Behind every story there is a reason, and the reason for this story is a river; a small but rippling, sparkling, gently flowing river called the Rogue, winding down among some ancient hills and wooded valley farm land.

Because there was this river, a dam was built across it to run a saw mill; and when the mill was built, a little hamlet sprang up around the mill, grew up into a village, and developed into a city known as Rockford.

This is a story of that city, the village and the saw mill, and of the river which gave them being, a narrative of authentic history someone, someday, may wish to remember. Now, to begin at the very beginning, we must first tell of the river.

Rogue River is a glacial stream of the glacial age, formed some 12,000 to 15,000 years ago as the outlet of a one-time glacial lake in southeastern Newaygo County, Michigan. Completely vanished today, that lake was always known as Rice Lake until it dwindled away to little more than a pond and then, in the early 1900’s, was totally drained into Rogue River to convert its fertile lake bed into rich, productive farm land.

Today, although Rice Lake is gone, the name remains and the headwaters of the Rogue are still in the springs and streams which formerly had their outlets in the lake.

From Newaygo County, the Rogue flows generally south and eastward, some 30 to 35 winding miles, between low glacial moraines and hills of glacial drift, rubble and deposit, and empties into the Grand River of Michigan on Section 23 of Plainfield Township in Kent County. A tributary of the Grand, Rogue River with its watershed thus, is part and parcel of the lower Grand River region.

Like every glacial stream, Rogue River originally was a clear, colorless, transparent stream before the days when lumbering and the farmer’s plow disturbed its watershed. There was no coffee-colored discoloration to spoil its crystal clearness for there were few swamps and swails with decaying, fallen timber or rotting, discoloring vegetation through which it flowed, and few places where the flow was quiet, sluggish or stagnant to become discolored. Well forested banks and hillsides lined its course, and its many back-country tributaries were rushing streams as clear and colorless as the river, itself.

Many stretches of the Rogue still hold great favor with canoeists, and with fisherman for trout and other species; upland wildlife, common to this part of Michigan, is abundant along the river; and in Tyrone Township of Kent County, a vast acreage of the upper river region is set aside for sportsmen as the Rogue River State Gamed Area.

Although no evidence of any prehistoric occupancy has yet been found along the Rogue, it is certain that the earliest primeval cultures and peoples of the lower Grand River region who preceded the Middle-Woodland Hopewell culture of 400 BC to 400 AD; the Hopewell people, themselves; and the Late-Woodland Indian culture who followed the Hopewell’s, all widespread, winding valley is recognized today as once a natural route of contact and communication between the ancient people of the Grand River region and their kindred and fellow tribesmen at the forks and Croton area of the Muskegon River.

In historic times, the Muscatay or Mascouten Indians of the late 1600’s, and the Ottawa Indians who succeeded the Mascoutens as inhabitants of the lower Grand River region in 1740, all frequented the Rogue River valley and area. This we know from finds of Indian artifacts at various sites along the Rogue; and from a pattern of Indian trail segments where they crossed surveyed section lines, noted and recorded by the first surveyors to penetrate the region of the Rogue.

Curiously, however, later history makes little or no mention of Indian occupancy along Rogue River in the pioneer days of settlement except in the vicinity of Plainfield village and nearby mouth of the river. In 1857, the Indians left the Grand and Rogue River regions for reservations elsewhere and before that, only occasional parties of Indians had visited the early settlers along the a Rogue with baskets and other Indian handicraft for barter and trade. Nor is there any record that Rogue River ever had an Indian name or other Indian designation.

History does, however, point the finger of suspicion, in 1683, at Rene Robert Cavelier Sieur De La Salle, the great French explorer, as the first white man to ever see the Rogue while on an expedition of exploration up Grand River. Yet he, in all probability, saw only the mouth of the river at Plainfield and took little notice of it.

