THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION

At a joint meeting of the executive committee and the committee of historians of the Michigan State Pioneer and Historical Society, held at Lansing, June 8, 1886, a resolution was adopted providing for a representation of the society at the Semi-Centennial celebration of the admission of Michigan into the union, to be held at Lansing, June 15, 1886, and delegates were named from the membership of the society from all portions of the State. At the same meeting the Hon. Witter J. Baxter, of Jonesville, was requested to speak in behalf of such representation on the Semi-Centennial occasion, if an opportunity was given by the committee of arrangements.

This action was taken by the Pioneer Society at too late a day for any place to be assigned them on the programme for the day, as that had been already prepared and printed, and the entire arrangements for the occasion completed, with a programme so full as to allow the introduction of no new exercise.

The committee of arrangements for the Semi-Centennial, however, on the evening of the 14th, concluded to give the representatives of the State Pioneer and Historical Society from three to five minutes, immediately after the address of welcome by the Governor of the State, at the front of the Capitol. At the close of the Governor's address, Mr. Baxter was introduced by the Governor, as representing the Pioneer and Historical Society of Michigan, who, speaking without notes, made, in substance, the following address:

ADDRESS OF HON. WITTER J. BAXTER

Mr. President and Fellow Citizens of our beloved State of Michigan:

At a gathering like this to celebrate the semi-centennial of our State, it was thought not inappropriate by the Pioneer and Historical Society to ap pear by representatives selected from their membership from all sections of the commonwealth, and the very pleasant duty has been devolved upon me of saying a few words on their behalf.

Surrounded as I am here by these representatives so chosen, we need no introduction as pioneers. Our whitened heads, our halting steps, our bended forms, all proclaim in language more forcible than words, that if not in

Michigan, at least somewhere on God's green earth, we have already passed nearly the entire period allowed to man's terrestial existence.

Some of us time has touched with gentle hands, leaving us, after our three score years and ten or more of earnest work in our several stations, with much of vigor, strength, and joyousness, glad participants with you in these commemorative exercises.

Nearly if not quite all of our representative members present with you today have passed in Michigan, more years than have gone by since it became a State. And of the scenes and incidents attending the rise, progress and development, from small beginnings, to present growth and greatness of our Michigan of to-day, have been eye-witnesses, and in securing the grand results, busy workers and participants.

We trust it will not be considered obtrusive, or out of place, to call to your attention some of the valuable work already done by our Pioneer and Historical Society, though but the beginning of work projected, and which we hope to carry forward to full accomplishment.

While at our annual social gatherings we clasp hands with friends and associates in early struggles and successes, and revive recollections of days long past, collect and preserve, for future reference and use, the words and the works of the fathers, into whose rich inheritance their children, and their children's children, have entered-we do much more.

We make careful examination of ancient relics, papers, and records, found among family treasures, carefully stowed away, or among the archives of historical associations, private, State, and national. Many of these we find covered with the dust of many years and undergoing defacement and decay, and which, but for the timely action of our society, would soon have been lost beyond recovery.

In the seven volumes of our collections already published will be found much of great interest and value to students of history, and while there will doubtless be found much of personal narrative, much of merely local interest, and much that might possibly have been omitted without serious loss, still we are fully persuaded that these volumes and others soon to follow will prove to the antiquary and historian a mine of inestimable wealth.

Fifty years constitutes for the individual a large part of his allotted period; not so with states and nations.

For them the hand upon the dial of time moves slowly, and when upon the revolving wheel of years its bell shall have tolled out fifty it is still with the state or nation early morning.

With states or nations, however, no less than with individuals, the early years, the springtime of existence, are of prime importance,

In them are found the germs of which the future is but the development and outgrowth.

It is the province of our society to discover the germs from which our institutions have developed, to lift the veil from the long hidden past, and by the view thus presented to give strength and encouragement for the pres ent and with the blessing of Almighty God on human efforts full assurance for the future of our State.

OTTAWA COUNTY

PAPERS READ AT THE SEMI-CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF ITS SETTLEMENT, HELD AT GRAND HAVEN, DEC. 2, 1884

HISTORICAL DISCOURSE

BY REV. CHRISTIAN VAN DER VEEN, OF GRAND HAVEN

TEXT. "For who hath despised the day of small things."-Zechariah, iv, 10.

It seems to me I could find no more appropriate text with which to open a historical discourse on the settlement of this county than the passage of Scripture, which may literally be said to have been the starting point of this county's history. It is just fifty years ago that the first permanent settlers of this region landed on the shore of this river, within gunshot from this spot. It was the very same day of the week, the Lord's Day. It occurred to the head of the party, fresh from missionary labors among the Indians, first of all to gather his little band together in a rude log hut which the traders had built to give thanks to God for his safe guidance, and to inspire them all with courage and hope for the future by speaking to them strengthening words. Those words were based on this word of the Lord, which ages ago came to Zerubabel, who also was called to begin again the Lord's work from the foundation, and under discouraging circumstances.

I cannot say with just what words Mr. Ferry on that occasion cheered his companions in their lonely surroundings. No sketch of that address was preserved. But those of us who had the privilege of knowing the man can easily imagine. Like so many of the pioneers of that period he had the prophetic insight which faith in hard work and perseverance gives. And I have no doubt that it was principally an appeal to labor and endure, with

the assurance that the object would not fail. Nor lacked they, I think, the assertion of the truth that all work, to be in any sense permanent or valuable, must be consecrated to Jesus Christ; words, without doubt, altogether in the spirit of that great pioneer apostle, who in his day went out to conquer the Gentile wilderness for the truth of Christ, "forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before."

I would not have you think when I name Mr. Ferry as the father of this county, the pioneer in the development of this lake shore region, that there was anything phenomenal or exceptional about him. He was but a sample of the men who went forth to conquer the wild parts of this continent for a better manhood than was indigenous here. Such men there still are, going forth into the places from which cowardly, weak men shrink and flee, because there is nothing there; men who have a keener vision, and who are, therefore, able to perceive the things which will be as well as the things which are; men who know the value of the three graces, faith, hope and love, and their applicability to the things of this life as well as to that which is to come. I would not wrong the men of my own generation. We have our heroes, too, in many fields. But the enginery of civilization is now so widespread, its course so undisputed, its touch so immediate and potent; in other words, the aids for the subduing of the world are now so many and so easily applicable that it sometimes seems to me as though there were more of heroism in times when more was required of the simple endeavor of the individual man, and one looks back with admiration upon the men, our fathers, who broke their way on foot and worked out their destiny with their brawny

arms.

A look back over fifty years takes us into this period of individual endeavor. In our day the railroad breaks the path for the pioneer settler more often than the pioneer blazes the way for the railroad. The men plodded across these vast stretches of country on foot, considering themselves fortunate if a yoke of patient oxen slowly dragged their few possessions over ungraded hills and through unbridged streams. In most cases they had to begin literally at the beginning. Their wants needed to be few and their hopes large. Their labors were hard and never-ending, and their reward was principally in promises. You see they needed courage and faith. I would first of all, therefore in this discourse, pay the tribute of our respect to the generation of men who have left us the legacy of our present enjoyments. They obtained it for us by no fictitious means, but by their honest toil, their faithfulness to the demands of their day, their patience, bravery, diligence, and self-denial. Their's was indeed a day of small actu alities, but of large possibilities, which they made into large actualities by