of 
East Poultney, Vermont, came to Michigan with a view to making a permanent 
location. He was the father of Lyman Cochrane, a prominent attorney of 
Detroit and a valuable member of the legislature, who died a few years 
ago. Mr. Cochrane found settlements so few and the inhabitants so widely 
scattered that it was impossible for them, except when gathered in 
villages, to have schools and enjoy religious privileges. Education and 
religion were needed at the start as essential to the orderly development 
of civilized society. He returned to Vermont, thought out the plan of a 
colony and began preparations for the execution of his project. The 
prevalence of the "Michigan fever," easily increased by accounts of the 
great lakes in the heart of the continent, the oak openings, the beautiful 
prairies and the vast wilderness of the wonderful peninsula, where the 
wild Indians still had happy hunting grounds, made it an easy matter to 
arouse the hereditary tendency of members of the Aryan race to move 
westward among enterprising Vermonters. A strong and earnest man, full of 
missionary zeal, he visited different places in Vermont and met and 
conferred with those who desired to emigrate. Early in the winter of 1835-
6 a meeting was held in East Poultney, which was attended by a number of 
persons who had caught the western fever. The plan proposed by Mr. 
Cochrane was discussed, approved and the initiatory steps taken to carry 
it into effect. Subsequent meetings were held in Castleton, Vermont, and 
on the 27th day of March, 1836, the constitution of "The Union Colony" was 
formally adopted. This being an unusual and unique inception of a colony 
for the settlement of a Michigan village and town, the document is worthy 
of preservation in a volume of the State Pioneer and Historical Society. 
That it might not be lost to posterity it is recorded in the office of the 

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register of deeds of Eaton country. This fundamental declaration of 
principles and polity, with religion, education and association as its 
leading ideas carefully drawn, is styled,


RULES AND REGULATIONS OF UNION COLONY:

"Whereas, The enjoyment of the ordinances and institutions of the Gospel 
is in a great measure unknown in many parts of the western country; and

"Whereas, We believe that a pious and devoted emigration is to be one of 
the most efficient means, in the hands of God, in removing the moral 
darkness which hangs over a great portion of the valley of the 
Mississippi; and

"Whereas, We believe that a removal to the west may be a means of 
promoting our temporal interest, and we trust be made subservient to the 
advancement of Christ's kingdom;

"We do therefore, Form ourselves into an association or colony with the 
design of removing into some parts of the western country which shall 
hereafter be designated, and agree to bind ourselves to observe the 
following rules:

"1. The association or colony shall be known by the appellation or name of 
"The Union Colony." 

"2. The Colony shall consist of those only who shall be admitted through a 
committee appointed for that purpose, and will subscribe their names to 
the articles and compact adopted by the colony. 

"3. We hereby agree to make our arrangements for a removal as soon as our 
circumstances will permit--if possible, some time during the summer or 
fall of the present year, 1836. 

"4. We agree, when we have arrived in the western country, to locate 
ourselves, if possible, in the same neighborhood with each other, and to 
form ourselves into such a community as will enable us to enjoy the same 
social and religions privileges which we leave behind. 

"5. In order to accomplish this object, we solemnly pledge ourselves to do 
all that is in our power to carry with us the institutions of the Gospel, 
to support them with the means which God has given us, and to hand them 
down to our children. 

"6. We do also agree that, for the benefit of our children and the rising 
generation, we will endeavor, so far as possible, to carry with and 
perpetuate among us the same literary privileges that we are permitted 
here to enjoy. 

"7. We do also pledge ourselves that we will strictly and rigidly observe 
the holy Sabbath, neither laboring ourselves, nor permitting our children, 
or workmen, or beasts to desecrate this day of rest by any kind of labor 
or recreation. 

"8. As ardent spirits have invariably proved the bane of every community 
into which they have been introduced, we solemnly pledge ourselves that we 
will neither buy, nor sell, nor use this article, except for medical 
purposes, and we will use all lawful means to keep it utterly out of the 
settlement.

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"9. As we must necessarily endure many of those trials and privations 
which are incident to a settlement in a new country, we agree that we will 
do all in our power to befriend each other, we will esteem it not only a 
duty, but a privilege to sympathize with each other under all our trials, 
to do good and lend, hoping for nothing again, and to assist each other on 
all necessary occasions."

