It was the time of Daniel Boone and Andrew Jackson; there was only one steam locomotive on the entire continent, whale oil lit the world, and the population of Britain was still higher than that of the United States. Detroit was still a fort of logs and earth surrounded by a cluster of woodframe buildings, and Chicago was a collection of 12 families huddled along the Lake Michigan shore. There were only 28 white settlements in all of Michigan Territory in 1830 (which included what is now Wisconsin) - most of these along the southeastern shore.

The interior was almost entirely unknown to the white race. But that was about to change with amazing speed - faster, in fact, than the settlement of any other State in the Union. This is the wilderness that Samuel Dexter saw as a land of opportunity for his family and fellow investors.

The northern highway to the "midwest frontier" was the Great Lakes system, beginning at the Erie Canal. Mr. Dexter had made a modest fortune during the excavation of the Erie Canal, and set out (as so many did) to see where it led. Louis Campau had traded in the Grand River valley for several years by the time Samuel Dexter and Dr. Jewett arrived in 1830 to scout the area for settlement. Campau had settled downriver at Brock-a-tinck (which in 1835 would become the village of Grand Rapids). Dexter and Jewett made a long trek down the Grand River then south to the village of White Pidgeon, where their land claim was filed, and finally returned to Herkimer County, New York, to gather up the bold party of pioneers that would settle in Michigan Territory nearly three years later.

There were 63 people in the Dexter party, driving their ox-drawn wagons down the Ottawa trails through the wooded countryside out of Detroit. They had traveled by canal, lake, and river to get to Detroit, and from there shipped much of their supplies around the straits to Grand Haven. The plan was to trek inland from the east, establish their homestead, then send on to the west coast for the remainder of their goods and bring it back upriver.

It took 18 days to make the trip from Fort Detroit to the picturesque floodplains that had captured Samuel Dexter's heart. It was not a happy trip. The tragic death of young Riley Dexter dealt the party a sad blow when they were just 30 miles from their destination. The cholera had struck Detroit, and left Riley dead and his sister Prudence blind.

At a small tributary north of the Grand River and within sight of Chief Cobmoosa's camp, the pioneers arrived on May 28, 1833 to stake their claim. They unloaded their belongings, met with their new native neighbors, and hung out their whale-oil lamps to light up their first night in their new home.

Cobmoosa's people relocated several miles downstream, not wanting to be too near the whites. The settlers purchased some of the native shelters (bark-covered wigwams as pictured here) and gardens already planted, and commenced to planting some of their own seed.

Mr. and Mrs. Dexter (pictured right) built several three-sided cabins of logs and bark, the fourth side covered with deerhide, to prepare for the coming winter. The kegs of flour they had brought with them had been infested with worms, so they had to trade with the natives for corn meal.

That first winter was very hard, mostly due to the difficulty with getting supplies. It took as many as five weeks to get the necessities shipped from Detroit to Grand Haven and nearly as long to get them up river from there as overland from Detroit. As with so many stories, it was largely due to the generous spirit of the natives that the whites made it through that first winter.

In November the Cornell family of 12 arrived without supplies, but fortunately the winter was late in coming, and the Cornell boys set out for the east with money to see what they could bring back with them. They didn't get back until the spring of '34! Fortunately, the rest of the community had survived without them.

The first white birth recorded in Ionia County had been Darius Winsor's son Eugene in 1833, and, sadly, the first death recorded in the County was his six-year-old daughter in the same year.

The second year for the little settlement was no better than the first. In all, three of the 63 whites died in the first 12 months, and the crops were frosted out in the late spring of 1834. These pioneers had money, though. It cost nearly as much to get the supplies brought in from Grand Haven to their settlement as it did to have them shipped to Grand Haven from New York.

The settlers were an industrious lot, and even though their supplies were low, they worked diligently to start their town. By the end of 1834, the town carpenter, blacksmith shop, saw mill and grist mill were in operation. A supply store was built, and when supplies arrived that fall, they made certain that there were plenty stocked up for their second winter. (The cabin pictured here is probably very similar to the early homes in the Ionia area.)

The first frame house was built partially with imported lumber by Dr. W.B. Lincoln (probably the first frame house in all of West Michigan). The Reverend E. Loomis established the First Baptist Church, and the first wheat crop was harvested that fall by Franklin Chubb (who had settled upstream near where Lyons is now).

Plans began for a school to be built in the spring. The whites were here to stay. 1834 brought in a lot of single-family homesteaders, including John Morrison and Alonzo Sessions, who settled in south-central Ionia County. Later that year, a party of 20 settled where Lyons is now, where many subsequent stories have been told about the place - called "Aurthursburg Hill."