IN MEMORIAM, MICHAEL PEARCE. 455 



journeyed westward to the wilderness of Ohio. In 1802, he and hia 

 family disembarked from the then familiar flat boat which had 

 borne them from Pittsburg down the Ohio to Cincinnati. From 

 that point, he made his way up the Big- Miami to the large tract of 

 land he had secured before leaving Morristown. There he laid 

 out the town of Trenton, in the dense forest, and with his family 

 and fellow imigrants commenced opening up the country. The 

 place was only seven miles from Fort Hamilton, now Hamilton, 

 in Butler county. He lived to a ripe old age, enjoying the confidence 

 of the community that had grown up at Trenton, revered and loved 

 as only people who have in common left the comforts of civilization 

 and isolated themselves in the wilderness to find new homes, can 

 esteem and revere the leaders whom they followed into the prom- 

 ised land. And well they might revere the old patriarch, for he 

 had led the way into the best part of the state, and lived to see it 

 developed and his numerous family provided with comfortable 

 homes, one of the family being John Pearce, the father of the sub- 

 ject of this sketch. 



Named for his grandfather, Michael spent his early life in the 

 companionship of the pioneers of Ohio and learned from them 

 very much of the early history of the west and imbibed their fond- 

 ness for pioneer life and pioneer enjoyments, chief of which was 

 bunting and practice in markmanship with their long rifles. 



Having acquired a common school and afterwards an academic 

 education, Michael was employed asa teacher in thecommon schools 

 of his native state, and found enjoyment not only in teaching the 

 young ideas how to shoot, but such was his natural enthusiasm in 

 whatever he undertook, that he succeeded in enlisting the parents 

 of his pupils in the investigation of the mysteries of arithmetic 

 and kindred subjects. In 1851, he visited the territory of Minnesota, 

 and in the succeeding year led a colony, formed in his native state, 

 to the then almost unknown territory of the northwest, and 

 located at Oronoco, in Olmsted county. A couple of years afterwards 

 he made another visit to his native state and returned with one of 

 the teachers with whom he became acquainted while engaged in 

 the same vocation, Miss Mary A. Johnson, who now mourns his loss 

 as his widow. The issue of the marriage was three daughters and 

 a son. The eldest daughter died young, but the other two are now 

 residents of Montana. On e of them, Mrs. Helen L.Smith is a graduate 

 from the State University and was for a number of years a teacher 

 in the public schools of Minneapolis. 



Owing to the location of the chief territorial road (stage route) 

 from the east to the west through Rochester instead of Oronoco, 

 the latter place failed to become anything more than an obscure 

 village. This lead Mr. Pearce to abandon that place and make 

 Rochester his residence, where for a number of years he was engaged 

 in buying wheat, southern Minnesota at that time being noted for 

 its immense wheat production, and Rochester after the completion 

 of the Winona & St. Peter railroad being the chief inland wheat 

 emporium. Later he engaged in the nursery business at Rochester, 

 but eventually he concluded the shores of Lake Minnetonka was 