The above fundamental declarations, in the nature of a constitution, 
clearly set forth the secular and religious purposes of the Vermontville 
colonists, and they indicate the dominant New England ideas of sixty years 
ago. They are distinctively Puritan in character. Minister Cochrane was 
the leader of the flock into the western wilderness and, no doubt, they 
were drafted by him. But a plan of operations was needed to carry into 
effect these declarations, and hence a series of rules and regulations was 
adopted as a practical mode of procedure in purchasing and distributing 
the needed land among the colonists. This plan is set forth in the series 
of votes and resolutions herewith presented in full, which may be properly 
designated as a

CODE OF LAWS FOR THE COLONY.

"The following votes and resolutions have been passed at the regular 
meetings of the colony, and are binding upon its members:

"1. Voted, That a committee of two be appointed, whose duty it shall be to 
make inquiry concerning the character of individuals who may wish to unite 
with the colony, and no person shall be admitted without the consent of 
this committee. (S. Cochrane and I. C. Culver were appointed a committee 
for this purpose.) 

"2. Voted, That three agents appointed to go into the western country and 
select a suitable location for the use of the colony, and purchase the 
sam. (Col. J. B. Scovill of Orwell, Deacon S. S. Church of Sudbury, and 
Wm. G. Henry of Bennington,were appointed a standing committee for this 
purpose.) 

"3. Voted, That we hereby authorize our agents to purchase for the use of 
the colony three miles square, or 5,780 acres, and as much more as they 
may have funds to purchase. 

"4. Voted, That the land, when purchased, the laid out by the agents so as 
to conform as nearly as the location and other circumstances will permit 
to the schedule adopted by the colony. 

"5. Voted, That no individual member of the colony shall be allowed to 
take more than one farm lot of 160 acres, and one village lot of ten 
acres, within the limits of the settlement. 

"6. Voted, That the agents be authorized to take a duplicate or 
certificate of the purchased lands in one name or the committee for 
raising funds; and the said committee shall hold the said lands in their 
possession until the first Monday in October, 1836, at which time the land 
shall be distributed among the settlers, according to some plan on which 
they may then agree; the village lots, however, may be taken up by the 
settlers when they first arrive, each one taking his choice of the 
unoccupied lots.

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"7. Voted, That each individual shall be obligated to settle the lot which 
he takes by the first of October, 1837, and in case of delinquency in this 
respect both the village and the farm lot may be sold to some other 
person, in which case the purchase money shall be refunded by the agents 
of the colony, with interest from the time it was paid. 

"8. Voted, That each of the settlers, when he unites with the colony, 
shall advance $212.50, for which he shall be entitled to a farm lot of 160 
acres and a village lot of ten acres, to be assigned to him according to 
the rules of the colony; and if any settler shall find himself unable to 
advance this sum, he may pay in $106.25, for which he shall be entitled to 
a farm lot of eighty acres and one-half of a village lot; and in case no 
money is paid before the departure of the agents, those who are delinquent 
shall give a note to the committee for raising funds, payable on the 25th 
day of June next, with interest for three months. 

"9. Voted, That each settler, when he receives a deed of his village lot, 
shall give a note to the agents of the colony, payable in two years from 
the first of September, 1836, for the sum of twenty-five dollars, and this 
sum shall be appropriated towards defraying the expenses of building a 
meeting-house for the use of the colony. 

"10. Voted, That an eighty-acre lot be reserved for a parsonage, out of 
the purchase, to be selected by the agents. 

"11. Voted, That our agents keep a regular bill of their necessary 
expenses, from the time they start until they have made a purchase and 
surveyed the village lots, and the colony pay one-half of said expenses.

"We, whose names are hereto annexed, do hereby pledge ourselves that we 
will willingly conform to all the articles and votes of the colony as 
contained above.

"The above and foregoing finally adopted March 28, 1836, at Castleton, Vt."


