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HISTORY OF BAY CITY
The identity of Bay City can be traced back as far as the Spring of 1838, and its history, therefore, covers a period of forty-five years. Upon preceding pages have been described the early conditions of this region; the luminous advent of the Saginaw Bay Company in 1837, its spasms and speedy strangulation. March 1, 1838, Sydney S. Campbell and family arrived upon the site of Lower Saginaw and established themselves permanently in a home and business. This was the first permanent settlement made in Lower Saginaw and in the line of Bay City’s development and history. So numerous and varied have been the accounts of the early settlement made in Lower Saginaw and in the line of Bay City’s development and history. So numerous and varied have been the accounts of the early settlement of Bay City, that the confusion of the reader is liable to be still further increased unless the earliest movements are described in this chapter with greater minuteness than would otherwise be deemed necessary.
Back of 1838 no plan took shape that was preserved and became a part of the organism of Low Saginaw, which developed into Bay City, while the village of Portsmouth, although first projected, maintained a separate municipality until 1873, when it ceased to exist and became an addition to Bay City by annexation. The interests of the two places were so much in common that a detailed history of each would necessitate a repetition. To avoid this as much as possible, we will briefly summarize the early movements in the.
VILLAGE OF PORTSMOUTH
The fame of Portsmouth consists chiefly in priority of existence, having been, as already described, the first town projected near the mouth of the river. When returning life began another struggle in this region, Portsmouth also led the way for a few years, in the way of first enterprises. Joseph and Medor Trombley became first settlers by remaining here contrary to their first expectations. Nearly fifty years have rolled around since they halted in the wilderness, and both are still in the county. The Center House had been built here; Judge Miller had laid out a town, and built a mill In February, 1837, the Portsmouth Company was organized. Among its members were Henry Howard, the state treasured; Kensing Pritchet, secretary of state; John Norton, the cashier of the Michigan State Bank; John M. Berrien, of the United States Army, and Gov. Stevens T. Mason, who individually purchased all the land subsequently included in the Portsmouth plat. These formed the stock company and caused the same to be re-surveyed and re-platted in 1837 by John Farmer.
A portion of this plat of Portsmouth was re-surveyed and replatted by A. Alberts surveyor for William Daglish, in 1855, under the name of Daglish Addition to Portsmouth.
The first postoffice in the county was established here in the Winter of 1837.
The first physician in this region, Dr. J. T. Miller, located her in 1836. The second physician, Mrs. Thomas Rogers, of sainted memory, also located here with her husband. She was truly a ministering angel of comfort and aid.
The first blacksmith, after the Indian blacksmith in this region, was Mr. Rogers.
The first lumber manufactured in this region after 1837, was in the Portsmouth mill by James McCormick & Son, in 1841. They also shipped the first cargo of lumber out of the Saginaw Valley.
The first school in the county, or in the territory afterwards Bay County, was in Portsmouth.
The first salt was made here and the largest saw mill in the valley was built here.
The first vessels built on this part of the river, after the “Java,” were the “Essex” and “Bay City,” built by the Braddocks at Portsmouth in 1857 and 1858.
The coming of the McCormicks, in 1841, was the first revival of business, but there was no marked improvement for several years.
Capt. Marsac had located here in 1838 and Capt. Wilson in 1841.
In 1848 Judge Albert Miller came to reside permanently, and occupied a house built by John Rice, on what is now Fremont Avenue, near Water Street; the first school being taught in this building. Judge Miller operated the mill in company with James J. McCormick for a short time.
C. L. Russell and Capt. Lyman Crowl came about 1849 and formed a copartnership with Judge Miller, under the firm name of Russell, Miller & Co. In the Winter of 1850 they built a mill on the present site of the Miller & Lewis Mill. They built several houses to accommodate their workmen, and opened a store. In 1850 they hired a minister, and erected a small building for a church. This building was afterwards fixed over for a school house.
The first hotel was the “River House,” kept by Daniel Chappel, in the building known afterwards as the “Center House.”
In 1850 Jesse M. Miller came and afterwards carried the mail between Lower Saginaw and Saginaw City.
Medor Trombley had also built a house, still standing near the pail factory.
