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Subject: Ohio & Indiana Land grabs
Date: 17 Oct 2004 17:37:07 -0600

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Classification: Query

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The fact that nearly all of the old settlers recovered from the effects of both disease and treatment can only be ascribed to the Darwin doctrine of "the survival of the fittest." The early settler of Michigan must have been "the salt of the earth."
The origin of this disease is naturally ascribed to malaria arising from abundant richness of vegetation, causing immense vegetable decomposition, and the existence of a large area of marshy soil undrained. About 1845 a new school of physicians began administering quinine and other tonics and discarding large doses of calomel and were successful. The original form of Michigan ague long since disappeared ow- ing mainly to the draining of the marshes and the cultivation and drying of the soil.

As surveyed and organized, a township in Michigan generally was six miles square, consisting of thirty-six sections of land, On account of the meandering course of the St. Joseph river, the bend of the shore of Lake Michigan, and the state line on the southern boundary of Berrien county, the townships are of unequal size and generally contain many fractional sections. Only the townships of Watervliet, Bainbridge, Pipestone, and Buchanan are exactly six miles square. The sections on the State line between Michigan and Indiana are fractional, containing only about three-fifth of a section.
The plan of local government adopted by the Michigan pioneers was that of New England and New York, in preference to that in vogue in Pennsylvania and Virginia. In the south the county was the political unit. In New England and New York the township was the political unit. In the latter, power was conferred upon the people of the township, at their annual town meeting, to enact such laws as they deemed best for their local needs, and not upon a county board. This is the theory of local government reduced to its simplest and most democratic form. County legislation was carried on by a general meeting of the supervisors of the respective townships at certain stated times each year .
The adoption of this system of local government, arose from the fact that before the admission of Michigan into the Union, an immense immigration had set in from the Empire State, which exceeded that from all the other states put together, and made Michigan in her laws, institutions, customs and traditions the child of New York.
While Michigan belonged to the territory of Indiana, Wayne county embraced the whole of the lower peninsula lying north of Ohio and Indiana. At this time the Southern boundary of Wayne county was understood to be a line running due east from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan to Lake Erie. This embraced the present site of the cities of South Bend, Mishawaka, Elkhart and Toledo. The northwestern portion of Indiana was not settled till about 1829, but Toledo and the surrounding country were settled as early as 1800. The enabling act of Congress providing for the admission of Ohio as a state, described the northern boundary as the prolongation of a line running due east from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan. The people of Ohio were not then aware that this line would exclude Toledo. Upon ascertaining that it did, they demanded a new line to be drawn, and a new survey was made under the direction of the Ohio State government by which the southern boundary of Michiga!
n ran from the southernmost point of Lake Michigan to the northernmost cape of Maumee Bay. This line placed Toledo south of the boundary line, but left the present site of South Bend, Elkhart, and Mishawaka within the boundaries of Michigan. In 1816 the enabling act of Congress, providing for the admission of Indiana, fixed the northern boundary of Indiana on a line drawn due east and west ten miles north of the southern extreme of Lake Michigan. No particular attention was paid by the people of Michigan to this change subtracting a strip of territory ten miles wide, as northern Indiana had not then been settled and was regarded of little account. The controversy, however, between the people of Ohio and Michigan over the boundary line continued with great bitterness for several years, and almost led to a civil war. Congress finally granted the claims of Ohio, and recompensed the state of Michigan by annexing to it the territory covered by the Upper Peninsula.
Michigan lost a valuable strip of territory on our southwestern borders to which she was undoubtedely entitled, whatever may have been the merits of the controversy between Ohio and Michigan. If the people of Michigan in 1816 could have anticipated the value and future importance of this ten mile strip, the southern boundary of Berrien county would probably without serious controversy, have been located ten miles farther south than at present, and would have iem- braced within its limits nearly 300 sections, largely of the choicest prairie and timbered lands, and the flourishing city of South Bend.

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