Charles Beach’s biography, Akron Township, Tuscola County, Michigan

Copyright © 2000 by Bonnie Petee. This copy contributed for use in 
the MIGenWeb Archives.  

 

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CHARLES H. BEACH, farmer, was born in Genesee County, N. Y., July 3, 
1827.  He came with his parents to Washtenaw county, Mich, in his 
childhood.  From there they removed to Branch county, where his father, 
Samuel Beach, was a pioneer settler.  In this county he spent his youth and 
early manhood engaged chiefly in agriculture.  On June 3, 1853, he was 
married to Miss Martha Bryant, also of Branch County.  She was born in 
Russell, Ohio, December 5, 1833.  They have nine children, Elva E., 
Adella A., Elmor H., Alice I., Elizabeth E., Orena E., Nelson C., Charles 
Milan and Carrie P.  They came to Akron, Tuscola County, in March, 
1854, and were the first family to settle in that township, which of course 
was then an unbroken wilderness, and had as yet no municipal 
organization.  From Tuscola village onward toward their place the road 
was a mere trail among the trees.  They erected a log dwelling 16x20 feet 
outside, roofed it with shakes and floored it with puncheons, and made 
window casings from the pieces of a dry good box.  He bought a door of 
another shanty from a settler, but for some time they needed this for a 
table, and used a blanket for a door.  One neighbor, in order to knock at 
the blanket door, brought a chip in his hand on which to rap.  They cleared 
eight acres the first season and sowed five with wheat.  Soon, however, 
they sold this their first forest home, and bought in section 34, where they 
now reside.  They now have forty-five acres of land and their son has 
thirty-five.  They have thirty-five under cultivation, with an excellent fruit 
bearing orchard and good buildings, constituting for them an inviting 
home. The first barrel of flour he bought and brought into Akron cost him 
$11 and nearly four day’s work with the team bringing it home, and 
through a part of one swamp he had to hoist it end over end by hand for a 
long distance, the oxen being done out with fatigue.  Mr. Beach served as 
clerk in the organizing of the township.  When he first served as overseer 
of highways he had two men in his beat, Mr. Davis at Unionville and Mr. 
Black on Hickory Island, eight miles away.  He was the first school 
inspector and the first commissioner of highways in his township, but 
evaded office almost as soon as others could be found to serve.  The 
church of their choice is the Methodist Episcopal Church.

THE PLAGUE OF MICE

The first season that Mr. and Mrs. Beach lived in Akron they were almost 
overrun with mice.  They devoured their garden beans, and ate their tallow 
candles, and gnawed hole after hole in the solid hardwood head of their 
flour barrel; and when they suspended their candles from the peak of the 
roof in the house by a small cord some of these invaders followed by this 
to the candles.  They once poured twenty-one dead mice from a gallon jug 
of molasses, out of which the cork had been eaten by them, and one live 
one ran dripping away.  Mrs. Beach caught fourteen live ones in a bowl of 
meal with a pair of fire tongs.  One man caught seventy mice in one 
evening in a dead fall.  Numbers of them were found drowned in crocks of 
preserves, others nesting in satchels and muffs, and others swimming in 
pans of milk, and others creeping into every available place of refuge and 
sustenance.