dead, carried him out and laid him with a row of bodies in the cart. Just as he was about to drive to the cemetery he noticed that Rider was still alive and lifted him out. Rider protested that he was as good as dead and would be ready for burial by the time they would arrive at the cemetery, but Canann left. him behind. Rider recovered and was alive in St. Louis 30 years later.

The session room of the Presbyterian Church was also utilized as a cholera hospital and there Dr. Douglass Houghton and several other physicians ministered to the afflicted. The death of Gov. Porter left the young Stevens T. Mason acting Governor of the Territory. Charles C. Trowbridge was Mayor of the city. These men remained at their posts of duty and did all in their power to minister to the afflicted and to calm the panic-stricken.

Mrs. Boyer, wife of the proprietor of the Mansion House, died of the disease and immediately the house was deserted. In one day such notable citizens as Gen. Charles Larned, F. P. Browning, Thomas Knapp, sheriff; E. B. Canning, and Mrs. B. F. H. Witherell were swept from the land of the living. Some who sought safety in flight died by the roadside or in outward bound stages. Between July 7 and September 15, more than one-eighth of the people remaining in the city died of the disease.

Such a disaster naturally brought dire distress upon the city. Many widows and orphans were left without support or even subsistence. The organization for relief of the poor had always been inadequate. An example is shown in the act of the Governor and Judges in 1806 when they appropriated $25 for support of the poor of Detroit after the great fire. In 1827 each township was authorized to elect two overseers of the poor. Apparently the intent was to create public offices rather than poor relief, for two years later each township was authorized to elect five overseers of the poor. In 1831 the community woke up and reduced the number of overseers to one for each township.

In 1833 the office of city director of the poor was created, but the situation after the cholera epidemic must have been baffling for Fr. Kundig felt forced to take the matter of poor

relief into his own hands. In 1828 an attempt had been made to establish a poor farm, but it had been voted down. Several other attempts failed, but in 1832, 17 acres of the Leib farm were purchased on the north side of Gratiot Avenue just west of Mt. Elliott Avenue. This was presently increased to 25 acres. The cost of the land was $200. Supervisor French erected a

long shed-like building at a cost of $950, using the cheapest building materials obtainable. J. P. Cooley was appointed keeper and the institution was opened in January, 1833.

Following the cholera the city was burdened with many invalids, widows and orphans and the poor house was utilized to its capacity. In the lack of other provisions for their care Bishop Résé placed the Sisters of St. Clare in charge of the inmates. Most of the inmates were brought to the institution

by Fr. Kundig, who took pains to search out the needy and, having assumed so many of the duties, he was appointed supervisor of the poor in the fall of 1834. The county allowed him 16 cents a day for the care of the inmates, but the actual cost was about double that amount, for provisions were hard to get and labor was scarce owing to the departure of many people from the city. There were more than 100 inmates of the poor house and 60 of those were invalids.

Firewood was needed, but the ground was so soft between the county poor house and the woods on the northern end of the farm that a horse could hardly drag more than an empty cart. To remedy this difficulty Fr. Kundig had a sort of log tramway laid which served its purpose.

Fr. Kundig did not limit his expenditures to the public allowance, but spent his own money for supplies. When that was gone he ran in debt personally for them. In 1837 his resources and credit were exhausted and there were 300 poor to be cared for, so the county raised his allowance to 22 cents. a day—but none of the money was paid to him. It was given in the form of county warrants and the priest in using them in trade was forced to accept a discount of 40 to 60 per cent. In 1838 his creditors descended upon the poor house en masse and literally stripped the building, taking beds from the sick in order to satisfy their demands. They also took over all of Fr. Kundig's personal belongings from his house, leaving him as poor as his charges. Years later the State was shamed into awarding him $3,000 compensation, but that was but a fraction of his debt incurred in behalf of the helpless poor.

The case of the children in the poor house was pitiful, but the creditors of Fr. Kundig were so eager for their money that some of them seized all the clothing of the orphans that was not on their backs.

Soon after the close of 1842 Fr. Kundig left Detroit under a cloud of debt to take a parish in Milwaukee. There he was better appreciated and rose to the rank of vicar general. This enabled him in later years to pay off all his Detroit obligations out of his salary—and the people of Detroit permitted him to do it.

The services of Rev. Martin Kundig to the people of Detroit during the cholera epidemic of 1834, and following that as supervisor of the poor and manager of the old county poor farm, have never been properly appreciated. The first pastor of Holy Trinity Church was a man of stalwart frame, resolute, resourceful and fearless in the midst of panic. It was the custom in his time to toll the passing bell when a member of any parish died. But when deaths were occurring at the rate of 10 to 36 a day the solemn clangor of the church bells sent shivers of dread throughout the community and people began to hold their hands over their ears to shut out the fearsome sound. Fr. Kundig begged that the tolling of bells be stopped and it was done. The priest himself was regarded as a carrier of plague and was generally avoided.

The physicians of Detroit worked night and day, but their remedies, apparently, were futile. Some of them resorted to heavy dosage of calomel and bleeding of patients whose blood was already reduced by the disease. Practically all who were so treated died a few hours later. Others dosed their patients with strong liquors, opium, rhubarb, and cayenne pepper, hoping to check the discharges and to warm the blood of the cholera victims, who became in a single hour emaciated and blue and shivering with cold while the terrible cramps doubled them up with pain. There were no nurses to keep up treatment after the doctors had left to hurry to the next sufferer so Fr. Kundig organized a Catholic Female Association for nursing the sick and caring for children suddenly orphaned by the plague. For such children it was necessary to provide temporary homes and care. He led weeping children from door to door to find temporary guardians. Some were housed in the county poor house on Gratiot Avenue and others were placed in an abandoned building on Larned Street, near Randolph, under care of the young women of the Catholic Female Association. Out of that association and the common necessity came the organization known as St. Vincent's Female Orphan Asylum. This had its real beginning in the spring of 1836 when 20 acres of land adjoining the poor farm were leased on the Gratiot Road beyond

Mt. Elliott Avenue, and a building was erected for housing the overflow of orphans from the poor farm and those for whom temporary care had been secured in the homes of the citizens and farmers about Detroit. This building never had fewer than 20 children inmates under its roof. In connection with it a school was opened and maintained until 1839.

Holy Trinity Church was founded, as has already been stated, as a parish for the Irish Catholics of the city who did not feel entirely at home among the French Catholics, because they knew nothing of the language. In addition to the Irish there were a considerable number of German Catholics in the city. For the benefit of these Fr. Kundig began conducting services in Ste. Anne's and preaching in the German language in 1833. Out of this innovation developed the founding of St. Mary's Catholic Church in 1841 at the southeast corner of Croghan (now Monroe Avenue) and St. Antoine Street.

He often conducted services in the old log church on the Melcher farm in Hamtramck township which had been hurriedly built in 1809. This church, known as "La Chappelle de Nord Est," is supposed to have been reconstructed from the timbers of an old log barn on the farm of François Paul Melcher, near the line of Jefferson Avenue somewhere between Baldwin and Field avenues of the present time. Bishop Résé authorized repairs to be made in February, 1834. Fr. Kundig removed some of the roof boards and shingles which had become rotten, but a violent wind came and blew the whole structure down on the night of February 22, 1834. A new church was then erected on the site and stood there until 1861, when it was burned. Fr. Kundig died in Milwaukee March 6, 1879.