Half a century later, in 1740, Charles Michael de Langlade, the region’s first fur trader, may also have learned something of the Rogue when he came down from Mackinaw with the first party of Ottawa Indians to peacefully penetrate the region as their new homeland.

Thereafter, a succession of explorers, voyageurs, soldiers, fur traders, surveyors, land speculators and settlers all knew of the Rogue, but no one of them was moved to name the Rogue until 1837.

In 1836, with an ever increasing tide of settlement sweeping westward across territorial Michigan, the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, by treaty, ceded to the federal government, their land rights to the vast wilderness lying north of the Grand River.

Government surveys of the area began in early 1837, and Deputy Surveyor General Lucius Lyon, of Pioneer Grand Rapids conducted the surveys. One survey party was assigned to determine and record the meander of Grand River and make limited surveys of the tributary streams flowing into it.

On that party was a Jacob’s Staff man and topographer named James A. Morrison, son of half Indian Moravian parents in the River Rouge area of southeastern Michigan. Morrison was privileged to name the first tributary river of the Grand above Grand Rapids.

Thinking to honor the River Rouge of his home area, Morrison intended to name that first tributary river of the Grand also Rouge River, but in entering the new name on his survey notes, misspelled it as Rogue. His error was not discovered until well after other surveyors, so often, had also recorded Rogue in their notes and records, and it had then come into such common usage and pronunciation that, by then, the name Rogue had already been firmly established and universally accepted.

Yet, over the next one hundred years, with details of the why and wherefore of the name Rogue almost forgotten, confusion and doubt often still arose concerning the correct name of the river, the spelling the Rouge often appeared on maps, signs and other media referring to the river in conflict with the pronunciation Rogue.

The correct, original spelling and usage of the name as Rogue was finally assured in February, 1952, when a resolution, concurred in by the Newaygo County and Kent County Boards of Supervisors and the State Department of Conservation, was submitted to the U.S. Board of Geographic Names at Washington, D.C. asking that the spelling Rogue be permanently adopted. A year later, in May, 1953, that final authority officially decreed the spelling, Rogue, as true, correct and confirmed.

Also in early 1837, other survey parties started surveying the new lands northward from Grand River, establishing the boundary lines of sections, one mile square, grouped into 36-section "towns" or future townships normally six miles, or sections, square. Each newly surveyed "town" was left unnamed and designated only by its location north and west of two base lines permanently established near Jackson in 1815 when the first Michigan land survey began.

That very same method of designation and reference is still in use in Michigan today for legal land descriptions of unplanted land acreage in rural areas.

During the settlement transition period; between the completion of a "town" survey and the formation of a township government with a township name; unorganized "towns" were attached to the nearest adjoining, organized township for administrative and judicial purposes. And since this policy also applied to county areas in many cases, it produced many confusing situations later for historians to trace in determining the political development of such units. All Kent County was once a township of Kalamazoo County, and other counties were also attached to Kent County in its infancy.

Surveys were soon completed in Towns 8 and 9 North, Range 11 West, (now Plainfield and Algoma Townships) encompassing the lower reaches of Rogue River, and of adjoining Towns 8 and 9 North, Range 10 West, (now Cannon and Courtland Townships); and of Town 9 North, Range 9 West, (now Oakfield Township).

These five "towns". later were all to find a common center of identity and association with that little sawmill on Rogue River.

The surveys of Plainfield had not yet been completed when settlers crossed Grand River to take up surveyed land in its Rogue River area, and in April, 1838, organized that town as Plainfield Township.

That same year of 1838, one Barton Johnson from Washtenaw County, a land looker for ten other friends and acquaintances, wandered into the "town" now Courtland and, in the vicinity of a sizable lake on Section 27, found fertile prairie land much to hiss liking and with acreage enough for all. When his ten companions arrived they concurred in his good judgment and, as had been previously agreed, drew lots in making their selections of the land. They all selected and located land contiguous to each other and the spring of 1839, organized that town as Courtland Township.

