PIONEER SOCIETY

ANNUAL MEETING JUNE 8 AND 9, 1886

MICHIGAN

PIONEER AND HISTORICAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT

BY HON. HENRY FRALICK, OF GRAND RAPIDS

Ladies and Gentlemen; Fathers, Mothers, Sons and Daughters; Pioneers of Michigan:

It is my pleasant and agreeable duty as president of the Pioneer Society of the State of Michigan, to greet you on the return of another annual meeting of this society. The large attendance here annually of so many aged persons, and from long distances, attests the interest felt and the enjoyments attained in this pleasant annually recurring social intercourse. To those scenes and incidents long past and gone, yet comparatively fresh and vivid in the recollections of those who participated in them, whether they were scenes of trial and suffering, or of enjoyment and pleasure, where persons are well past middle age as most of us are, the mind loves to revert back and clings with great tenacity, and that is one of the strongest reasons of the interest and pleasure taken by our associate pioneers in these meetings.

While it is great pleasure to meet so many of the old familiar faces, it is mixed with pain to notice the many vacant places made in our ranks by the remorseless sickle of old Time, but such is life. It therefore behooves us

who still remain to be laborers in the prolific field of gathering up such fragments of the early history of our beloved State, while yet we may, as important to their permanent place in the future history of the State. With you who have felled the forests, cleared the fields, prepared the soil, and sowed the seed, and so wisely started the early history of this now great State, is the knowledge that no generation after this can obtain if not imparted and left of record by you. Every week death calls from our ranks some of those who have in a greater or less degree helped to change the wilderness into fruitful fields of plenty, having left their native States in the early days to fill the noble mission of a pioneer.

The incidents, self-denial and hardships of braving the terrors of the unbroken forests, in the settlement of a new country, are well known to you; but they, thank God, are now largely removed from the present generation, by the energy, privations, and indomitable preseverance of our early pioneers.

I think it the duty of every pioneer, according to his or her ability, to contribute of his or her knowledge and experience in the early settlement of this Territory and State, including incidents, circumstances and transactions which go to make up a full and complete record of its pioneer history. Each one may and can furnish the information of what transpired in his or her neighborhood or locality. It may not seem material to them, but when properly arranged and compiled makes the veritable history, which is the aim and object of this society to gather, record and perpetuate.

Our work is progressing fairly, the seventh volume of our publications has just been issued; it has been delayed some time by the press of other State printing that required urgency; the material for the eighth volume is all ready for the printers, and there is sufficient material now nearly ready for the ninth volume. We hope to get both volumes out before January next. Our Committee of Historians, with the help of some good friends, have been able to obtain quite voluminous, but reliable and valuable papers relating to the early history of the territory now comprised in the limits of the State of Michigan. The Society has been at some expense in having such of these as required it translated from the French into the English language and all carefully compiled. In this we are confident the money has been wisely expended. The work of the last year has required a good deal of the time and attention of the Committee of Historians for which they are entitled to the thanks of the Society, as are also the Recording and Corresponding Secretaries and Treasurer, for the prompt and faithful services rendered.

The dignity of labor, both mental and physical, is exhibited in all laudable undertakings, and in none more so than in felling the forest, clearing and

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cultivating the new lands, organizing new towns, counties, and states, building the necessary and indispensable roads and bridges, farm buildings, school-houses, churches, mills, factories, villages and cities, form and enact proper, wise, and suitable laws for the government of each. Who has greater and better cause for gratulation than the pioneers of this State, in the glorious success of their efforts in establishing a State so great and complete in all the elements that are desirable in a community as the State of Michigan.

We have accomplished in that sense our full duty; it still remains for us, for the benefit of the State, the nation, our children, and our successors in whatever capacity, to perfect the record, so far as possible, of the ways and means how this great work was brought about. There is no doubt the underlying cause of the rapid and desirable progress of Michigan was in the character of a large majority of its early settlers. They were mostly from New York and New England; their early training had been in the right direction; they and their progenitors had been early imbued with the knowledge that industry, sobriety, and good morals were vitally essential to the ultimate desirable success in the formation of the society and laws of a new community; and to their influence and action much of the enviable position of this State and character of its people are undoubtedly due.

The land was sold only for cash at time of purchase; thus those unsatiable cormorants, high prices and large interest for credit, were generally avoided by the early pioneers. They were thrown on their own resources, and about their only hope lay in self-reliance and those principles which sustain it.

I am confident that I am briefly giving the experience of most of my hearers and associate pioneers. We were early taught that intelligence was essential to success, therefore one of the first joint actions of a few settlers, comparatively remote from each other by reason of the want of roads, was the building of a school-house, though of the most primitive kind, and establishing a school. When the neighborhood had a few more settlers an addition to the school-house or a new and larger one was erected, not only for holding schools, but in which to hold religious and other necessary meetings. Gradually as the country became more settled and improved school districts were organized and a primary school system established, which was soon followed by a few seminaries and high schools for the preparation of teachers. Then as the means of the people increased the establishment of our Normal School and University system and private colleges followed. All of which were so well managed, patronized, and sustained, that at the National Centennial held in 1876, it was found ou examination and comparison by the able judges selected for the purpose,