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Submitted by Cheryl VanWormer 




						HERVEY BARTOW.

	Hervey Bartow, lawyer and real estate operator, was born in Freetown, Cortland Co., 
N. Y., March 31, 1813.  His parents were William and Grace Bartow.  His father was born in 
Rutland Co., Vt., in 1782.  When a young man he came to Cortland Co., N. Y., and was married May 
15, 1808.  Was a member of the New York Assembly in 1824.  In 1825 he moved to the Territory of 
Michigan.  Only one steamboat then ran on Lake Erie, and the fort, as surrendered by Gen. Hull,
was then garrisoned at Detroit.  He settled in the woods twenty-one miles west of Detroit, 
cutting the first wagon-track part of the way; and the town, when organized, was called Plymouth,
in Wayne County.  He was elected to the Territorial Council in 1831, when Gen. Cass was Governor 
of said Territory.
	Hervey Bartow was twelve years old when his father moved to Michigan.  With the exception
of six weeks' attendance at a neighboring log school-house, he obtained all his subsequent 
education by studying at night, after severe hard labor through the day, by the light of burning 
hickory barks, and what he gained was secured that way.  During the first fourteen years of his 
life his health was feeble, and, feeling the importance of a good constitution, he resolved, if 
possible, by thorough and severe industry and physical hardships, to establish his health on a 
firm basis.  This resolution he succeeded in carrying out.
	In April, 1836, having earned a few hundred dollars by jobbing and clearing land and 
other hard labor, he started for the West.  He traveled on foot through the forest, camping out 
nights, guided by Indian trails, section-lines, and pocket compass, to and along the valleys of 
the Maple River, Looking-Glass and Grand Rivers, and passing near where is now the pleasant city 
of Lansing and capital of Michigan, the whole of said country being then an unsettled wilderness;
came to Cocoosh ("Hog") Prairie, at the junction of Maple and Grand Rivers.  Being ten o'clock 
at night, and finding the Indians in a dance on the opposite side of the Grand River, and no 
sign of a white man, he retired to the bushes on the rising ground at the eastern skirt of the 
present village of Lyons.  Thence he went up Grand River, past the mouth of Looking-Glass River,
and by compass to the United States land-office at Kalamazoo.  He made the first land purchase 
in the town now known as Lyons, and finally, in the fall of 1836, settled with several of his 
friends near the present village of Lyons.  Here he cleared some of his lands and farmed till 
the fall of 1840, when he went to Lyons and commenced the study of law as a pastime, still 
looking to his farming interests.  In the winter of 1846, having become unable to perform hard 
manual labor, he went to Portland, in said county, and gave more attention to law studies.  He 
was admitted to practice in the several courts of the State in May, 1846, and opened a law 
office at Portland, in said county, his characteristics being well adapted to that profession.  
His integrity as a man and as a legal adviser secured the confidence of the public and his share 
of the legal practice of the county.  He never sought for office of any kind.  Was elected 
public prosecutor for Ionia County for the years 1855 and 1856.  The country being new, and the 
consequently small amount of legal business soon induced Mr. Bartow to leave the practice of law
and attend to other matters.
	He considered the interest of Portland as identical with his own, and spent his life and 
means mostly in its behalf.  An early attack was made upon the town of Portland by the county 
board and officials of the county of unjust claims against Portland.  Mr. Bartow was Portland's 
representative on the board, and successfully defended the township against the almost united 
efforts of the county of Ionia, wherein considerable money and much asperity of feeling were 
involved, and saved the town from much embarrassment.
	Mr. Bartow says then an effort was made by his own neighbors and citizens to build up 
local interests in Portland, not by properly using and making available the great waterfall of 
Grand River, but by sacrificing the great and general interests of the place, and Mr. Bartow's in
particular, by some sixteen of them forming a joint company to dam Grand River at the village of 
Portland,--said to be for hydraulic purposes,--and thereby destroy mainly its water-power 
interests on Grand River, and so as to flow and destroy Mr. Bartow's land on the west side of 
Grand River.  Soon as he learned this, which had been purposely kept from him, he offered the 
free use of so much of his land as needed, by damming Grand River as a higher point up the river,
and the privilege of racing down on his side, if desired, free of charge, only saving his land 
from flowage and soakage.  This would give many times the power of a dam built at the lower 
point, and at the village, as now, and secure the health of the place.  But jealousy of the sides