One of their number, Philo Beers, Courtland Township’s first Supervisor, also gave his name to the lake as Beers Lake which years later, was renamed Myers Lake, its name today.

Cannon remained attached to Plainfield Township until 1845 when it was set apart as Churchtown Township by legislative enactment only to be changed to Cannon Township when officially organized on Monday, April 6, 1846.

Some five other unorganized towns, including Oakfield and Algoma remained attached to Courtland Township until 1846. That year Algoma was transferred from Courtland Township to Plainfield Township jurisdiction; and by legislative mistake, Courtland Township was combined with Oakfield "town" and reorganized as a single township named Wabasis.

That mistake was corrected by the legislature about a year later with Courtland being returned to its original township status and name, but with Oakfield "town" attached to Courtland until 1849 when it was finally set apart, organized and named Oakfield Township.

The political changes from unorganized, nameless "towns" to organized and named Townships, with the influx of pioneers and settlers who brought them about, set the stage for events which were to follow.

The first of those events occurred the year 1842, a year of destiny and awakening along Rogue River on Section 36, T 9 N. R 11 W.-future Algoma Township. Today the location and identity of Section 36 in the extreme southeast corner of Algoma is almost forgotten and unknown for it is no longer a political subdivision of Algoma Township. Today it is all a part of, and all within, the corporate limits of the City of Rockford.

East to west, Section 36 reaches from Rockford Plaza and Rockford High School west to Childsdale Road; and from south to north, it reaches from East and West Division Street north to the line of 11 Mile Road, an area of only one square mile.

Although surveyed in 1837, Section 36, in 1842, was still unsettled wilderness of rugged hills and narrow river valley attached to Courtland Township. The closest settler was Collins Leach, two miles away on the Plainfield-Sheridan Indian trail in Cannon Township; and the next closest was Gideon H. Gordon, five miles down Rogue River along present Rogue River Drive on Section 15, Plainfield Township. There Gordon, in 1840, had erected the first and only combined grist mill-sawmill along the Rogue River.

No one seems to have broken the forest solitude along the Rogue beyond Gordon’s location until three men, two of them land lookers and the other a new settler, stirred the river area into awakening on Section 36 of Algoma and set destiny on its course. The land lookers were two brothers, Merlin and William Hunter, and the settler was a minister of the gospel, Rev. David J. Gilbert.

Recorded history, most of it written only after 1870, makes little mention of the Hunter brothers. By 1870, both had long vanished from the local scene as unheralded and mysteriously as they had first appeared.

From whence they came, and just precisely why, history does not say. One writer says they were originally from New York state. Perhaps they were employed by some eastern syndicate of land speculators or investors, or perhaps they were only acting for themselves. But it is certain that it was the virgin timber along the Rogue which lured them into the area.

Tradition says that Merlin Hunter came into the area first, alone, the summer of 1842 as a timber cruiser, and spent many weeks ranging the surrounding forest evaluating the timber and lumbering possibilities. Before winter he built a small cabin far back on a gentle slope east of the river, just south of present Maple Street at Dayton Street, and near a small brook along the south line of Section 36 (E. Division Street). There he is said to have spent the winter.

Although it was never named nor shown on any map, and most evidence of it is gone today except just easy of St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, that little brook once originated in some small spring south of E. Division Street near Rockford Plaza and flowed northwesterly down into Rogue River at a point a few rods below E. Bridge Street. This writer remembers it well, dubbed Hyde’s creek by the neighborhood lads, and still flowing intermittently in the 1920’s. By then it had been rerouted across town in an open ditch along property lines and streets and behind homes; but hidden in culverts crossing streets and roadways, under crosswalks and some sidewalks, and beneath business buildings and pavement on S. Main Street.

The spring of 1843, Merlin Hunter was joined by his brother, William, who took up land along the river in the south half of Section 36, 80 acres of it along the east bank, and selected an adjoining site for a dam and sawmill just upriver from south section line. The Rockford dam at Bridge Street marks that site today.

