Mrs. Pierce sings Home, Sweet Home
From Black Hawk Slept Here
The Rev. John D. Pierce and his wife came to Marshall, Michigan (Calhoun County) in the fall of 1831. This anecdote was told most likely in 1877 or shortly before, by a Rev. O.C. Thompson who was also headed to Calhoun County and joined them along the way. I like the way it reveals what it was like for people who were unused to the kind of life they encountered in the west.
West of Jackson it was next to impossible to distinguish the main road from the Indian trails and paths of new settlers. I came at last to the openings and was obliged to make my dinner that day on raw turnips, growing in a deserted homestead. Late in the afternoon of the second day's tramp I entered a ten mile woods, beyond which I was told were accommodations for travelers. The sky was overcast with clouds, and soon the rain began to fall; before I had half accomplished my task, the night set in fearfully dark and gloomy; the stillness was broken only by the howling of wolves. I began to feel that my situation was anything but pleasant, and might be sadly disastrous, and quickened my steps. Just then the noise of wagons and teamsters on the road before me was a glad and welcome sound. It proved to be several families of emigrants like myself bound for that same house of entertainment beyond the woods. Among these were the Rev. J.D. Pierce and family. His wife, whom he had recently married, a highly intelligent lady from a wealthy family in the State of New York, was sitting in her silks in an open ox wagon drenched to the skin with the falling rain. Misery sometimes likes company, and I took such a liking to that company that dark night, that I determined not to leave them. The road was bad, and it seemed to me that oxen never went so slow before. Late in the evening we saw the light of the long-looked for tavern as it shone through the chinks of the logs--a sight most welcome to us all. Our caravan halted before the door; only there was no door there, a blanket being where the door should be. The shanty was only partly covered with shakes; the rain pouring down at one end; a cook-stove stood on the ground in the middle of it. This was soon put in requisition, and the coarse fare was a sensible relief to us weary and hungry mortals. After this we prepared to retire for the night, but where to retire was the question. If there had been a garret or a cellar, we might have retired, and either would have afforded some relief. Some of the women of the company packed themselves away on the bedstead, others under it, on the ground, their husbands next; and the rest of us occupied a little more than all the dry ground in the shanty. Sleep soon came to the relief of the weary bodies, at least it was so with one of the company. The morning came; one of those dark, gloomy fall mornings; the rain was still falling. We made another requisition on the potato pile and the pork barrel, after which Mrs. Pierce sang beautifully, as few persons can sing, 'Home, Sweet Home,' then turned her face to the wall and wept. Poor woman, the next summer she fell a victim to the cholera.
-- Michigan Pioneer and Historical Collections, Volume 2, pages 197-198.
In the paragraph that follows the above, Thompson said this tavern was located six miles east of Marshall. That would put it near Marengo, in Marengo Township. However, it's difficult to reconcile this information with any certainty with the other available information about taverns between Jackson and Marshall.
The cholera that killed Mrs. Pierce was a worldwide epidemic that came to Michigan with the soldiers of the U.S. Army who came from the east with Gen. Winfield Scott intending to subdue Black Hawk.
