Michigan Land Offices
Background for the Ranney letters
Michigan was part of the Northwest Territory until 1800 when the western region became part of the Indiana territory. The Michigan territory was formed in 1805 and the first Land Office in the territory was established at Detroit in 1804. Land sales were slow until after the War of 1812. The Potawatomi, who were members of Tecumseh's Confederacy and the Council of Three Fires (along with the Ojibwe and Ottawa) gradually ceded lands in Illinois, Indiana, and Michigan. Until about 1820, land sale laws favored large investors and speculators over settlers. In 1820, the US Congress passed a new land law reducing the minimum acreage individuals could purchase to eighty acres, at a price of $1.25 per acre. That meant settlers could buy a parcel suitable for a farmstead for $100. Territorial Governor Lewis Cass began trying to attract settlement. He declared that Michigan's climate was temperate and healthy and its soil rich and fertile. In 1825 the completion of the Erie Canal opened a water route from the Atlantic to Detroit, which allowed settlers to travel by flatboat from the Hudson River to Lake Erie and then across the lake on steamships. In the first year after the opening of the canal, 92,332 acres were sold. (Encyclopedia of Detroit)
Outfitting new settlers for their overland trips to their new parcels became the main business of Detroit in the 1820s and 30s. In 1836, the volume of buyers overwhelmed the Detroit office and rather than letting people inside, sales were subsequently made through a window. The Detroit office sold nearly 500,000 acres of land through the window in 1836 alone. And there were additional offices, farther west, selling even more land.
In 1821, the Treaty of Chicago included the cession of the land south of the Grand River and north of the St. Joseph (the gray area on the map above). The White Pigeon Prairie office opened in 1831 along the Sauk Trail (also known as the Chicago Road) and operated until 1834 when it was supplanted by the Bronson (Kalamazoo) office. During its four years of operation another quarter million acres were sold in southwestern Michigan at $1.25 per acre.
In the early 1830s, George Ranney Jr. (the father of Henry Ranney and his brothers) traveled to the Grand River region and worked in winter lumber camps, cutting white pines. He probably brought one or more sons with him. When George and his sons moved to Phelps, New York around 1833, they almost immediately also purchased land in Michigan. A couple of years later, George’s brother Samuel had his difficulties with the Ashfield Congregational Church, sold his farm, and left for Phelps. Samuel and his son William also almost immediately traveled to the Detroit land office. On April 15, 1837, Samuel bought 160 acres and William bought 40. If I'm reading the map correctly, this would be about halfway between Marshall and Jackson, in Livingston County, Michigan (which, interestingly, contains townships called Conway and Deerfield, after Massachusetts towns near Ashfield). Samuel didn't live much longer. When he returned from Michigan, he signed a will written for him by his friend Russell Bement on April 19th. Russell had moved to Phelps from Ashfield during the “exodus,” along with the Flowers family mentioned in one of the Ranney letters (Russell’s wife was Sally Flowers). Samuel appointed his wife Polly and Bement co-executors. He left a dollar to each of his older children and the 200 acres of Michigan land to his younger son Frederick, who was still a minor. Samuel left the remainder of his property and all his household furniture “to my dear wife Polly Ranney.”
Ranney died June 23, 1837, and in July surrogate court letters were sent out to William and Julia Ranney in Phelps; Dexter Ranney, Lucretia and her husband Nehemiah Hathaway in Grand River Michigan; and John L. Dose, guardian of Frederick, in Canandaigua, New York. An inventory of the estate, filed October 23 1837, listed a couple hundred dollars in furniture, tools, and clothing, notes against Russell Bement, Nehemiah Hathaway, Francis Root, and the companies of “Ranney & Hathaway” and “Vandemark & Co.” (another peppermint oil producer). The total value of the estate was listed at $983.50. This was a modestly substantial sum at the time; worth about $31,425 in today's dollars. The Ranney brothers who wrote to Henry occasionally mentioned Samuel's sons and “Mrs. Hathaway” and Frederick grew up to be a peppermint farmer in Michigan, occasionally selling his oil to his cousin Henry.