FOREST AND STREAM 
403 
Tim Coleman’s Bear 
I N THE days before the Civil war the south¬ 
ern peninsula of Michigan was, much of it, 
a wilderness. True, there were settlers along 
the state roads and the principal streams of the 
southern portion, and thriving villages had al¬ 
ready sprung up many years previous to the be¬ 
ginning of strife between the North and the 
South. But in the early fifties cleared farms 
were but islets in the surrounding sea of woods. 
Into the wilds came settlers from “York State” 
and from New England. Moving along lines of 
the same latitude these found in the Wolverine 
state much the same conditions of climate and 
surroundings as in the states from which they 
came. The attraction of cheap land, of virgin 
forest which had never known the ax, of clear 
streams and limpid lakes, of nature’s larder 
stocked with the finest game and fish—all these 
called with siren voices to the hardy adventurers 
of the eastern states, who, lacking the price of 
cultivated acres in their home counties, or moved 
by the spirit of restlessness and adventure then 
so common among the young men, sought new 
and cheaper homes in the west. 
No less responsive to the call were the true 
pioneers, those restless spirits who were never 
content unless on or beyond the borders of civil¬ 
ization ; the hunters and trappers who saw with 
disapproval and alarm the game and fur-bearing 
animals rapidly disappearing from their haunts in 
the states where forest was fast giving way to 
field. 
The settlers came in various ways and by di¬ 
versified routes. Those along the Erie canal 
came by the big ditch to its western end and 
thence by steamboat up the Great Lakes until 
the border of the promised land was reached. 
Some came by rail as far as the road for the iron 
horse was laid, with its strap iron rails on 
wooden trestles, and from the terminus of the 
iron highway finished their journey by stage. 
Many came by slow but sure stages behind their 
plodding teams of horse or oxen, their worldly 
goods and families housed in the covered wagon 
at once their home and transport. 
Among these latter came Tim Coleman, a na¬ 
tive of Catteraugus county, New York, with his 
wife and two children, drawn by a slowly moving 
ox team attached to a covered wagon, whose ca¬ 
pacity was taxed to the utmost by its load of 
household utensils and human freight. Along 
the smooth highways of his native state Tim and 
his caravan of ox team, cow behind the wagon, 
and the dog, Trip, crept around the eastern end 
of Lake Erie, across the finger of Pennsylvania 
which streaches out to dip into the big water, 
into Ohio and up the lake shore toward their 
goal, an eighty-acre tract in one of the thinly 
settled counties of Michigan. 
The journey was commenced in the spring as 
early as the condition of the roads would allow, 
and fair progress was made until the western 
portion of the Buckeye State was reached, and 
the famed and dreaded Black Swamp spread be- 
By C. A. Bryant. 
fore them. The Colemans learned with dismay 
that the road through the swamp was well nigh 
impassable from frequent rains which had pre¬ 
vailed in that section, and found also that the 
larder of the expedition was low and the family 
purse light. 
A suitable camping place was selected and a 
kitchen walled with poles and roofed with boughs 
and bark was built. The covered wagon was 
ranged alongside as a dormitory, and the family 
cooked, ate and kept house in the shelter of the 
improvised dwelling. 
Meanwhile Tim took a job of logging up a 
piece of ground which had been partially cleared 
and, being skilled at such labor, with the help of 
“Stopped and Turned His Head.” 
the oxen he speedily rolled the large logs and 
stumps into heaps for burning, and with the help 
of the family picked up and piled the brush and 
roots. When the job was finished and clear 
weather had rendered the rude trail through the 
swamp more passable, they took the road for 
their new home with replenished larder and heav¬ 
ier purse. 
The fates were kind. No serious difficulty was 
encountered on the way. And after another 
month of plodding along rough roads, through 
heavy woodlands interspersed with farms, some 
of which had already commenced to take on an 
air of thrift and comfort, in marked contrast to 
the rude clearings and ruder shanties of the 
more recent settlers, at the close of an August 
day Tim unyoked the brindled oxen and set up 
the covered wagon on the land he had purchased 
before leaving York State. Then, with true 
Yankee adaptability, he set about the task of 
getting a living for himself and family. 
After a night spent in the covered wagon, Tim 
with his wife and children explored the land 
which was to be their home. The eighty acres 
were “oak openings,” gently rolling and covered 
with a noble growth of the varieties of oak com¬ 
mon to the country, the white oak predominat¬ 
ing, from which sign Tim declared the soil to be 
clay loam of a productive quality. 
“T tell ye, mother,” he said, addressing his 
wife, “if we can get along and make a livin’ ’til 
we can get a clearin’ made and broke, we’ll soon 
be raisin’ wheat and corn, and I know that a 
garden’ll just grow itself if ye put seeds in the 
ground.” 
“It looks kind o’ lonesome now,” replied Julia 
Coleman, as they looked from the corner tree of 
the eighty, on which the surveyor’s mark was still 
plainly visible, “and that’s a big black swamp over 
there,” pointing to where a dark growth of tara- 
rack, black ash and water elm stretched away 
to the northwest. “But I s’pose there’s neigh¬ 
bors nigh, and it’ll look different when we get a 
clearin’ made and a house up. Can we build one 
this fall, do ye think?” 
Tim shook his head in doubt. “I’m ’fraid not,” 
he said. “There’s plenty of logs to make one, but 
I’m ’fraid I can’t raise the money to pay for 
the help and lumber ’twould take. I guess we’ll 
shanty for a spell.” 
As they passed down the north line of the 
land they came to a rise from which there was 
visible through the scattered oaks, free from 
underbrush, a fine double log house and a frame 
barn of generous dimensions, from which a clear¬ 
ing of many acres extended to the east and 
north. There were wheat stacks at the barn, 
corn grew luxuriantly in the fields among the 
oak stumps, the green of the garden patch 
showed between the house and the small orchard, 
whose thrifty young apple trees shaded the 
stumps of the forest giants they had displaced, 
and the whole surrounding had an air of thrift 
and comfort. 
“That must be the farm the agent told me ’bout 
when I bought this,” said Tim. “He said there 
was a cleared place next to this, and that the 
man ’at owned it had been here six or seven 
years, and raised good crops all the time. I 
didn’t take much stock in what he said, but ’pears 
he wasn’t lyin’ much. I’m goin’ over there soon’s 
I git a shelter up, an see if I can’t swap work 
for some hay and a few oats for the oxen. 
They’re kinder thin and wore down from such a 
long ja’nt, and nothin’ to eat but browse and 
what grass they could pick ’long the road.” 
Tim set about building a shelter for his family 
and stock. A pen of small logs was built for the 
oxen and the little cow, in which they could be 
confined at night and prevented from straying 
too far away, but in the daytime Henry Coleman, 
stout in reliance of his twelve years, the com¬ 
pany of his dog Trip, and that of his sister Julia, 
aged nine, kept the cattle in sight of the wagon, 
and allowed them to feed on the marsh grass 
around the edge of a small swamp across the 
road and to the south of the house. 