It was a well-selected site for a waterpower and sawmill. Where the survey notes of 1837 show the Rogue then as 110 ft. wide a mile upstream on the north section line, and up to 200 ft. wide and over at farther-upstream locations, on the south section line of Section 36 the river narrowed to only 65 ft. wide between high banks and showed considerable fall from more gently sloping terrain along the east bank upriver.

The survey notes also show the surrounding region as then heavily timbered with oak, maple, beech, elm and other hardwoods interspersed, with considerable pine. Many of the pines were noted as being of large girth. The northern half of Algoma and the upper reaches of the Rogue were also noted as heavily timbered with pine.

Totally separate from any activities of the Hunter brothers and unconcerned with either Rogue River or lumbering, the Rev. David J. Gilbert and his family of Washtenaw County, in September, 1842, emigrated to the wilderness of Oakfield Township and settled on Section 19 to establish a new home. Six months later, in March, 1843, tragedy befell the little family when Orin Gilbert, a brother of David Gilbert, set out for hiss brother’s home on foot from Cook’s Corner near Belding, Ionia County and died of cold and fatigue on the frozen shore of Long Lake, now Tek-e-nik Lake, on Section 34, Oakfield Township, only four miles from his destination.

Later that summer of 1843, possibly prompted by that family tragedy, another brother, Luke Gilbert, and brother-in-law Smith Lapham, also came up from Washtenaw County to visit David Gilbert and his family.

From their Washtenaw County home, Luke Gilbert and Smith Lapham traveled on foot to Okemos, Ingram County on the Red Cedar River. There they fashioned a crude canoe from a basswood log and, in the crude affair, floated and paddled down the Red Cedar and Grand Rivers to the mouth of Flat River at Lowell, Kent County. There they abandoned their canoe and struck out on foot, north across the trackless wilderness to David Gilbert’s new location in Oakfield, reaching his home late in the evening of the same day they started from Lowell.

History makes no further mention of Luke Gilbert and refers to David J. Gilbert only briefly in following years until his death in Oakfield Township, March 9, 1873 at the age of 72. But of Smith Lapham, it is clear and concise, relating anecdotes of his life, activities and influence repeatedly in the pioneer years which followed.

Smith Lapham appears an exceptional man, even for his time when exceptional men were legion among the early pioneers. His early biography and life foretell the natural ability, shrewd business acumen and faculty for leadership which were to mark his later life perhaps even more so than did his earlier life.

Smith Lapham was born in Rhode Island, April 8, 1804, and spent his boyhood and young manhood farming in Rhode Island and New York state. In early 1825, at age 21, he went to Buffalo, N. Y., where he signed on as crewman aboard the new steamboat Pioneer, one of six steamboats then on Lake Erie and all running between Buffalo and Detroit.

On his second trip, the Pioneer ran aground and was wrecked off Fairport, Ohio, but Mr. Lapham made it safely ashore. He then walked on to Sandusky, Ohio where he took passage for Detroit on the steamboat Superior, the second steamboat built on Lake Erie. From Detroit he traveled on foot over several counties of southeastern Michigan, eventually purchasing a tract of land the fall of 1825, on Lodi Plains, Lodi Township, Washtenaw County, six miles south of Ann Arbor.

He returned to Saratoga, N. Y. that winter and on April 10, 1826, married Katherine Gilbert, sister of David Gilbert. In June, 1826, he returned with his bride to Washtenaw County and began farming his land. During his years as a farmer there, Mr. Lapham also served as Justice of the Peace, surveyor of Pittsfield and in other capacities by which ge soon acquired the tile of Esquire Lapham.

In 1835 he sold his farm and built a hotel, named the American House, at Saline which he ran two years, then, in 1839 engaged in culvert building on the Wabash and Erie Canal in Ohio, then under construction.

