Excerpt From “The
Saginaw Valley” by Judge Albert Miller in Pioneer Society of Michigan 1884 Vol.
7
The pioneers of Michigan who settled in the northern
part of the State fifty-four years ago were fully aware that there were vast
forests of pine timber lying around their settlements and to the north of
them, but could not have anticipated the great value which the rapid
improvement of our whole country, and especially of the western portion of it,
has found those forests to possess. The early settlers of that portion of
Michigan of which I am writing, were principally from the New England States
and New York, and when they looked back to the large amounts of pine timber
they had left behind them, they did not suppose that, in their lifetime, it
would he exhausted and that large amounts would have to be transported from a
thousand miles interior to supply the Atlantic States. At that time Maine was
of itself considered " a world of pine forests,” and its proximity to
Boston gave that city and the State of Massachusetts a supply of cheap lumber;
and, passing further west and south, we find the Connecticut River reaching far
up into the region of pine forests in northern Vermont and New Hampshire; and
large quantities of pine in every shape, from the tall spar used in fitting out
our Atlantic marine, down to the manufactured clapboards and shingles, floated
down its rapid current to supply western Massachusetts and the State which
adopted the name of the river, without a thought on the part of the consumers
that the supply was ever to be exhausted. The supply of pine timber on the
banks of the Connecticut River was considered by the early settlers in that
region to be exhaustible. The writer has seen large quantities of pine logs
near the bank of the river not over one hundred miles from its mouth, which had
been hauled from the land by the early settlers while clearing it for
cultivation, and rolled into a ravine and suffered to decay, which, if they had
been sound, would have been worth more than the land from which they were cut.
I mention this reckless destruction of a commodity which time and circumstances
have made so valuable, as a warning to prevent the proprietors of Michigan
forests from permitting any waste of their timber, for, in less time than has
passed away since the circumstances transpired that I have related above, a
good pine-lumber tree will he as great a rarity in Michigan as it is now in
that part of Vermont. I believe that every sound forest tree in Michigan, of
whatever kind, is of more value to the proprietor than the ashes it will make;
after bestowing much labor to convert it into that commodity. If more land is
required for cultivation, let it be supplied by the boundless prairies of the
West, but let our Michigan forests remain till the timber is required for some
useful purpose, and then let the land be put into the highest state of
cultivation.
But to return to the pine forests of the Eastern
States forty years ago. passing over the Green Mountains, we come to the pine
region of Lake Champlain and the waters emptying into it, which, with the
regions on the headwaters of the Hudson, produced such quantities of lumber,
finding a market at Albany, that that city was for a long time the great lumber
mart of the United States, and she still maintains an ascendancy in that trade,
although the great source of supply is now in the West and in Canada. We might
continue, and mention the regions of the Delaware and the Susquehanna as the
great source of supply for the more southern and Atlantic cities, and then pass
on to western New York and look at the headwaters of the Genesee and its
branches. I was recently told by a pioneer of northern Michigan that a little
more than fifty years ago he was in the town of Dansville, which is situated
on a branch of the Genesee River, and that, within four or five miles of that
town, good pine lumber could be bought at the mills for $2.50 per thousand, and
paid for in almost any kind of barter; and that, in 1826, after the Erie Canal
was open and in use from Albany to Buffalo, pine lumber was sold in the city of
Rochester for $6, $8, and $10 per thousand. In view of the circumstances
related above, it cannot be supposed that at that time the idea could have
been conceived of doing a profitable business by manufacturing lumber in the
forests of Michigan and transporting to the Atlantic cities.
The first saw-mill that was ever built on the waters
that are tributary to the Saginaw River was built on the Thread River at Grand
Blanc in 1828 and 1829, by Rowland Perry and Harvey Spencer. The object in
building the mill was to supply the want of that settlement, the nearest mill
then being at Waterford, about twenty miles distant. There was no pine timber
in the immediate vicinity of the mill, the nearest being a small pinery four or
five miles distant in a northeasterly direction, from which farmers hauled logs
to be manufactured into lumber for their own use. The mill was a poor affair,
not profitable to the owners, and after three or four years was wholly abandoned,
and, the land which was occupied by the pond has been cultivated for more than
forty years.
The second mill was built by Rufus Stevens in 1829 and
1830, on the same stream, four or five miles north of the one first mentioned,
and within two miles of Flint River, just above the present location of the
“Thread Mills.”
[The writer is much pleased with the general
correctness of the History of the City of Flint, written by Hon. E. H.
Thompson, and published in the fourth volume of “Pioneer Collections;” but on
page 435 of said volume Mr. Thompson seems to have been unable to get the
correct data as to the first saw-mill, The one referred to above was the first.
It was built and owned by Mr. Stevens. It was operated by George Oliver at the
time referred to by Mr. Buckingham.] That mill was run a portion of the year
for a time, but without much profit to the owner. The first raft of lumber that
was ever floated on the tributaries of the Saginaw was manufactured at this
mill and hauled across to Flint River and floated down that stream.
There was an
attempt made in 1830, by Alden Tupper, to build a mill on Flint River below
Flushing, but it never progressed any farther than to build a frame, which was
suffered to stand without covering till it rotted down. There was a steam
saw-mill built at Detroit in 1832, and another at Port Huron the same year. I
know of no others in Michigan before Harvey and Gardner D. and Ephraim S.
Williams built one at Saginaw in 1835. Joel L. Day, late of Bay City,
constructed the mill-wright work, and put in the first muley saw that was ever
used in this part of the country. A good supply of logs was provided, and I
think Messrs. Williams did a profitable business during the year 1836.