Portsmouth as first platted extended north to the present line of Twelfth Street, and south to a line between Thirty-Second and Thirty-Third Streets. When the village of Bay City was incorporated it took in Portsmouth as far south as the section line, and finally to Twenty-Fourth Street, and in 1873, by annexation, acquired the whole of Portsmouth village. Several additions had been made, among them being Medor Trombley’s, Dr. Daglish’s and Ingraham’s. The various elements that entered into the growth of Portsmouth are necessarily given elsewhere, and it is therefore needless to repeat a history of them here. As enterprising men as ever came into the valley composed the bone and sinew of the village, and promoted its growth. Some remain, but the number who have ceased from life’s activities is comparatively very large. The history of Portsmouth recalls such names as Trombley, Miller, McCormick, Marsac, Wilson, Braddock, Stevens, Daglish, Southworth, Beckwith, Watrous, Wilmot and Kinney. Of this force but a remnant remain.
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“BAY CITY IN 1837”
was attempted to be recalled by an artist in 1874, and the result of the effort has since done duty as the frontispiece of a local and very creditable publication. The scene pictured is quite romantic and attractive. The serene repose that pervades the spot reminds one of a New England Sabbath in June. The intense stillness, however, has a depressing influence upon the future prospects of the place, somewhat damaging to its material interests. The two fishermen upon the dock are waiting reverentially for a “bite,” and a bark canoe, containing a pair of Indians in war paint, is being propelled through the water of the river with noiseless strokes of their oars. Judge Campbell is seen issuing from the front door of the Globe Hotel to take his accustomed seat in the shade, but no other evidence of life is visible in all the realm. The effect of the picture, however, is somewhat marred by the fact that the cluster of buildings represented did not exist in the year named. Even the Globe Hotel had not then taken shape, and Judge Campbell was a resident of Bridgeport. A correct picture of Lower Saginaw, at March 1 1838,would represent a clearing extending from the present line of Third Street, south to a point just beyond Center Street, and from the river east to about the present line of Saginaw Street. There were two or three log houses and the block house built by the Saginaw Bay Company, near the present corner of Fourth and Water Streets, for a boarding –house. The Globe Hotel building was in process of construction, and Cromwell Barney was at work upon it. A mile or so to the south were the big house of the Trombleys, and a deserted saw mill. Such was the birth and birth-place of Bay City. The future has few secrets more securely locked up that those which pertained to the destinies of this gem of enterprise.
SYDNEY S. CAMPBELL
Or Judge Campbell, as he is generally called, was unquestionably the first to locate in Lower Saginaw and effect a permanent settlement, after the town was projected. He was born at Paris, Oneida Co., N. Y., February 29, 1894. In 1830 he emigrated to Michigan and settled at Pontiac, whence he removed to Cass River, Bridge I the Spring of 1836. Here he laid out a town and called it Bridgeport; his partner in the business being Mr. G.D. Williams. A postoffice was established and Mr. Campbell was appointed postmaster. But Bridgeport was blighted by the hard times, and in the Winter of 1838 he was induced by Mr. Fraser to remove to the new city on the Saginaw, and start a hotel. Some of his Saginaw friends who know his love of ease when not on a chase for deer said that “Syd” was too frequently disturbed while at Bridgeport by travelers coming along and requiring entertainment, and that he had opened a tavern at Lower Saginaw where he would not be disturbed in that way. However, he removed here with his family in the Spring of 1838 and opened the Globe Hotel, as related elsewhere in this work. He arriefved here on the first day of March, and the following day killed a large buck on the opposite side of the river, the last one that he saw for five years. That month, March, 1838, is described by Mr. Campbell as being as warm as is usual for the month of June. In addition to the lot on which the Globe Hotel was built, and still stands, he purchased several other lots which he was wise enough to keep. He had married, March, 1830, Miss Catharine J. McCarty, of Schenectady, N. Y. They have had three children, two of whom are still living. Edward M. Campbell, who died in 1879, was the first boy born in Lower Saginaw, or in what is now Bay County. He was the first supervisor of Hampton Township, and held the office for several years. He was probate judge of the county for sixteen years after its organization. In 1873 he built a brick business block just north of the Globe Hotel, on Water Street, which he rents. He and his wife now live on Woodside Avenue, and twice every day he visits the Globe Hotel, which he has owned for forty-five years, though it has been considerably enlarged and improved since it was first built. The incidents of Judge Campbell’s early connection with the place appear at different places in this work. For forty-five years he has been a wetness of the changes which, in history, link the bustling metropolis of the present with the desolate opening in the wilderness nearly half a century ago.
