Stow came to Iosco Township at age six with his father and mother, Asel and Luana Stow.

 “The trials and privations of those pioneers who settled here from 1836 to 1845 were many and severe.  The new-comers usually arrived with very few of the trappings considered indispensable in the ordinary household of older communities; often with no more than could be drawn on one wagon, together with the family and a few boards.  These boards were a necessity, as they furnished the only shelter for the pioneer, his family, and effects until a house could be erected.

 “They were arranged by placing one end on the ground or a convenient log, the other on a pole supported by forks, driven into the ground.  This with a fire in front, sufficed until a better could be provided.  The dwellings were almost invariably of the same type, and, with the exception of nails and a few boards, were built of logs and such other material as could be obtained from the forests without the aid of mechanics.

 “With no roads, no bridges over streams, blazed trees or perhaps an Indian trail was the only guide to distant markets and settlements.  No flour or other provisions of any kind could be had nearer than Ann Arbor, a distance of 30 or 35 miles.  Those who had teams frequently drove to Detroit for supplies- a journey which, in those days of bad roads, required about a week’s time to accomplish.  Flour at that time was worth $16 per barrel; pork, from $12 to $15 per hundred; potatoes, $1 per bushel; butter, 40 cents per pound, and other articles proportionately high.

 “Those who had exhausted their means in getting here and purchasing their lands had a hard struggle for the following two or three years to keep that gaunt spectre, hunger, from the door, and sometimes suffered for the necessaries of life.”

 (A historical footnote should be added here. During the early 1800’s, just prior to the opening of mid and western lower Michigan to settlement- John Jacob Astor’s American Fur Company had organized an extensive network of trapping in the state’s rivers and streams, using the Indians to do much of the work in exchange for trade goods.  By the time the settlers began arriving, much of the wildlife had been depleted and so was not easily available as a food supplement.)

 Stow’s address continues: “The long and disastrous depression of industrial interests, and the depreciation in values which followed the financial crash of 1837, was a trying ordeal for this township, but yet in embryo.  Not until the summer of 1837 had any produce been raised, the few settlers of the previous year not arriving in season to plant any crops, with the exception of four or five small pieces of wheat, probably no more than 20 acres in all the township and this was nearly a failure.

 “The prostration of business generally effectually checked emigration, and many disheartened emigrants returned to their former homes in the East, consequently the township increased by little in population during the three succeeding years.

 “After the harvest of 1838, considerable surplus wheat was on hand, but the cost of marketing was nearly as much as could be realized for it when there.  A load of wheat, requiring four days with oxen to Ann Arbor, would bring from ten to fifteen dollars, but people in those days “cut the garmet to the cloth.” Or, in other words, kept their expenses within their income.

 “Notwithstanding the many and serious difficulties which these brave and dauntless pioneer men and women had to overcome, they were generally happy and content. It would seem almost as though they were especially designed and prepared for their work.  They made little of the dark passages of life, and much of the bright ones.  All within a radius of miles were neighbors and well acquainted.  No aristocracy then; the man with forty acres of land had as large a revenue as the one with a half section- for wild lands produce no earnings- and was his peer socially.

 “It was a customary practice to gather together on the long winter evenings at each other’s dwellings and have a merry good time.  These free-and-easy social gatherings, devoid of the dictum of fashion or pride of dress, were every enjoyable affairs, and no doubt contributed largely to that fraternity of feeling and interest in each other’s welfare which forms so prominent a feature in isolated and sparsely-settled communities.”