of the river being the moving stimulant, their policy could not be changed; but by injunction he 
secured partial protection from its effects, and the town and county, by peculiarly limited 
policy of those citizens, lost much--very much--of its manufacturing interests (unimproved) at 
that place; all of which might, Mr. Bartow contends, according to his policy, have been cheaply 
made available for largely extended manufacturing purposes.  Whereas most of the great and 
natural advantages, then open and free, were thus forcibly shut out from use and improvement.
	He served six years on the village board of trustees, with special reference to 
establishing by-laws, rules, and precedents, etc., in the beginning under the village charter of
Portland.
	Notwithstanding the great jealousy existing against the west side of Grand River, and 
consequently against Mr. Bartow, by small and narrow-minded men, his services were always called 
into requisition to manage the thing when any strong efforts were required.
	In the summer of 1866 a few of the citizens agitated the idea of a railroad, and Mr. 
Bartow was chosen to confer with the Hon. James Turner, of Lansing, as to the practicability of 
procuring a railroad through Portland on a line from Lansing to Ionia.  A company was formed, of 
which Mr. Bartow was chosen director.  He took a very active part in its advancement, paying 
liberally of his limited means and obtaining aid from others, and the right of passage with 
little cost to the road.  When this was mainly accomplished there seemed to be a peculiar 
falling off of zeal at Lansing and Ionia, at least in parties having control of the road.  Mr.
Bartow immediately opened correspondences with Hon. C. C. Elsworth, of Greenville, A. L. Green, 
of Olivet, and George Ingersoll, of Marshall, with a view to construct a railroad from Marshall 
through Portland to Greenville.  A survey was made to Greenville <I>via</I> Portland, and
through Lyons and Muir.  A company was formed, in which Mr. Bartow was also director.  This 
aroused the jealousy of the Ionia citizens, and people on other parts of the Ionia and Lansing 
line, and in the fall of 1869 that road was pushed in earnest to Greenville.  Thus one railroad 
was secured to Portland.
	The other, called the Coldwater, Marshall and Mackinaw Railroad, raised its means for 
construction in subscriptions and town bonds.  But just before these bonds were negotiated, the 
courts decided against their constitutionality.  The people then tried to accomplish it by 
subscription alone.
	Mr. Bartow again was chosen, at a public meeting of its citizens, to take charge of the 
project for Portland, as the only condition that an effort would be made.  These conditions were 
accepted by Mr. Bartow, with the further understanding that no sides of the river prejudices 
enter into or be known in the matter by the citizens of Portland.  This the citizens in said 
meeting unanimously agreed to.  The subscriptions were mostly obtained, but not fully, and the 
road-bed mostly graded from Marshall, in Calhoun County, to elm Hall, in Gratiot county, being 
about one hundred and twenty miles, and many ties furnished.  The prejudices and earnest
opposition of parties of the east side of the river tended much to its failure of accomplishment,
at present at least, which is much and sorely felt now, and considered to be a very great injury 
to the people, the place, and the adjacent country.  Mr. Bartow put a large amount of time and
effort and all his means at command into these public improvements, from which he has received 
little or nothing in return.
	Mr. Bartow belongs to the society of Free and Accepted Masons, and has taken the seventh 
degress.  In early life he thought much of religion as instilled from Puritan teachings, but 
could not admit the practibility or adaptablility of the theories and creeds as usually taught,
--that all things are governed, not by passionate edict, but by fixed laws in all varieties of 
existing things, whether physical or spiritual, and as adapted to organizations and character; 
and, as water by established laws runs down hill, it may be dammed and diverted; yet the <I>same 
laws govern</I> it still.  So in all things, <I>ad infinitum.</I>  Infinite in worlds, infinite 
in existence connected with them, in physical and spirtual capacites, representing in this 
infinite God.
	To politics, Mr. Bartow at first identifed himself the Whig party, and has thrown his 
influence for many years with the Republican party.  He would, however, be glad to aid that party
which would best secure the strength the unity and strength of our country, and base its 
prosperity upon the broad principle of the right of man as promulgated to the world on the day 
of the birth of the United States into the family of nations.
	He never was married.



This biography is taken from "HISTORY OF IONIA AND MONTCALM COUNTIES, MICHIGAN"
by John S. Schenck. Philadelphia:  D. W. Ensign & Co., 1881. Pages 336-337.  Portland.