Thank you again, Diane!
The services will be conducted at the Frazee funeral home at 8:30 a.m. and at Holy Family church at 9 a.m. Rev Fr. J.B. Surpreriant will officiate and burial will be in Mt. Olivet. Until the time of the funeral, friends may see Mrs. Defore at the Frazee funeral home.
[[ Born Eighty Years Ago on South Saginaw Site (Pictured) Mrs. Matilda Defore ]]
(Mr. Laing of the News Courier staff has for more than a half centurey been a reporter and editor in Saginaw. From his long experience and intimate knowledge of affairs during those decades he is writing this series of articles which are being published weekly on Sunday).
Spaulding township, being that portion of the county that adjoins the city on the south, was organized by the board of supervisors in December, 1858, three years after the village of East Saginaw was detached from the township of Buena Vista and placed under the municipal government. It was named after Phineas Spaulding, who, with his wife, had settled on a farm in 1837, and who was the first justice of the peace elected in the township. Their home was a log cabin 18 x 18 feet on what was known as the Detroit and Saginaw Indian trail, a structure that many years after was reported as still standing. Their supplies were received once a year from a small schooner that made the trip from Detroit.
At the meeting held in 1859 for the election of officers of the new township, Aaron K. Penny, father of Harvey Penny of this city, was the choice for clerk. As early as 1848 Mr. Penny deeded land on the east side of the river, a little above what was then called Saginaw City. Being a practical farmer he succesfully tilled the soil until he sold out to William Gallagher who with his family, took up his residence there. With the discovery that extensive salt deposits underlay the valley, he thought it would be a good plan to locate a town upon his farm, which was well situated for the purpose. He carried out his idea and some months later the village of Salina was added to the business centers of the Valley. Mills and salt blocks, docks, etc., were quickly in evidence with stores and shops and other concomitants of a thrifty community. The place grew and in 1864 had the good fortune to get in easy touch with the city at the other end of the avenue, when the street railway completed its line along Washington avenue in 1866 it was incorporated as a village and was thenceforth known as South Saginaw. Theron T. Hubbard was its first president. Under the new conditions it continued to grow and prosper. In March 1873, by net of the legislature it was annexed to East Saginaw and since Saginaw came into existence under the act of consoliation has been knows as the “South Side”.
Phineas Spaulding and his son-in-law, John Barter, also a pioneer of Spaulding township, took an active interest in Salina, the village founded on the Penny farm, and it is said, that to these two men, in a measure, is due its existence. The territorial road or Saginaw turnpike, was laid out by Mr. Spauding and the township road under the supervision of John Barter in 1871. Mrs. Barter was the first white child born in the township.
One is not often accorded the privilege in this year of Our Lord, nineteen hundred twenty-four, of meeting and conversing with a pioneer of the Saginaws who became a resident at this end of the valley before Curtis Emerson built the “Hall of the Montezumas” on the site of the present city hall, before the village of East Saginaw was organized in the township of Buena Vista, and before the township of Spaulding was formed and became a part of Saginaw county. Clearings were few and far between on the east side of the river. In one of these clearings was the farm of Christian Miller, and here, in a small log house, on August 21, 1844, was born Mrs. Matilda Defore, still living at the South Side, where she has passed nearly her entire life. Mrs. Defore is the oldest daughter of James B. and Mary Ann Lesia, the farm on which they lived at the time of her birth being afterward platted and made a part of South Saginaw. This plat located the family home on Mackinaw street (now Fordney avenue) in the vicinity of the Fordney Avenue Baptist church. Members of her father’s family were among the early land purchasers in neighboring townships. An uncle, Francis A. Lesia, conducted the first tailor shop in Saginaw City, and Charles F. Lesia in 1860 was clerk of Spaulding township. Matilda Lesia was one of the first twins born in Saginaw. On July 6, 1864, at Bridgeport when 20 years of age, she was united in marriage to August Defore, who died 45 years ago. From this union 10 children were born, of whom six are now living: August, William and John Defore, of Saginaw, Mrs. Stella Carson, of Detroit, Mrs. Agnes Loefler, of Pontiac, and Mrs. Albert Bertrand, of Saginaw. There are also 28 grandchildren and 18 great-grandchildren. A brother, Babtese Lesia, lives in Portland, Ore and a sister, Mrs. Joseph Coveon, in Chicago, Ill.
Mrs. Defore has an excellent memory and finds great pleasure with relatives and friends about her in telling of the days when Saginaw presented a far different appearance from the busy city of the present. One of her earliest recollections is of the religious services held in her father’s log cabin by missionaries who made the trip on horse back from Detroit through the woods for the purpose of establishing a mission of their church in Saginaw. Through these services held in the homes of the people came the founding of St. Andrew’s Catholic church on the west side. One of the attendants on the services in her father’s cabin, was John W. Richardson, a young pioneer, who joined the church and became one of its staunchest supporters. To go to Saginaw City one had to cross on the ferry established at Mackinaw street by Gardner D. Williams. The ferry was a scow propelled by poles from one side of the river to the other. Later poles gave way to ropes stretched across with pulleys at each end. This ferry continued in existence until a bridge was built at this point. It was by means of this ferry that the family attended church services.
The first passenger boat to visit the river from Detroit was the steamer Huron, and Mrs. Defore well remembers an excursion down the river and out on the bay on July 4, some 68 years ago. The start was made from Eaton’s dock at the west end of Mackinaw street, and nearly the entire community went on the pleasure trip. Some time after an accident befell the Huron and the steamers Sam Ward and Susan B. Ward took its place on the route. She was 14 years old when the F & P.M. railroad was built, and walked on the ties “for the fun of it” before the rails were laid. It was when she was 20 that the first sidewalk was laid on Washington avenue, from Bristol street to the F&P.M. station.
On her mother’s side, Mrs. Defore is related to the Compeau family, of Detroit and Saginaw, well known in pioneer days. It was Joseph Campeau, an uncle, whose house on Jefferson avenue still stands, who gave the ground for Calvary cemetery. Her grandfather, named Savenyak, was one of the party that accompanied General Cass from Detroit to Saginaw to negotiate the famous treaty with the Indians.
The Lesia farms on which the old family burial place is still to be found, and on part of which the extensive plant of Baker & Perkins is located, was situated between Hess street and Forest Lawn cemetery. On the 21st of last month, Mrs. Defore quietly observed her eightieth birthday at her home on the South Side. Since her naval day the rise and fall of the great lumber and salt industries have been witnessed. What remarkable developments have taken place within the span of this pioneer’s life, not only in the Saginaw Valley itself, but in the world at large. The present generation can scarce conceive the difference in living conditions of the present day and in pioneer days. Yet how often do we hear an old timer remark, “I wish the old lumber days were back again.”
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