His biography makes no further reference to Mr. Lapham’s activities until he came to Oakfield in 1843 to visit Dave Gilbert. He was 39 years old when he ventured on that journey. And from then on, his interests and activities were to center in this region of Rogue River until his death Saturday, July 26, 1884, at the age of 80 years.

Because history is so often remiss in its omissions of minor details and related facts vital to full knowledge and understanding of momentous events, mystery still shrouds the reason or motive for Mr. Lapham’s next venture. The record merely notes that being somehow aware of William Hunter’s intentions to build a dam and sawmill on Rogue River on Section 36, Algoma Township, Mr. Lapham, while visiting David Gilbert, traveled across Courtland Township, presumably afoot, to visit Hunter at his new location.

There he found that Hunter had already started some construction of a sawmill on the west bank of the river and had also made some small effort to build a crude dam with some brush and tree trunks in the river. To complete the project, Hunter then entered into some agreement with Mr. Lapham to build the dam and finish the sawmill for 80 acres of Hunter’s land along the east bank of the river adjoining the dam.

Mr. Lapham completed the dam that fall of 1843, and then, Hunter went back on his word, limiting Mr. Lapham to only 40 acres of land to complete the project instead of 80 acres. Undaunted by that apparent reverse in his fortunes, Mr. Lapham settled for the 40 acres, and the next year, instead of completing Hunter’s sawmill, built a sawmill for himself on his own property at the east end of the dam. He completed his sawmill and had it in operation by the fall of 1844, then ran it 20 years, and sold it in 1866.

Subsequent history of Lapham’s sawmill and the little hamlet of mill hand’s shanties which grew up around it is meager, often confusing, and as often contradictory. Hunter’s mill was eventually built, but if Hunter completed it and when, history does not definitely say. Of William Hunter, it only vaguely says he built a home in the hamlet by 1845, resided there with his family a few years, was elected to township office in 1849, and then apparently sold out his holdings in the 1850’s and left for greener pastures, unmissed, unheralded and soon forgotten.

The most definite and positive remaining indication and memorial of his presence in the hamlet through 1849 is found in Rockford’s Pioneer Cemetery out E. Division Street-an early gravestone bearing this epitaph: "Wm. F. son of Wm. And Dolly Hunter, April 14, 1849, Age 15 yr. 11 Mo. 28 Da."

Merlin Hunter is mentioned but twice in historical record; still living in his cabin in 1845 and also elected to township office in 1849. Presumably he also departed the area with his brother.

But of Smith Lapham-he put down firm, solid roots here in this Rogue River Valley and stayed on the rest of his life. Respected and regarded as Algoma Township’s first real settler, he prospered well, and with his sawmill, founded the City of Rockford

A great financial crisis swept the state and nation in the years immediately following 1837. Credits were impaired, specie and cash money was scarce and hard to come by, barter of goods and services became a way of life, and emigration and settlement were seriously curtailed. But by 1844, when Smith Lapham built his sawmill on Rogue River, there were promising signs of recovery from the crisis and again, ambitious, determined settlers from eastern states were trooping westward in search of new homes, opportunity and economic security in the virgin lands of Michigan and adjoining states.

Rapidly growing Chicago and the fertile, but virtually treeless, plains areas of Illinois and Iowa were being heavily settled up and generating ever increasing demands for Michigan’s white pine lumber for building purposes. Although Smith Lapham’s Rogue River sawmill, with its upright Mooley saw, which went "up today and down tomorrow", was limited in output to only five or six thousand board feet of lumber a day, it still contributed its full share towards satisfying that demand--it was right on the edge of Michigan’s white pine timber and the Rogue could float that timber to Lapham’s sawmill.

