23G lilJRAL MICHIGAN 



took wheat and corn to the mill and returned with 

 flour and meal and sundry articles of family use 

 from the country store or even from Detroit or 

 Grand Eapids. 



"When winter came and the sleighing was good," 

 relates Edward W. Barber, a pioneer of Vermont- 

 ville, Eaton County, "father yoked the oxen, hitched 

 them to a rough sled, drove to Marshall, twenty- 

 eight miles distant, purchased a load of wheat at 

 forty-four cents a bushel, had it ground and was 

 home again in four days." This illustrates the 

 market facilities of pioneer Michigan. "It was some 

 years before a mail reached us once a week unless 

 the river was high," says R. C. Kedzie of his Lenawee 

 home of the second quarter of the last century. "We 

 were twenty-five miles from a mill, store, post-office, 

 doctor, minister and civilization in general and par- 

 ticular. Our roads were merely trails through the 

 woods marked by blazed trees, and our only bridge 

 over the river was a canoe." In going to mill, "the 

 bags of wheat were carried over the river in the canoe, 

 the horses were unharnessed and made to swim the 

 stream, the harness piece by piece was ferried over, 

 then all parts put together again, the grain loaded 

 up and the driver could then go to Monroe to get 

 his grist ground."^ When Captain Scott of Clinton 

 County went to Ann Arbor for seed- wheat in 1834, 

 he traveled with an ox team. "Not having bags to 

 put the wheat in, it was put loose in the wagon- 

 box. On the way home, the wagon got mired cross- 



^ "Mich. Pioneer & Hist. Soc. Collections," XXIX, 529. 



