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· 172 · C H A P T E R F I F T E E N  Mounting Trouble, Mounting Debt  A s the year of the Saginaw treaty came to an end, the white population of Michigan was nearly 9,000 people, with most of these living in and around Detroit. The town itself now had 1,442 residents, and settlers were coming into the newly created Oakland County. Jacob Smith returned to Detroit after helping Cass secure the treaty, and late in 1819 or early in 1820, he was the third person to sign a petition to the U.S. Congress for reimbursement for Detroiters and residents of the Michigan Territory who had suffered economic losses and property damage during the War of 1812.1 Many residents of Detroit, Frenchtown and surrounding hamlets, and the farms along water from Lake St. Clair down to the Maumee, had been robbed, vandalized, or otherwise victimized—not just at the hands of Indians allied with the British, but also by U.S. troops who had been quartered in area houses and farms, and who thought nothing of taking a farmer’s chickens or fence rails. The citizens of the territory also asked that they be reimbursed for paying for the release of hostages taken by the Indians. Dr. William Brown signed this petition first, followed by Conrad TenEyck, who had lost goods seized by the Indians when the war had broken out. (In the · 173 · Mounting Trouble, Mounting Debt supplemental article to the 1819 Saginaw treaty, the Chippewa had asked that TenEyck receive $1,298.20 in installments from their yearly treaty payments, “as compensation for the property taken by them at Saginaw, in the year 1812.” But as noted previously, that article was not approved by Congress. It would take years for TenEyck to get a reimbursement from the federal government.) It probably is significant that Jacob Smith was the third signer of the petition for payment of war damages. Lewis Cass had written that Smith had been useful in dealing with the Indians and that Smith’s work in the war had cost him personally . This petition to Congress, along with Smith’s rescue of the Boyer children by paying the ransom, and the governor’s words about Smith’s work on behalf of his country, are indications of his service to the United States. Yet no direct reimbursement to Jacob Smith seems to have been made by the federal government except that for the loss of his horse at the surrender of Detroit in August 1812, payments that other militiamen also received.2 It was almost a matter of routine by now that Jacob Smith was back in court that fall of 1819, both as a juror and a party to lawsuits before the Territorial Supreme Court. In September, Smith and a merchant who had once sued him, Robert Smart, joined together to post the bond for a man named Oliver Miller, who had been charged by the United States for assaulting a fellow named Terrence Smith. Miller was found guilty, however, so it would seem unlikely Jacob Smith and Robert Smart benefitted from backing the defendant. On October 16 Smith settled his four-year-old lawsuit against James Abbott over his wartime mission to Ft. Michilimackinac out of court.3 Three days later Smith was called to court and served on a jury hearing another case. But not enough jurors showed up, so the Wayne County sheriff grabbed a bystander who was quickly impaneled. Unfortunately for the plaintiffs in this case, Smith and his fellow jurors decided that the defendant, a man named John Connelly, only owed the plaintiffs $5. Plaintiffs’ attorney Solomon Sibley moved that the verdict be set aside and a new trial be granted, presumably hoping for a more favorable decision with a larger judgment. As the month of October was ending, Smith agreed to arbitration in the old case brought by merchants Josiah Bellows and David Stone, the partners of the late Richard Hall Jones. Lawyer and businessman Henry J. Hunt, merchant Abraham Wendell, and Antoine DeQuindre served as the referees who would consider the evidence and even take testimony; then they would make a recommendation to · 174 · c h a p t e r f i f t e e n Judge Woodward. The referees didn’t see things Smith’s way. They ruled that he should pay Bellows and Stone $332.57¾. As Judge Woodward entered the award into the record on December...

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