The Owosso times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1897-1926, 1902-08-15
The Pioneer Picnic.

usually ldTS6 dlltuudilCc DOtH Ou az
count of the favorable weather and on
account of the excellent facilities for
getting to the meeting place. The
county, as well as Corunna itself, is TO
be congratulated more and more on
having this park for such gatherings
The earlier hours were spent in social
greetings, at the picnic tables, about the
park and in its pavilions, and there were
numerous picnic dinner parties scat
tered about.
The program was begun about two
o'clock, the principal address of the
afternoon being made by Mr.. John
Whelan, of Vernon, candidate for the
republican nomination for representa-
tive from Shiawassee county. Excel
lent music was furnished by the SYM
phony Quartette Of Durand, the mem
bers of which came in on the afternoon
train Aside from the principal address
short talks were given during the after
noon by the president Of the meeting,
Mr.. j. D. Leland, of Durand, and by
Messrs. Lucius Gould, of this city; John
Fitch, Alonzo H. Owen, Andrew Sher-
man, and others All these talks con-
tanned most interesting anecdotes of a
time now already seemingly far past,
and equally interesting comparisons of
the customs and things of the past with
those Of the present, Mr.. Gould pre-
faced his talk with the announcement
that at the annual meeting of the society
next winter motion would be made to
change the name of the society to some
thing like the "Shiawassee Pioneer and
Historical Society" the word "Histori
cal" being added, since as he said, in a
few years more the membership would
contain few OF the real pioneers and the
work of the society would be still more
largely than at present historical.
The address of the afternoon was
pleasing one. Mr.. Whelan in the be-
ginning said that when he had been in
vited to speak before the society he felt
highly honored and was glad of the op-
portunity. Later when be began to
think Of what he should say to the peo-
pie whom he should address on that day
he began to feel that he was not quail
fed to address them. He felt that he
had not had the experience necessary to
give them what they deserved to hear.
He had himself seen less than forty
years of life and had been resident of
the county only about thirty. He was
one of the modern, therefore, rather
than one of the old settlers. He quick
ly got into the old settler spirit, how
ever as far as outrageously impossible,
and humorous stories were concerned,
and told several on \some of the old set
tiers present which provoked no small
amount of merriment among them and
their friends.
In 1880, he said, the territory of Mich
igan was regarded as the extreme west
frontier. The government surveyors
had reported that the uplands' were
heavily wooded and hard to clear and
that the lowlands were covered with the
densest growth of underbrush. If the
settlers of those days had known as much
of the extent of the country and its re-
sources now they would have gone on
by Michigan in those days to the country
beyond the Mississippi, where they could
have at once plowed their fields and
sown their crops, and have left the val
liable forests of Michigan to the later
days when the timber would have been
more valuable than the farms them
selves today.
He would not dwell on the resolution
and fortitude of those early settlers how
ever, upon the fortitude and endurance
required to pass through trials and hard
ships, losses, sleepless nights because of
fear of wild beasts and treacherous In
dian foe, from the dangers and annoy
ances from mosquitoes, feas, fever and
ague, and even the medicine of the doc
tors-he would leave that to those who
were better able than he to relate them
and pass to comparison of Shiawassee
of that day and this.
Today the forests have been leveled,
and the old crooked Indian trails have
become straight roads cutting the county
almost into half sections. The settlers,
who We're then miles apart, now see the
so thickly settled that the
farms are small ones of forty, sixty and
eighty acres largely and the neighbors
correspondingly close together Instead
of going many miles once or twice a
month for their letter or paper, they
now have their mail left every day at
their door Now one of these old set
tiers can well nigh go from home to San
Francisco and return in a palace car in
the time it then took him to go to Pom
tiac and back.
The improvements at which society
wonders today havelbeen wrought, per-
haps nj nety per cent of them in the last
hundred years and quite seventy-five
mt