Upon arriving here the 1st of March, Mr. Campbell’s family occupied the block house for a short time until the “Globe was finished, when they took possession and opened the first tavern in Lower Saginaw. In those days supplies were not ordered through telephone, nor yet by stepping out to some market place a block away, and often Mr. Campbell would paddle a canoe sixteen miles to Saginaw for a pound of tea. In 1862 the old hotel building was enlarged to its present size, and endowed with the name “Globe Hotel.”
A year or two after settling here, Mr. Campbell borrowed the government oxen, and plowed a piece of land near where Folsom & Arnold’s saw mill now stands, which he sowed with buckwheat. When the time came to gather it he would take his canoe, his wife accompanying him, and go down to the field. On the way he would shoot ducks for their dinner. Spreading a sail cloth upon the ground, Mrs. Campbell would bring the bundles of buckwheat together, and he threshed it out on the sail cloth. After winnowing it with a shovel it was put in bags and taken in his canoe to the hotel, where it was emptied into a bed-room up-stairs. The following Winter there was a scarcity of flour, and in February the supply in Lower Saginaw became exhausted. None could be had at Saginaw or Flint, but people in those days did not starve. In this instance Mr. Campbell’s harvest of buckwheat was opportune. Fred Derr, who lived in the “Wild Cat” building opposite the “Globe,” had a big coffee mill, and it didn’t take the settlers long to study out a way to get flour. Each one as he needed would visit the buckwheat pile, and taking what he needed, grind it in Mr. Derr’s coffee mill. In this way, the only flour used in the settlement for three weeks was made, and it is not recorded that the avoirdupois of the place diminished, or that the bloom of health was dulled.
“Yankee” Brown, as he was called, kept boarders in the block house, and Cromwell Barney was living in the old log house, previously occupied by Leon Trombley. Fred Derr was working with Cromwell Barney, while the Globe Hotel was being built. He afterwards married Miss Clark, who taught school a short time near where William Peter’s mill now stands. They were the first white people in Lower Saginaw to unite for better or worse, but they went to Saginaw City to get the solemn sentence pronounced. She died in about a year after they were married, but he is still living East. Mrs. Derr was the second person buried in the burial place selected for that time, as described elsewhere.
The first white child born in the county was Elizabeth, daughter of Cromwell Barney, and the late wife of A. G. Sinclair, now of Bay City. She was born in the log house in May, 1838.
During 1838, the bank building was built nearly opposite the Globe Hotel, on what is now the corner of Water and Fifth Streets. The reasons why this building was never used for a bank have already been given. The warehouse also was built on the river. During the Summer Mr. Campbell borrowed the government oxen of Leon Trombley and plowed a piece of ground, but the operations of the place were not extensive, and the hotel business did not exceed the facilities.
With 1838 the operations of the Saginaw Bay Company ceased. Its affairs went into chancery, and Lower Saginaw was under a shadow more dismal than that of the surrounding wilderness, for two or three years.
There is a story told in connection with the wreck of the Saginaw Bay Company that illustrates the ups and downs of life. At the time of the crash, Theodore Walker was a tailor in the city of Brooklyn, and had a claim against one of the bankrupt stockholders of the company. Having nothing else left at his dsposal, he turned over to Mr. Walker a strip of land in Lower Saginaw. It was not supposed to be of any value, either in reality or expectancy, but Mr. Walker accepted it because nothing better was to be had. He kept it, and some years later came to Lower Saginaw, and died here, but not until after his worthless land had became very valuable. Mr. Walker used to tell this circumstance during his residence here.
Judge Campbell kept the Globe Hotel for three or four years, and then moved into a house still standing on Water Street, just below Third Street, that James Burly had built, but lightning dashed into the clearing one day and gave an exhibition on that building, leaving it in tatters. Judge Campbell fixed it up and occupied it is a residence. The Globe then had several proprietors. Col Garrett kept it for a while, then Capt. Benjamin Pierce, who came here on the schooner “Maine,” and afterwards a man named Tait.
About 1841 the forces that were to enter into the future development of the place were being gathered together. It was about this time that the scrip for most of the land owned by the Saginaw Bay Company came into the possession of James Fraser, Dr. D. H. Fitzhugh, James G. Birney and Theodore Walker. In 1840 Dr. Fitzhugh had purchased several parcels of land bordering on the river, opposite Lower Saginaw and Portsmouth. So that practically the