NAMES OF THE COLONISTS

The signatures of forty-two persons are affixed to the foregoing compact, 
but we give the names of only the twenty-two who became actual residents 
of the village and town of Vermontville, with the former residence and 
occupation of each when stated, in the order they appear. Except where 
otherwise noted they were citizens of Vermont, from Addison, Bennington 
and Rutland counties:

Rev. Sylvester Cochrane, Poultney, clergyman. 
Hiram J. Mears, Poultney, wheelwright. 
Levi Merrill, Jr., Poultney, farmer. 
Simon S. Church, Sudbury, farmer. 
Jacob Fuller, Bennington, cooper. 
Oren Dickinson, West Haven, farmer. 
Elijah S. Mead, West Rutland, farmer. 
Wait J. Squier, New Haven, farmer. 
Stephen D. Scovell, Orwell, farmer. 
Simeon McCotter, Orwell, cabinet-maker.

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Walter S. Fairfield, Castleton, printer. 
Sidney B. Gates, Brandon, farmer. 
Daniel Barber, Benson, merchant. 
Jay Hawkins, Castleton, farmer. 
Martin S. Norton, Bennington, blacksmith. 
Dewey H. Robinson, Bennington, physician. 
Bazaleel Taft, Bennington, machinist. 
Roger W. Griswold, Benson, farmer. 
Edward M. Barbes, Benson, farmer. 
Wells R. Martin, Bennington, surveyor. 
Charles Imus, Dorset, Vermont. 
Willard Davis, Bellevue, Michigan. 
George S. Browning, Bellevue, Michigan. 
Oliver J. Stiles, Bellevue, Michigan.

Of these pioneer settlers Dr. Oliver J. Stiles settled in the village, 
remained but a short time and moved to New York; Charles Imus settled on 
the farm now owned by Chauncey H. Dwight, four miles from the village, 
commenced an improvement, sold out in two or three years and moved away; 
Bazaleel Taft settled on his village lot, remained there about two years, 
then moved to a farm in the town of Kalamo, where he lived many years 
until his death; and Elijah S. Mead built a log house on his village lot 
and lived there a short time until his wife died in April, 1837, when he 
left never to return. The rest of those named became permanent settlers 
and were identified with the growth, progress and character of 
Vermontville.


CONSIDERATIONS

Among the miscellaneous papers preserved by S. S. Church and now in the 
possession of his son, E. P. Church, superintendent of the Michigan School 
for the Blind, is one which sets forth the "Considerations for locating a 
colony," probably prepared by Rev. Sylvester Cochrane. It also contains 
the names of thirty-two of the colonists and the sum contributed by each 
towards the purchase money of the land--in all $5,792.50.

At the outset of these "Considerations" the charge of Moses to the 
delegates from the twelve tribes of Israel who were sent to search the 
land of Canaan is referred to--Numbers 13, 17-20, namely:

"And Moses sent them to spy out the land of Canaan, and said unto them, 
Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain;

"And see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, 
whether they be strong or weak, few or many;

"And what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and 
what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in 
strongholds;

"And what the land is, whether it be fat or lean, whether there be wood 
therein or not; and be ye of good courage, and bring of the fruit of the 
land."

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Of course the Vermonters were not freebooters like the ancient Israelites 
referred to, as they had put up the money to buy the land they wanted, and 
their faces, like those of their Aryan ancestors for forty centuries, were 
directed westward instead of southward; but their agents were asked to 
have in view, in selecting a location--"first consideration, a healthy 
place, with good water, realizing that life depends upon this; second, a 
rich and fertile soil, well watered, interspersed with wood and prairie of 
practicable; third, to be located on or near a water fall is of great 
service to a colony; fourth, consider the country around--is there a 
prospect of its being speedily settled--is it capable of supporting a 
dense population--is it where produce can be got to market--is the soil 
qualified for various productions, not only for grain of different kinds 
and fruits, But for the mulberry, cattle, horses and sheep; fifth, a 
situation where a canal or railroad may cross, or in the center of a 
county, will greatly increase the value of real estate; sixth, let it be 
near some navigable water, not compel one hundred and fifty souls to make 
a journey of one hundred and fifty miles through intolerable roads and get 
homesick before they see the place."


