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Formatted by U.S. Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott
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PIONEER HISTORY OF HURON COUNTY, MICHIGAN
by Florence McKinnon Gwinn
Huron County Pioneer & Historical Society, 1922

[page 97]

CHAPTER IV
TIMBER INDUSTRIES, EARLY AGRICULTURE

      Some of the first roads were built along the sand
  ridges to escape the swamps and bogs.  Such was the
  old Sand Ridge Road from Sebewaing to Harbor Beach,
  over which a stage coach carried mail and passengers
  for several years.  This was the swiftest means of inland
  travel.  No railroads, telegraphs or telephones or even
  a daily newspaper, in those good old days.  After night-
  fall the land was lighted by tallow candles.  The mower
  and harvester were unknown.  Instead they had the
  scythe and cradle and to thresh, the flail.  The settler's
  equipment consisted of axe helves, beetles and wedges
  for rail splitting, handspikes for rolling logs.  Harrows
  were made from the crotches of trees.  Often men pre-
  ferred to work in the saw mills rather than clear land for
  farms which was much harder work and would not bring
  them money for a long time.  Much of the land was low
  and swampy with no way of draining it.  Potatoes were
  the principal crop as they could be planted between the
  
  
[page 98]          PIONEER HISTORY OF HURON COUNTY 
  
  stumps.  The climate was thought to be too cold for
  corn.  The stock rambled at will through the woods.
  In many places the marshes proved to be a veritable
  God-send to the settlers for here he secured his hay for
  winter.  Men would go to these marshes before daylight
  in order to cut a swathe around the portion they wished
  to secure.
  
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