I was an outsider.
I quit trying to neighbor with the Roebucks, Smiths, and George Story,
my new neighbors on the south; and took up with some French who moved in
on the east, the families of Pierre Lacroix and Napoleon B. Bouchard. We
called the one "Pete Lackwire" and the other "Poly Busher." They were
the only French people who came into the township. They were good
neighbors, and fair farmers, and their daughters made some of the best
wives the sons of the rest of us got. One of my grandsons married the
prettiest girl among their grandchildren--a Lacroix on one side and a
Bouchard on the other.
It may well be understood that I now took no part in the township
history, which gets more complex with the coming in of more settlers;
but it was about this time that what is now Vandemark Township began
agitating for a separate township organization. We were attached to
Centre Township, in which was situated the town of Monterey Centre. This
town, dominated by the County Ring, clung to all the territory it could
control, so as to spend the taxes in building up the town. A great
four-room schoolhouse was finished in the summer of 1860; most of it
built by taxes paid by the speculators who still owned the bulk of
the land.
The Vandemark Township people made a great outcry about the shape of
Centre Township, and called it "The Great Crane," with our township as
the neck, and a lot of other territory back of us for the body, and
Monterey Centre for the head.
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