THE PROSPECTING PARTY

April 2, 1836, S. S. Church and William G. Henry, members of the 
purchasing committee, left Vermont, met by appointment at Troy, New York, 
and started by stage for Michigan. Their first Sunday was spent in Auburn. 
In western New York Wait J. Squier, one of the colonists, joined them. 
These three pioneers to spy out the land went to Lewiston, near the mouth 
of Niagara river, intending to go through Canada to Detroit, but were 
advised not to make the attempt on account of the badness of the roads. 
Accepting this advice they went to Buffalo with the intention of taking a 
steamboat, but the harbor and lower end of Lake Erie being covered with 
ice, they continued their journey by stage to Erie, Pennsylvania. Arriving 
there they found the south shore of the lake was free from ice and that a 
boat would leave for Detroit in a day or two, on which they took passage. 
At Detroit they waited twenty-four hours for the stage to leave. It was an 
open wagon, the roads were horrible, and, besides paying fare, they worked 
their passage, carrying fence rails to pry the wagon out of the mud where 
the holes were deepest. Their objective point was the United States land 
office at Kalamazoo. Mr. Church stopped at Battle Creek, where his 
brothers-in-law, Judge Tolman W. and Moses Hall resided, for a much needed 
rest. Soon afterwards the committee met at Kalamazoo and began their 
search for a contiguous body of government land that would answer the 
purpose of the colonists. Failing to find such a tract as was wanted, Mr. 
Church returned to Battle Creek, procured a guide, and with one or two 
other 

Page 13

colonists who had arrived there, set out on an exploring tour; while 
Messrs. Squier and Henry went to Grand Rapids to look for a location in 
that part of the territory. The Church party explored Barry county as far 
as Middleville and from there passed up the Thornapple river some distance 
east of Hastings, without finding what they wanted, namely: a tract of 
government land of the quality and quantity needed in a solid body, 
unbroken by swamps or marshes and free from "catholes." The original 
intention to obtain a location in the oak openings was found to be 
impossible, as all the desirable land had been entered by settlers and 
speculators. In 1836 the fever of speculation in Michigan real estate was 
at its height, and dreams of rapidly acquired wealth by land-grabbers were 
abundant. They continued until the collapse of the bubble a year or two 
later. It was also the wild-cat money era. The outlook for the committee 
was discouraging. With the money of over thirty persons in their 
possession to be wisely invested, with the ideals of the colony uppermost 
and with each one of the investors interested in obtaining as good a 
quarter-section farm lot and ten-acre village lot as any of their fellow 
colonists, it is not surprising that the committee began to despair of 
success.

Returning again to Battle Creek Mr. Church, who was always on the alert 
for information, met Col. Barnes of Gull Prairie, who had helped survey 
Eaton county and was one of the original proprietors of Charlotte. From 
him he learned that the amount of land needed, if not taken within a short 
time, might be found in town 3 north of range 6 west. The next day by 
appointment they met at the Kalamazoo land office and obtained a plat 
which showed that only one parcel had been purchased in the township. A 
letter from Messrs. Squier and Henry stated that they were prospecting in 
the southwest part of Ionia county, with headquarters at Middleville. They 
had not found a desirable location on government land. Events began to 
focus on Vermontville.


PLANTING THE COLONY

The committee were faithful to the trust reposed in them. They knew what 
they wanted, but thus far had failed to find it. In a narrative of the 
further steps taken to locate the colony, written by Mr. Church and 
printed in the Charlotte Republican several years ago, he says: "I 
repaired to Middleville and our company came in. They examined my plat and 
we concluded to go to Eaton county. The next morning I made out an 
application for land enough to cover the amount we wanted, sent one of our 
number to the land office with my application, while the rest of us went 
to Battle Creek to make arrangements to explore the town. Here we found 
two or three more of the newly arrived colonists. We were nearly two days 
procuring an outfit and getting to our destination. 

Page 14

The third day we explored the town, running nearly every section line. All 
were satisfied with the land. We then went to Kalamazoo and on the 27th of 
May, 1836, I took up the amount of the colony purchase, also about twenty 
lots over and above that for members of the colony and others. We then 
returned to the purchase and selected the south half of section 21 for the 
village. W. J. Squier had his surveying implements with him, so that we 
were enabled to lay out the village, which we did agreeably to 
instructions. Those of us who were present selected our village lots and 
marked them on our plat."

