Congress appropriated twenty thousand dollars. The next year thirty thousand dollars was appropriated. One after another appropriations were made until 1852 amounting in all to $160,733, and year after year the money was expended and no real good accomplished. The government abandoned the undertaking, and for fourteen years nothing more was done. William H. Goodhue said, "Hope for a season' bade Michigan City farewell." At length, in 1866, the citizens determined to build a harbor themselves, and organized the 'Michigan City Harbor Company.' They raised money and worked, and again Congress began to help them. In 1867 an appropriation was made of $75 000; in 1868, of $25,000; in 1869, of $32,500; and year after year appropriations were made until Michigan City had a harbor. In the meantime, through all these years, business and growth were not standing and waiting. "From 1837 to 1844, Michigan City was the principal grain market for Northern Indiana, wheat being received from as far south as the central portion of the State. Huge caravans of ox teams, with two and three yoke of oxen to a wagon, would come in, sometimes thirty or forty such teams together. The supplies for all this large extent of country were purchased here. The same teams which conveyed the wheat to market, would return laden with goods for the home merchants. It was not uncommon for three hundred teams to arrive in one day." The railroad era came and things were changed. The Michigan Central road reached Michigan City in 1850, and in 1851 machine shops were built. The Louisville, New Albany & Chicago road reached Michigan City in 1853. Other roads soon were built. In 1857 was located the Northern Penitentiary. Manufacturing firms soon began to employ prison labor. The first was for cooperage, firm, Hayward & De Wolfe. The next was for wagons and carriages, different men controlling the business from time to time, employing in 1876 one hundred and fifty of the prisoners, and making carriages, buggies, and sleighs, besides adding, to this business, cooperage, their sales at this time amounting to one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Ford & Johnson, in 1870, commenced chair making, soon employing also one hundred and fifty men, their chairs going out even as far as Japan. The Michigan City car factory has done a large. business, cars being made for the government during the Civil War, four hundred men at times having been employed. Fisheries have in some years been very profitable at Michigan City. Lyman Blair, it is said, has packed in one year white fish worth forty thousand dollars. 1856 and 1857 were years noted for a great catch of white fish and trout. Congregational, Churches in Michigan City: Manufacturing firms: Ford & Johnson, chairs. Tecumseh Knitting Factory. Lakeside Knitting Factory. Free delivery of mail matter since 1892. Formerly in the postoffice 1,300 boxes. Now only 420. Michi gan City is built on beds of sand, deep, heavy sand, that sometimes blows and drifts like snow, for there are very light particles in what is called heavy sand. Immense quantities of sand from the Hoosier Slide are taken away in carloads to Chicago, but it is a huge mass yet. Foundations have been laid in this great bed of sand that underlies the city for many grand structures. In 1871 a large public school building was erected on a sightly spot, and the grounds "have been kept in their present beautiful condition" through the care and benevolence of a pioneer of 1834, Mr. George Ames, who, having no children of his own, cared for the welfare of the children of others. For the school grounds it seemed as though "he could never do enough." He was accustomed, for many years, to present each graduate of the school with a likeness. of himself and also with one of the school building and the grounds, and, dying about 1892, he left a sum of money the interest of which is to be expended in keeping up and adorning the school grounds.* This school building, considered for the size of the city, "one of the finest in the State,"* was destroyed by fire in January, 1896, and was replaced by another grand building ready for use in January, 1897. Besides electric lights and paved streets this city has electric railways. Its population is about 15,000. It has a full share of the various social orders of the day, and has been noted in all its years of growth for quite a number of wealthy citizens. It has been Authority, Miss Minnie E. Barron, a graduate of the school and a teacher in the year 1900. * General Packard. first and still is first in its manifestations of the refinement and even of the aristocratic tendency of cities. It has some noble Christian men and women, cultivated and refined. It has a good many citizens now of foreign birth. It contains probably alone of all our towns, a Soldiers' Monument. CHAPTER XXII. EARLY TRAVELS. In a little book of seventy-two pages, called "Journal of Travels, Adventures, and Remarks, of Jerry Church," printed at Harrisburg, 1845, belonging to E. W. Dinwiddie, of Plum Grove, some interesting statements concerning a few of our localities are found. The writer, Jeremiah Church, born in Brainbridge, New York, evidently very eccentric and an adventurer, as he himself allows, spent many years, apparently between 1820 and 1835 or 1840 in various adventures and speculations in the then West and in the South. He appears to have been honest in his dealings and truthful in his narratives. A little confusion exists in his dates where he gives 1830 after he has given as the year 1831. Considering the latter the correct date, some extracts from the journal are now quoted. In company with his brother he had been speculating in lands at Ottawa, in Illinois, laying out town lots on government land, and he says: "We then prepared to leave, and hired a man with a yoke of black oxen and a wagon, to take us to Chicago, distant eighty miles, which we travelled in two days and a half-two nights camped out. At last we arrived in front of a hotel, in the City of Chicago (which at that time contained about half a dozen houses, and the balance |