The days of Michigan lumbering as a venture and industry turning a profit had begun. Woodsmen, loggers, mill hands and settlers soon found opportunity along Rogue River and around Lapham’s sawmill in growing numbers. Pine logs from areas upstream were floated down Rogue River to Lapham’s mill and sawn into lumber. The lumber was then sold to new settlers or, in lumber rafts, was floated on down the Rogue and Grand Rivers to Grand Haven and shipped across Lake Michigan to Chicago by Lake schooners or "lumber luggers" as they were called.

Of the first pioneers attracted to Lapham’s sawmill in 1844, the year of its completion, only three are noted in recorded history; John Long, Freeman Burch and William Thornton. In just what precedence they arrived remains unknown, but one historian states that John Long was first.

John Long and Freeman Burch were land seekers, bent on settlement in rural areas where good, new farms could be carved from the virgin wilderness by their own enterprise and labor. Their descendants, like those of Smith Lapham and David Gilbert, were destined to continue a family association with the Rockford area and its history from that very date to this.

William Thornton was a civil engineer, mechanic and opportunist, destined, like the Hunter brothers, to briefly play a star role in the pioneer days of Rockford and then move on elsewhere to other interests and activities, leaving his memory to be perpetuated only by the pen of future historians of the community.

John Long did not tarry for any time at Lapham’s sawmill. With his family, he went on farther up Rogue River where, on 160 acres of land along the west side of Section 27, (Algoma Township) he pioneered the settlement of the township outside of Rockford. His family name and enterprise are perpetuated there yet by his descendants who still reside in the same neighborhood and are active in Algoma Township leadership and Rockford commerical interests today.

Freeman Burch, 41, his wife Lucy, 36, and their seven children, formerly of Tioga County, N.Y., came in from Oakfield County, Michigan by lumber wagon and two yoke of oxen to tarry near Lapham’s sawmill for the winter and the next summer before moving on. Their home that winter of 1844 was a small slab shanty located on lower Courtland Street where the Post Office building stands today. Their future home, a new frame house built in 1845 with lumber from Lapham’s sawmill, was on 40 acres of wild land on Section 20 of Courtland Township.

Their brief interlude in Rockford’s pioneer history would be of little note except that Lucy Walker Burch now appears to have been the very first pioneer wife and mother to make her home in Rockford. And a box of select books, prized possession of Freeman Burch, now appears to have been the first private library brought into Rockford.

Lucy Walker Burch, 1808-1888.

William Thornton, born at Springfield, Vermont in 1814, came to Kent County in 1838 at the age of 24, and in June, 1839, with his family, located on Section 29, Oakfield Township. Apparently, pioneer farming was not one of his favored vocations for in 1844, he came over to Lapham’s sawmill, acquired, from Mr. Lapham, a small tract of land on the east line of Mr. Lapham’s forty acres near the mill and began the construction of a frame house with lumber from the sawmill.

Thornton’s new home was the very first frame house ever built in Rockford. He built it, history claims, facing east where the Rockford hardware Company is now located at 11 N. Main Street. History also says it was still standing on its original site, a Rockford landmark, in 1871 and was then owned by Noah Helsel.

It is also written that a narrow strip of land in front of Thornton’s house and paralleling the east line of Smith Lapham’s forty acres, in time, became a public roadway, and eventually, Main Street in downtown Rockford. If that be true, and Thornton’s house was still standing in 1871, a photograph of Rockford’s downtown Main Street taken in 1865 indicates that, by 1865, Rockford’s first frame house had already been remodeled into a store building and probably burned in the Main Street fire of 1883.

William Thornton remained a resident of the community for a decade or more, contributing to its growth into hamlet and village, was Supervisor of Plainfield Township (which then included Algoma) in 1847, then moved away to Grand Rapids, became Kent County Sheriff from 1864 to 1866, and died at Grand Rapids on January 18, 1888 at the age of 74.

The Late Ex-Sheriff Thornton.

The funeral of ex-Sheriff William Thornton, whose death was noticed yesterday morning, will take place from the residence near the corner of Jefferson and Highland Avenue at 10 o’clock tomorrow morning. The members of the Old Residents association will meet at 9 o’clock in the superior Court room, and attend the funeral in a body.

