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Page 10 text:
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History of Port Huron The history of Port Huron proper may be said to begin in 183 7 because in that year the settlement near the mouth of Black River was first called by that name. Two years before Edward Petit had laid out a plat on the South side of Black River, near the mouth which he called the Village of Peru. D. B. Harrington laid out the land between Peru and the Indian Reserve in the Village of Desmond. John Thorn laid out what is now called Thorn ' s Plat and called it Gratiot, and Charles Butler laid out Butler Plat and called it Huron, and in 183 7 these were all united and called Port Huron. For some years before that people had been coming in slowly and settling around the vicinity principally along Black River. In 183 2 the Military Road from Detroit to Fort Gratiot was completed and a bridge built across Black River. Oddly enough the bridge was of the same general type as the present one, except that each leaf or part was raised by a separate winch, requiring two men to operate it. At that time the Indian Reserve was still in existence, the east line starting at Black River a short distance east of the bridge and running southwesterly through the present St. Clair County Savings Bank, J. A. Davidson Co. store, crossing Griswold Street a little east ot Sixteenth Street. John Riley, a half breed Indian, well known for his services as interpreter and his influe nce with the Indians, lived for sev- eral years in a log house just inside the Reserve near the corner of Military and Water Streets. People began to come in rapidly in 1837, a newspaper called the Lake Huron Observer was started, with E. B. Harrington, a brother of D. B. Harrington, as editor. During the summer of that year they claimed for the town 500 population. There were three hotels, eleven merchants, three lawyers, two ministers, two custom house officers, twelve buildings were in course of construction at one time. On Black River there were ten water saw mills with three more building, and two steam saw mills, one the Black River Steam Mill, located on the north side of Black River just west of Erie Street had the enormous capacity of cutting 25,000 feet a day. There was even then rivalry between the settlement on Black River and the Villag e of Palmer, now St. Clair, which was the County Seat, and the Observer claimed with pride that 45 people had moved to Port Huron from Palmer. The main industry at that time and for 40 years after was the con- verting of pine logs, brought down Black River, into lumber, lath and shingles, and at one time there were as many as eight saw mills in Port Huron, and according to the census of 183 7 there were 30 such mills in the county. The panic. of 183 7 and subsequent business depression nearly stopped the influx of population and although the settlement was incorporated as a
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Page 11 text:
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village by the legislature in 1849, it only had a population of 1584 by the census of 1850. Twenty years later it had reached 6000, had a daily news- paper, and had at last after many years of struggle succeeded in removing the County Seat from St. Clair, although it was not established at Port Huron until the following year. In the meantime the community had developed in the orthodox Ameri- can fashion: churches and schools appeared and their number increased with the growth of population. In 1838 the first church was built on the north side of Broad Street about where the present fire hall stands, and in 1844 it was moved to the south side of Butler Street at the corner of Fort Street. At the time this church was built it had no denominational name, but in 1840 it passed under the control of a Presbyterian society, which a few years later changed and became Congregational. This society worshipped in this building until 1859 when it moved to the brick church completed in that year at the corner of Wall and Seventh Streets. The second church was Episcopal built in 1841 on the northwest cor- ner of Huron Avenue and Butler Street, and its first minister was the chap- lain at Fort Gratiot. In 1844 the Methodist society which was organized in 1840 built a church on the west side of Sixth Street, and this building they sold to the Catholics in 1851, and built a larger church on the site now occu- pied by the Times-Herald building. There was no organized Catholic society until 1851 when the Methodist Church was bought and moved to the place now occupied by the Lauth hotel. The Baptists did not have a building of their own until 1863 when they built on the east side of Superior Street near Butler Street. The first school teaching was done by two missionaries who came to Fort Gratiot in 182 1 to teach the Indians and who in fact taught all chil- dren who would come. The first school house was built in 1833 on the South side of Broad Street at the corner of Superior and came in later years to be known as the Old Brown School House. In 1849 the North Union School building was erected on the site of the present jail. The first school building on the South side of Black River was built in 1842. This was burned in 1859 and soon after the present Washington School was built. The first high school building was completed in 1870, burned in 1873, re- built in 1874 and again burned in 1906, and the present building completed in 1908. From the earliest time of the settlement at the mouth of Black River the only means of getting out to the rest of the world was by St. Clair River and lake to Detroit by boat except in winter time, and then generally on the ice. In 1832 the Military road to Detroit was completed and not long after that the steamboat Gen. Gratiot began to run beween Detroit and Black River, up one day and back the next. At that time there was deeper water in Black River than now and the steam boat went more than once up as tar as adham’s mill. In those days the county roads were no better than now, and the travel to Detroit except by boat infrequent, until in 1859 the Grand Trunk Railroad was completed and thereafter Port Huron felt
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