of) RDRAL MICHIGAN 



that may affect the desirability of a given tract of 

 Jand for agricultural purposes or rural life. 



The land surface of Michigan was relatively very 

 accessible to settlement, but outside opinion regard- 

 ing its quality was not in al] cases flattering. The 

 most notorious instance of this unfavorable opinion 

 is contained in the report of the United States 

 surveyors, in charge of General Tiffin, who were 

 expected to locate some two million acres of land 

 in Michigan as bounty for the soldiers of the War 

 of 1813. The report of this survey represents the 

 southern portion of the Lower Peninsula as a suc- 

 cession of lakes, swamps and marshes, between which 

 was "a poor, barren, sandy land, on which scarcely 

 any vegetation grows, except very small scrubby oak. 

 In many places that part which may be called dry 

 land is composed of little short sand hills forming 

 a kind of deep basin, the bottom of many of which 

 are composed of a marsh similar to those above 

 described." General Tiffin closes his observations 

 with the pronouncement that not more than one acre 

 in one hundred — if in one thousand — would admit 

 of cultivation.^ This was an opinion of 1815. Mrs. 

 jS[ancy B. White, recalling her departure from New 

 York for IMichigan in 1857, says her parents thought 

 "we could hardly have made a poorer selection; we 

 would have fever, and ague, and mosquitoes to con- 

 tend with besides other hardships too numerous to 

 mention." - 



^"Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," XVIII, 660. 

 ^Ihid., XXII, 240. 



