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7 Strategies for Settlement MarIVATIONS FOR COLONIZATION Those who immigrated to Michigan came voluntarily to the new country; but their choice to do so entailed more than simply making a decision to relocate. Although most perceived that the benefits of resettlement would justify the cost ofmovement, immigration was an expensive and disruptive experience, and one not lightly undertaken without expectations of an improved life. In addition to the monetary costs of travel and farm-making, immigration also involved the social cost of leaving kin groups, churches, established communities, and familiar environs. People migrated in response to worsening circumstances in the homeland or a markedly better situation on the frontier, or both. Laborers, tenant farmers, fugitive slaves, European farmers, established eastern agriculturists, and capitalist entrepreneurs had quite different incentives to migrate, but all found inducements strong enough to attract them to Michigan.1 Most of Michigan's pioneers had participated in the American economy and had no desire to leave it behind. Instead, they sought to expand its geographical arena and lay claim to a greater share of its wealth. The abundance of land in Michigan attracted easterners wishing to increase their fortunes in farming, as well as others seeking opportunities for success. In the eyes of the editor ofthe Grand River Times, "eastern emigrants, the farmer-the mechanic-the professional man and the capitalist seem alike attracted to this 'land of promise."'2 A growing obsession to possess frontier lands prompted Michigan resident D. L. Porter to report that [an) emigration mania or fever is prevailing very extensively in the western part of New York, in all the middle states & most of the eastern states. There have been pioneers from every section of the middle and eastern states to examine the country. I am not aware of an instance in which they have returned to their friends without purchasing a lot first.3 Although Porter exaggerated the extent ofland purchases, he captured the enthusiasm that gripped many easterners. Driven by economic motives, many immigrants contracted Michigan fever, including James Lanman, who captured the attitudes of recent settlers: 127 128 WEST TO FAR MICHIGAN he state of Michigan is rapidly filling up with an active class of people from the east, who have left the Atlantic frontier to improve their fortunes, or perhaps from that reckless and migratory character which belongs to this country.... Wealth and honor ... are the grand motives of emigration.4 Hiram Arnold, of Kalamazoo County, recalled explicitly immigrating to "improve his financial condition in a new country:' Polly Ely, of Poplar Ridge, New York, observed that fifteen people who had recently left her community for Michigan did so principally "to increase in wealth:'5 The degree to which Michigan pioneers valued economic success and placed business above all other endeavors in life impressed visitors from the East, although not always favorably . The Reverend James Selkirk, for example, found the residents of St. Joseph "so engaged in making money that they seemed to have left religion in their former place of abode."6 British diarist James Platt Clapham, who journeyed to the Old Northwest in 1836 to seek his fortune, conveyed the economic imperative for western settlement with quintessential simplicity. "If 1 did not see my chance of making money, he noted, 1would not stay one minute on this side of the Atlantic."7 Changing economic conditions on the Eastern Seaboard induced emigration. Rapid population growth, from natural increase and European immigration, placed increasing pressure on limited land resources. Traditional farming became increasingly unprofitable because of higher operating costs, increased land values, competition from western agriculture, and often declining output from worn-out lands. Although many eastern farmers found employment in manufacturing , others looked toward resettlement in the West as a solution to these conditions.s Their perceptions found their way into popular verse in the "Michigan Emigrant's Song:' And there's your Massachusetts, Once good enough, be sure; But now she's always laying on Taxation and manure; She costs you pecks of trouble, But de'il a peck can pay; While all is scripture measure In Michigania.9 The low cost of Michigan land encouraged easterners to move westward. To Alvah Brainard, a young immigrant to Grand Blanc from Monroe County, New York, cheap land offered the only way to enter farming. He concluded, "I would have to go west, where it could be had cheap.... [Tlhere was no alternative but to go:' The opportunity to acquire tracts of agricultural land at relatively low cost permitted...

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