Andrew Hays, land speculator
From Black Hawk Slept Here
Hays was not a farmer nor was he a resident of Kalamazoo County. He was a physician who lived in Marshall, in Calhoun County. His reminiscences along with those of his wife, Clarissa, are the source of much of what we know of the effect of the Black Hawk war scare on their town. The home they built some years after their arrival is still standing in Marshall.
There are a total of 16 land entries for the Hays in Michigan. One is in in Clarissa's name, and the remainder in Andrew's. Some of them are for smaller parcels of land than this one, and some for parcels considerably larger. It is not known if the return on this investment helped pay for the house in Marshall, which is a large, stone structure that may have been one of the more expensive homes in town when they lived there.