The village was platted one mile and forty rods long east and west by half 
a mile north and south and was subdivided into thirty-six lots, fronting 
twenty rods in width on the east and west street, extending eighty rods 
north and south and containing ten acres each. The east and west street 
became the leading highway from Charlotte to Hastings, and later, after 
the location of the State capitol at Lansing, a part of the Lansing and 
Allegan State road. The farm lots were located around the village in all 
directions. By adopting this plan of settlement the colonists became near 
neighbors and enjoyed the benefits of society, school and religious 
meetings from the start. Among the colonists were a clergyman, two 
physicians and a blacksmith. West, in Castleton, just over the town line, 
a shoemaker, Joseph Rasey, had settled on a wild eighty acres, and to him 
with a side of sole leather and enough upper leather to shoe the family 
the boys would go every fall, after the frost had begun to bite, and have 
a pair of cowhide boots made for winter, going barefoot and enjoying an 
occasional stonebruise having been the summer custom; while north of the 
village three and a half miles, in the edge of Sunfield, lived O. M. 
Wells, a tailor, who brought his trade with him from New York, and to him 
the cloth for making Sunday clothes would be taken and cut into garments 
to be made up by a seamstress in the house. The nearest place to get a 
pound of saleratus or green tea was at Bellevue, also the post office, 
fourteen miles away, and most of the trading was done at Marshall, twenty-
eight miles distant, C. P. Dibble & Co. being the favorite merchants. The 
nearest grist mill was at Bellevue and the nearest saw mill, owned by 
Oliver M. Hyde, afterwards a prominent citizen of Detroit and mayor of the 
city, was in Kalamo, seven miles distant. From there W. J. Squier drew the 
lumber to build the first frame house erected in the village or town in 
1837-8.

While William G. Henry was a member of the committee that selected the 
location and was one of the original members of the colony, signing its 
constitution and by-laws at Castleton, Vermont, he did not settle in 
Vermontville, but in Grand Rapids, where he was for many years a prominent 
and highly esteemed citizen. He married Huldana Squier, sister of Wait J. 
Squier, who, as the record shows, was a leading colonist. Mr. and Mrs. 
Henry's oldest daughter, Annette Henry, married 

Page 15

Gen. Russell A. Alger, a prominent citizen of Detroit and of Michigan, and 
now Secretary of War for the United States. As Mr. Henry was instrumental 
in locating the Vermontville colony, gave his counsel and advice to its 
organization, and selected a village lot, although not one of its pioneer 
settlers, he is justly entitled to special and honorable mention.


THE VILLAGE PLAT

The Marshall and Ionia road passed through the center of the village from 
south to north and became the first weekly mail route from Bellevue to 
Ionia, through the western part of Eaton county. A post office was 
established in 1840 with Dr. Dewey H. Robinson as the first postmaster. 
From each of the four central village lots about an acre was taken and set 
apart for a public square. In the original conveyance from the trustees 
who located the land one thirty-second part of this square was deeded to 
each colonist. By common consent the northwest quarter of the square was 
used as a site for the first log school house and a few years later for 
the academy building, the southwest quarter for the Congregational church, 
the northeast quarter for a Methodist church, and the southeast quarter 
was occupied for some years by hay scales and has been quite a place of 
resort for Canada thistles, which were introduced in 1837 in the Vermont 
rye straw used by W. J. Squier to pack his household goods for moving. 
With very few exceptions the original settlers have passed away, but the 
thistles still survive them.

The following diagram, with the names of the original selectors of village 
lots as of record in the office of the Eaton county register of deeds, 
gives a better idea of the plat than words can convey:

Page 16

Thus the "Union Colony" was planted. The actual fell far short of the 
ideal. Youthful imagination was disillusionised when living in the woods 
and clearing away the forests commenced. But few of the pastoral 
"considerations" presented in imitation of the ancient Hebrew example were 
realized. Barring the indigenous ague and fever, it was a healthy place; 
the water was good, the soil was rich and fertile but covered with heavy 
hardwood timber; there was no waterfall, only the sluggish Thornapple and 
Scipio winding through and miry bottom lands, with suckers, red horse, and 
pickerel; all forest and no prairie; far away from the desired center of a 
county and from markets--fourteen miles from Charlotte, fourteen miles 
from Hastings, twenty-eight miles from Marshall and twenty-six miles from 
Ionia; no navigable water nearer than Lake Michigan and the surveyed 
Clinton and Kalamazoo canal that never materialized; never a mulberry, but 
wild grapes, plums and cranberries and the most horrible and roughest 
roads--roots, stumps, corduroys and mud of great depth and adhesiveness--
that mortals ever traveled through this vale of tears. The panic of 1837 
came; the Michigan fever abated; there was no sale for land at any price; 
and with a good deal of heroism these early settlers commenced the work of 
making homes in the wilderness.


THE FIRST BLOWS STRUCK

Some of the colonists who went with the first prospecting party to spy out 
the land, among whom the names of W. J. Squier, W. S. Fairfield and Levi 
Merrill, are mentioned, remained in the woods, and the latter part of May, 
1836, went to work felling the forest trees, building log houses and 
shanties and clearing for crops a few acres of land. The first potatoes 
and corn were grown among the stumps and logs. Sometimes potatoes were 
cooked in the hot ashes of burning log heap and green corn roasted by its 
live coals. No portion of southern Michigan was more heavily timbered, 
mostly beech and maple, with ash, oak, elm, cherry, basswood and black 
walnut interspersed. The winter of 1835-6 was the last one of centuries of 
savage solitude. Prior to the advent of these first settlers, except an 
occasional blow struck by some hunter, surveyor or nomadic Indian, no 
sound of a civilizing axe had disturbed the silence or awakened an echo in 
the forest. So in May, 1836, the work of transformation from an unknown 
and prehistoric past of wild animals and men to the known present and to a 
future, the nature of which none of us can guess, actually commenced. The 
era of the bark shanty and pole and brush wigwam of the Indian ended there 
and then. Log houses were built that summer those who remained for 
themselves and their coming families, and a colony house was erected to 
shelter other settlers as they arrived. Log house raisings were frequent 
and all turned out to 

Page 17

help each other without expecting or desiring pay for the labor. Each 
house raising was a thank offering to the new and always welcome settler.

During that summer, 1836, Bazaleel Taft came with his family and settled 
on his village lot, but he moved to the town of Kalamo in a year or two 
and resided there the remainder of his life. Reuben Sanford, having 
purchased eighty acres of land adjoining the colony, also moved in that 
summer with his wife and only child, a daughter, living for awhile in an 
unoccupied shanty on the Colver village lot until his own log house was 
built, and though not a member of the colony, become the first permanent 
settler in the town. Soon after their arrival, while living in the shanty, 
a son, Henry Sanford, was born, and was the first white child born in 
Vermontville. Twenty-five years later, when the civil war came, he was one 
of the first of the Vermontville boys to enlist as a soldier, and he died 
in the service. During the fall Jacob Fuller and wife, Elijah S. Mead and 
wife, Jay Hawkins and wife with one child, Horace Hawkins, who still 
resides on a farm his father located, and W. S. Fairfield, arrived. March 
24, 1837, Mrs. Elijah S. Mead died after a brief illness, at the age of 22 
years, the first death in the colony. There was no physician to be had; 
womanly kindness and care did all that was possible for her, but in vain; 
and, disheartened, Mr. Mead moved back to Vermont.

Besides these families, several of the men who belonged to the colony came 
that year to inspect the purchase and make up their minds about moving. On 
the first Monday of October, the third day of the month, a large number 
assembled at the colony house, and after a prayer by Rev. Mr. Cochrane, 
proceeded to distribute the farm lands by lot, agreeably to the plan set 
forth in the articles of association adopted at Castleton, Vermont, the 
previous March. To meet the expenses incurred by the agents for locating 
the land a committee was appointed to make an assessment upon the farm 
lots which, because of their location, were the most desirable. This was 
agreed to and the sum of $400 raised for that purpose. Then it was voted 
to make the distribution by lot, and quoting S.S. Church again, "each one 
drew and was satisfied." In addition to the families already mentioned, 
several of the men who came in the fall remained, among them Oren 
Dickinson with two hired men, to make preparation for bringing their 
families the coming year. S.S. Church and W. J. Squier returned to Vermont 
that autumn for their families. About the middle of November, 1836, Mr. 
Church arrived in Battle Creek with his wife and six children, it having 
taken nine days to reach there from Detroit by wagon, and in January, 
1837, they all moved to Vermontville and commenced housekeeping in the 
colony house. Mr. Squier returned with his family in April, 1837. In the 
fall of that year 

