It was October 24, 1829 that I, a lad nine years old, reached what is now Prairie Ronde township. We--my mother, brothers and sisters--were about twenty days on the road not-with-standing we drove horses, three on one wagon and two on another. My father, Col. Abiel Fellows, and two oldest brothers had preceded us and had a home built ready to receive us. The transition though slow from a roomy home of plenty to a temporary house of one room, where six wayfarers had found shelter previous to our arrival, naturally filled the mind of a small boy with consternation, his heart with homesickness. Where was the school-room, the clock-room with its glowing coal grate? Where was the square-room, the bed-rooms, the cheerful kitchen? And where, Oh where, was the buttery? Thoughts of the contents of the one left behind increased in size the big lump in my throat. And the mountains, the hills, the cool spring bubbling from the rocks, where were they? But an extenuating fact, did we not have in this new land the Indian? He lurked in every dark corner, was behind every tree and bush, I fancied. The strangers our humble home already sheltered were William Duncan, two sons and one daughter--William, Delamore, and Eliza Ann--, Lydia Wood and Samuel Hackett. My father met us at Monroe, and I recall that in Saline township he purchased thirty bushels of wheat the entire output of a small stack, and left it to be ground into flour. Later we had numerous calls for a little wheat flour to make a wedding cake, which was always freely given. At Strongs Ridge, Ohio, where we staid one night we were told we would see no more peaches after we left there--a strange condition of things I thought--so we bought a goodly supply and saved the stones and on reaching Prairie Ronde planted them in Mr. Guilford's garden, the first garden cultivated by a white man on the prairie. Mr. Guilford had apple trees growing from the seed in this garden. The peach trees grew and thrived and were transplanted to many claims in the county. The south-west part of Kalamazoo county was first settled and John Bair, brother to William Bair, of Vicksburg, drove the first stake, or rather blazed the first tree near Harrison's lake June, 1828. It was in Prairie Ronde that the first school district in the county was organized, and the first school taught in the winter of '30 and '31 by Thomas W. Merrill, founder of what is now Kalamazoo college. Mr. Merrill, my first teacher in Michigan, was followed by Stephen Vickery, and Mr. Vickery by Richard Huyck. The school house was built of split logs and was 20 by 26 feet. It stood near the home of Judson Edmunds, recently sold to Joseph Davis.