The Bark Covered House: Or, Back In the Woods Again; Being a Graphic and Thrilling Description of Real Pioneer Life in the Wilderness of MichiganNowlin, William
History
The Bark Covered House: Or, Back In the Woods Again; Being a Graphic and Thrilling Description of Real Pioneer Life in the Wilderness of Michigan
Nowlin, William
Dearborn (Mich.); Frontier and pioneer life -- Michigan -- Dearborn
One day, about this time, I was at Dearbornville; they had a fife and
drum there and were beating up for militia and volunteers. A young man by
the name of William Ozee had volunteered. I was well acquainted with him;
he had been at our house frequently. Sometimes, in winter, he had chopped
for us and I had hunted with him. He had a good rifle and was certainly a
sharp shooter. I found that he beat me handily, but I made up my mind it
was because he had a better rifle and I was considerable younger than he.
I saw him at Dearbornville just before he went away. He told me to tell
my folks that he was a soldier and was going to the war to defend them;
that Governor Mason had called for troops and he was going with him. We
heard in a short time that he was at Toledo. We also learned that
Governor Lucas, of Ohio, with General Bell and staff, with an army of
volunteers, all equipped ready for war, had advanced as far as Fort
Miami. But Governor Mason was too quick for the Ohio Governor. He called
upon General Brown to raise the Michigan militia, and said that his bones
might bleach at Toledo before he would give up one foot of the territory
of Michigan; said he would accompany the soldiers himself, to the
disputed ground. He, with General Brown, soon raised a force of about a
thousand men and took possession of Toledo; while the Governor of Ohio,
with volunteers, was fooling away the time at Fort Miami. When we heard
that Governor Mason had arrived at Toledo, we wondered if we should hear
the roar of his cannon. Sometimes I listened. We thought if it was still
and the wind favorable, we might hear them, and we expected every day
there would be a battle.
But when Governor Lucas learned how determined Governor Mason was, and
that he had at his back a thousand Michigan braves, and most of them
with their rifles in their hands, ready to receive him, he made up his
mind that he had better let them alone. We afterward learned that
Governor Lucas only had six or eight hundred men. The conclusion was,
that if they had attacked the Michigan boys at Toledo, they would have
gotten badly whipped, and those of them left alive would have made good
time running for the woods, and would have wished that they had never
heard of Michigan men. Perhaps the Ohio Governor thought that discretion
was the better part of valor. He employed his time for several days,
watching over the line. May be he employed some of his time thinking if
it could be possible that Governor Mason and General Brown were going to
subjugate Ohio, or at least a part of it, and annex it to the territory
of Michigan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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