slabs, he moved his family in 1820. He discovered good brick clay and opened a yard for brick manufacture, and in 1828 built a brick house, handsome for that day. He also built a brick tavern. Two years later the township of Cottrellville was created and named in honor of Judge David Cottrell, one of the first settlers, and a postoffice was established at Yankee Point, which was renamed Belle River.

From time to time Cap. Samuel Ward would make a trip along the shore to trade with the small towns and for this purpose he converted his schooner into a sort of floating bazar. Most of the trade was by barter as there was little money in circulation. While the Erie Canal was building he launched a schooner of 28 tons on Belle River, which he named the St. Clair. When the canal was opened Capt. Ward took his little schooner through to New York. To pass the canal he unshipped the spars of his schooner at Buffalo, reset them on the Hudson River and sailed down the Hudson. In 1825 he built the Albatross of 20 tons and the Marshal Ney of 73 tons. In 1833 he built the Elizabeth Ward of 65 tons and the Gen. Harrison of 115 tons. This ended his ventures in sailing craft and he turned his attention to steamboats, becoming part owner of the Michigan, built by Oliver Newberry at Detroit.

In 1822 his nephew, Eber Brock Ward, son of Eber Ward, came to Belle River. As soon as he was old enough Eber Brock Ward began work as a common sailor for Capt. Sam. The young man presently bought an interest in one of his uncle's schooners and began sailing her on partnership account. As soon as the Michigan Central Railroad was well under way the Wards built two steamboats to furnish passenger service between Detroit and Buffalo in anticipation of through traffic. By the time the Michigan Central had reached Marshall, Capt. Eber B. Ward had two steamers on Lake Michigan to take railway passengers from St. Joseph to Chicago and Milwaukee. When the Michigan Central was diverted to New Buffalo the port service was shifted to that point. During the time the railway was building from Marshall westward passengers completed the overland trip in stages which connected with the Ward boats.

In 1848 the Michigan Central built the Mayflower, at the time the largest and finest steamer on the lakes, for the Detroit to Buffalo service and soon followed with the Atlantic. The railway was extended to Chicago. This put an end to the Ward service, but Eber Brock Ward was not a man to be discouraged. He made a personal investigation of the Lake Superior ore prospects and became one of the promoters of the Soo Canal. He also began building vessels to make use of the ship canal.

EUREKA IRON & STEEL WORKS AT WYANDOTTE, 1860

He hauled schooners overland around the Soo Rapids and sailed on Lake Superior. It was his aim to make Detroit a manufacturing center. To establish an iron industry he organized a corporation known as the Eureka Iron & Steel Company in 1853 in association with U. Tracy Howe, S. M. Holmes, Philip Thurber, Benjamin Vernor, Harmon DeGraff, T. W. Lockwood, S. N. Kendrick, and John S. Van Alstyne.

These men and their associates bought 2,200 acres of land on the site of the present town of Wyandotte, platted a village and built a blast furnace and rolling mills, huge for that time. Capt. Ward went to Chicago and founded another plant, which became the Illinois Steel Company, and he built still another at

Milwaukee. At Ludington he established great lumber mills. He built another lumber mill at Toledo to manufacture the hardwood timber of Ohio. He also invested in iron mines. It was his vessel which brought the first cargo of ore from the Jackson mine down the lakes. Out of that first shipment of Lake Superior iron he had the walking beam and main shaft of a new steamer, the Ocean, manufactured. In 1864 he installed a Bessemer converter at Wyandotte and turned out the first Bessemer steel manufactured in America. At the mills he had founded in Chicago in 1865 was rolled the first Bessemer steel rail produced in this country.

Capt. Ward was a whirlwind of energy. He insisted on doing the work of two men and gave himself no rest. His physicians warned him that no man could keep up such a pace of activities, but he scoffed at their warnings. When the Pere Marquette Railway became virtually bankrupt he took hold of its affairs and by use of his money, credit and business ability put the concern on its feet. He had the vision to see that wrought iron produced by the old process must give way to mild steel produced by either the Bessemer or the Siemens-Martin open hearth method and urged his associates to transform the Wyandotte plant.

It was a critical moment. The change would involve the scrapping of costly installations and replacements which would cost more than a million dollars. While they hesitated Capt. Ward fumed and went about speeding up his various enterprises. He established a shipyard at Wyandotte in 1872, was interested in several newspapers and a promoter of higher education. He lived to see many of his enterprises on the way to great success; to see the little settlement at Yankee Point changed to Belle River, then to Ward's Landing and finally to Marine City. One day the high pressure under which he lived and worked caused the rupture of a blood vessel in his brain and on January 2, 1875, he died suddenly of apoplexy while walking on Griswold Street. The home he had built on Fort Street later became the House of the Good Shepherd. At the time of his death he was beyond question the most enterprising

and the richest man in Michigan, but his estate was so involved and scattered that it took all the talent and time of some of the ablest lawyers of the state to straighten out the entanglements and save a large fortune for his heirs.

After his death his associates in the iron plant at Wyandotte still hesitated. The panic of 1873 had shaken the nerve of most business men. Recovery was very slow and new ventures were regarded as risky. So the Wyandotte plant was allowed to potter along in decadent fashion for several years until it was finally shut down forever. The idle iron plant threw many men out of work and Wyandotte seemed for a time in danger of complete extinction, but new manufacturing enterprises came in and revived its prosperity. The iron works buildings took fire one day in the 1890's and were destroyed. After that came a gang of men who blew up its costly engines, rolls and other machinery and soon nothing was left but a mass of junk to mark the site of what promised to be and what might have been the foremost steel plant of the United States.

I

CHAPTER LXXXIX

EVENTS OF THE 1850'S

N 1829 the Legislative Council of Michigan Territory petitioned the Government for the founding of a hospital

for the seamen of the Great Lakes. Congress did not make such provision until 1854, when a plat of eight acres was bought on Jefferson Avenue for $23,000 and a building erected at a cost of $80,000. A number of seamen who had been cared for in St. Mary's Hospital were then transferred to the Marine Hospital. In compensation for free care in the hospital each seaman was taxed 40 cents a month, which was reserved out of his wages by the captain of each vessel. For many years the number of patients ranged from 15 to 25. After maintaining this hospital for 66 years the Government is considering its discontinuance.

Several counties in the center of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan were famine stricken in the years 1856 and 1857. The people generally clamored for access to the land. The poor people complained that the soil of Michigan was being absorbed in large tracts by men of means and that those who could not afford to pay $1.25 an acre were doomed to perpetual poverty. To quiet this complaint a Congressional act known as the "Graduation Act" was passed in 1854 by which certain Government lands were opened to settlement at 50 cents an acre. This reduction caused many people from the towns who knew nothing about agriculture to rush into the wilderness to clear land and plant crops. They accomplished little and much of that was so badly done that the crops were not enough to furnish them even a meager subsistence.

Gratiot County was the center of a famine which developed suddenly. There were no roads except trails in much of this country and communication with the outside world was infrequent. An alternation of floods on undrained land followed by a long drouth and then unusually early frosts left many