Page 18

several colonists had arrived, and among them Rev. Sylvester Cochrane with 
his wife and two children--Lyman Cochrane and Sarah Cochrane.


EARLY EXPERIENCE AND GROWTH

The work of founding a new colony in the wilderness was begun. Only those 
who have had experience of pioneer life know what it means. After a few 
acres of land were cleared by each settler there was always enough to eat. 
At first provisions were scarce, and there was no certainty as to where a 
supply would come from. R.W. Griswold, soon after his arrival, started out 
to find something to eat with the horse team and wagon owned by Oren 
Dickinson. He drove to Climax, Kalamazoo county, where he found and 
purchased a load of wheat, had it ground in a grist mill at Verona, a few 
miles northeast of Battle Creek, and after a week's absence returned to 
the colony with the first load of flour, shorts and bran for the anxious 
pioneers.

But the women and men of that early period did not live by bread alone. 
Physically they needed food, shelter and raiment, but mentally they were 
sustained by an earnest purpose. Intelligent, courageous and devoted, 
deprived of many familiar comforts, yet willing to endure privations and 
hardships for the sake of an idea and to make life better worth living for 
their children, still they belonged to their time, were firmly established 
in their inherited political and religious opinions, and did not think the 
thoughts that women and men think today. Transplanted to the west with its 
broader horizons, even they slowly yet steadily outgrew themselves and 
their New England prejudices. In after years, as they went back to make 
their old Vermont homes a visit, they lost all desire to return. The old 
life and environments they had forsaken seemed pinched and narrower to 
them. Thus the west has uniformly brought an expansion and liberalization 
of American ideas. Men cannot separate themselves wholly from the 
traditions grow weaker with the lapse of time. They were fully up to their 
time, but it was a slow-moving era, and thoughts ran in wagon ruts instead 
of along electric wires.

By wagon road, canal and lake, and such horrid highways as Michigan then 
afforded, guided through the woods by blazed trees, it took three weeks to 
make the journey from Vermont to Vermontville if no time was lost, now 
made in thirty hours, yet fewer making it now than then; the postage on a 
letter was twenty-five cents; telegraphs and telephones were not invented; 
railroads were just beginning to revolutionize industrial and social 
conditions; nevertheless life, for the sake of home, family, virtue, 
morality, intelligence, kindness and love, and the refining influence of 
society, was no less worth living then than it is now; although, knowing 
the present, humanity could find but little external satisfaction 

Page 19

in the past of our immediate ancestors. Words cannot convey an accurate 
impression of the labor of the days that antedate reapers and mowers, when 
the sickle and the grain cradle, the scythe and the handrake were the 
implements of the harvest and hay fields--the days that antedate 
railroads, telegraphs and telephones, before steam and electricity became 
agencies for doing the world's work. To those of us who knew something of 
that early period it seems like a dream. Wherefore the changes? Because of 
the changes in the thoughts of men. Every new thing under the sun was a 
first a thought before it became a fact. And thought is still moulding 
different conditions than those that now exist. The chief economic problem 
of the past was production; now, though men who cling to old thoughts are 
slow to see it, it is production and distribution. The present is no more 
stable than was the past. All human conditions are undergoing change. 
History is a record of the changes brought about by the thoughts and 
actions of men. Thought is best when there is the most of it, when it is 
freest, and refuses to run in established channels. All valuable history 
is a record of the doings of the people. Emerson asks: "What is all 
history but the work of ideas, a record of the incomputible energy which 
his infinite aspirations infuse into man? Has anything grand and lasting 
been done? Who did it? Plainly not any man, but all men; it was the 
prevalence and inundation of an idea." Thus the Vermontville colony was 
planted.