nearly every section of land, a complete sketch would include the opening of roads, the building of schools, the establishment of postal facilities, and the many other matters that necessarily belong to an advancing community. But with the limits of this chapter already exceeded, several of these subjects will be reserved for later treatment under separate titles. In the following chapter we will consider that inevitable centralization of society that results in the formation of village centers.

CHAPTER VIII.

CENTERS OF POPULATION.

The organization of the townships, which has been previously described, was an artificial process, following the geometrical lines of government survey. But the grouping of population and the formation of village centers are the result of natural growth. In the following pages it is our purpose to continue the story of settlement and growth with special reference to the grouping of people into communities and villages.

It is easy to indicate in a general way the beginning of such a community. A fertile and arable region receives a large proportion of the immigration. Assuming that they are pioneers, it will be almost a necessity that most of them till the soil, even though combining that with another occupation. But if the settlement was on a much-traveled thoroughfare, such as the Chicago road on the south side of the county, one or perhaps more of the pioneer houses would be opened for the entertainment of the transient public. On the banks of a stream some one constructs a saw or grist mill. At some convenient and central point a settler with the commercial instincts opens a stock of goods such as will supply the needs of the other settlers and of the immigrants. A postoffice comes next, the postmaster very likely being either the merchant or the tavern-keeper. A physician, looking for a location, is pleased with the conditions and occupies a cabin near the store or inn. A carpenter or other mechanic is more accessible to his patronage if he lives near the postoffice or other common gathering point. If the schoolhouse of the district has not already been built, it is probable that it will be placed at the increasingly central site, and the first church is a natural addition. Already this nucleus of settlement is a village in embryo, and in the natural course of development a variety of enterprises will center there, the mechanical, the manufacturing, the commercial and professional departments of human labor will be grouped together for the purpose of efficiency and convenience. By such accretions of population, by diversification of industry, by natural advantages of location and the improvement of means of transportation, this community in

time becomes organized as a village and with continued prosperity, as a city. Sometimes the development is arrested at a particular stage. The village remains a village, the hamlet ceases to grow, and we have a center of population without special business, industrial or civic development. Then there are instances in this county of retrogression. A locality that could once be dignified with the name of village has dis integrated under stress of rivalry from other centers or other causes, and is now little more than a place and a name.

Specific illustrations of all these processes are to be found in the history of the centers in Cass county. But in general it may be stated that during the early years, when communication was primitive and isolation quite complete even between localities separated by a few miles, the tendency was toward centralization in numerous small hamlets and villages. But in keeping with the economic development for which the past century was noted and especially because of the improvement of all forms of transportation, the barriers against easy communication with all parts of the county were thrown down and the best situated centers grew and flourished at the expense of the smaller centers, which gradually dwindled into comparative insignificance. Nothing has done more to accelerate movement than the establishment of rural free delivery. The postoffice was the central point of community life and remoteness from its privileges was a severe drawback. Rural delivery has made every house a postoffice, puts each home in daily contact with the world, and while it is destroying provincialism and isolation, it is effecting a wholesome distribution of population rather than crowding into small villages. And the very recent introduction into Michigan of the system of public transportation of school children to and from school will remove another powerful incentive to to village life. When weak districts may be consolidated and a large, well graded and modern union school be provided convenient and accessible to every child in the enlarged school area, families will no longer find it necessary "to move to town in order to educate their children."

These are the principal considerations that should be understood before we enter on the description of the various centers which Cass county has produced in more than three quarters of a century of growth.

EDWARDSBURG.

Nowhere can the processes above described be better illustrated than along the meandering Chicago road that passes across the lowest tier

of townships on the south. In the chapter on early settlement the beginning of community life on Beardsley's Prairie has already been sketched. It will be remembered that Ezra Beardsley, in order to accommodate the increasing host of immigrants, converted his home into a tavern, the nearby Meacham cabin being used as an annex. On the south side of the lake Thomas H. Edwards in 1828 began selling goods to the settlers, and thus early the community of Beardsley's Prairie had

a center.

With the Chicago road as the main axis of village life, a plat of a village site, named "Edwardsburgh," was filed on record, August 12, 1831, by Alexander H. Edwards, who appeared before Justice of the Peace Ezra Beardsley and "acknowledged the within plat to be his free act and deed." The original site of the village comprised 44 lots, but Abiel Silver on June 2, 1834, laid out an addition of 86 lots and on March 25, 1836, a second addition.

Jacob and Abiel Silver figure prominently in the early life of the village. They purchased in 1831 the store of Thomas H. Edwards. Other early merchants were Henry Vanderhoof and successors Clifford Shaahan and Jesse Smith; the late H. H. Coolidge, who came here in 1835 to take charge of a stock of goods opened here by a Niles merchant, and who later was engaged in business in partnership with P. P. Willard. In 1839 A. C. Marsh established a foundry for the manufacture of plow castings and other iron work, and this was one of the industries which gave Edwardsburg importance as a business center.

During the thirties and early forties Edwardsburg bid fair to become the business metropolis of Cass county. It is easy to understand why its citizens had inplicit faith in such a future. The Detroit-Chicago road, on which it was situated, was at the time the most traveled route between the east and the west. The hosts who were participating in the westward expansion movement of the period, traveling up the popular Erie Canal and thence to the west by way of Lake Erie and the Chicago road, all passed through Edwardsburg. The mail coaches, which primitively represented the mail trains of to-day, carried the mail bags through the village and lent the cluster of houses the prestige that comes from being a station on the transcontinental mail. Furthermore, the agitation for canals which then disputed honors with railroads seemed to indicate Edwardsburg as a probable station on the canal from St. Joseph river to the lake.

All conditions seemed favorable for the growth of a city on the

south side of the county. But at the middle of the century the mighty rearranger of civilization, the railroad, pushed its way through Michigan and northern Indiana. The villages touched by the railroad in its course flourished as though by magic. Those left to one side languished as if the stream of life, diverted, ceased to nourish their activities. The Chicago road was no longer the artery of commerce it had been. The stage coaches ceased their daily visits. A few miles to the south the Michigan Southern, having left the route of original survey at White Pigeon, coursed through the villages and cities of northern Indiana, giving new life to Bristol, Elkhart and South Bend, and depriving Edwardsburg of its equal chance in the struggle of existence. To the west Niles became a station on the Michigan Central and prospered accordingly, while Edwardsburg, thus placed between the two great routes, suffered the barrenness of almost utter isolation.

It is said that just before the period of decline began Edwardsburg had a population of three hundred, with churches, school and business houses. The permanent institutions of course remained although with little vitality, but the business decreased until but one store remained in 1851. For twenty years Edwardsburg had practically no business activity, and was little more than a community center which was maintained by custom and because of the existence of its institutions of church, education and society.

The same power that took away gave back again. The Grand Trunk Railroad was completed through Edwardsburg in 1871, and with the establishment of communication with the world and with facilities at hand for transportation there followed a revival of village life. Ten years later the population had increased from 297 to 500. There were about twenty stores and shops and a list of professional and business

men.

Since then Edwardsburg has held her own. There is good reason in the assertion that the village is the best grain market that the farmers of the south half of the county can find. The large grain elevator alongside the tracks is of the most modern type, replacing the one burnt down a few years ago, and a steam grist mill is a very popular institution among the farmers of this section. Edwardsburg has never organized as a village, and hence is still, from a civic point of view, a part of the township of Ontwa. The village improvements have been made in only a small degree. The bucket brigade still protects from fire, and the con