The deceased was 74 years old, having been born at Springfield, Vt. In 1814. He was a civil engineer and came to this county in 1838, settling in Algoma township, which he represented on the board of super visors for several years just before the war. He was elected sheriff of Kent county in 1864 and was succeeded by Sluman S. Bailey in 1866. When the government building was erected in this city he acted as inspector of material. His wife and several children survive him.

By the fall of 1845, Lapham’s sawmill was already the center of a little hamlet of several slab shanties, one log cabin, and four pioneer frame, but unflustered, houses. Albert L. Pickett, age 29, a Vermonter and relative of Smith Lapham, came in that year to operate the sawmill for Mr. Lapham. He recalled the location of those frame houses in his memoirs.

Mr. Lapham had a new frame house on the southeast corner of present Squires Street and Courtland Street. William Hunter had a new home on the northeast corner of present Main and Courtland Streets. A member of the Gilbert family, presumably Franklin Gilbert, had a third new home, near present 43 E. Bridge Street, and William Thornton had the fourth new home near present 11 N. Main Street.

Six or more other new settlers; Joshua Briggs, John Davis, Henry Helsel, Benjamin and B. J. Pettingill, Henry Shank and others; also came in to Lapham’s sawmill during 1845, but all those listed went on to locate elsewhere in Algoma Township north and west of the little sawmill hamlet on Rogue River. Yet the little sawmill hamlet remained their center of contact, communication and geographical reference.

And since it is human experience that most singular features of the landscape-a hill, a stream, a road, or a four-corners- soon acquire some sort of name, and often a name associated with some individual in the area, it naturally followed with that someone would soon name the little hamlet around Lapham’s sawmill. And since it was located almost entirely upon land owned or sold by Smith Lapham, the pioneer settlers of the hamlet in 1845 were already thinking of it as Lapham’s village and calling it Laphamville. By the name of Laphamville, the little hamlet would later by platted into a village and continue to be known for the next twenty years.

All during 1845, with the families of Smith Lapham, William Hunter William Thornton, Franklin Gilbert and probably other settlers occupying new homes in the hamlet, other events of historic significance in Laphamville followed one another in succession.

On Sunday, June 22, 1845, the Rev. David J. Gilbert performed the first marriage in Laphamville, uniting Isaac Baker and Harriet Lapham, a daughter of Smith Lapham, in holy matrimony. History does not reveal the hour or place, but it could well have been an afternoon ceremony at the Smith Lapham home with most of the Laphamville settlers and neighbors witnessing the wedding.

The young couple continued ti make their home in the hamlet and, in March 1846, their first child, a daughter, Eva, became the first person ever born in Laphamville.

1845 also marked the first death in Laphamville, that of Barney Lapham, a native of New York state and relative of Smith Lapham. His interment may well have been the very first burial in Rockford’s Pioneer Cemetery.

During 1845, the first mail service to Laphamville was established by Smith Lapham as a courtesy to his neighbors and fellow settlers. Once a week he would bring the mail in from the Austerlitz post office at Plainfield, in his coat pocket, and then distribute it as the unofficial postmaster at Laphamville, using his home as the post office.

There was then no road to Laphamville from anywhere only a meandering wagon track through the woods, which branched off north from the Plainfield-Sheridan Indian trail near present day Kroes Road and Northland Drive and roughly paralleled Northland Drive down to Laphamville.

Before that wagon track could be fashioned into a road, the Rev. Isaac Barker emigrated from New Hampshire to Courtland Township in 1844 and cut the first road through to Laphamville, from Courtland in 1845. Barker’s new road appears to have come in from present day 12 Mile Road and Courtland Drive, generally paralleling Courtland Drive southwesterly, clear through to Rum Creek at Northland Drive, and thence down Courtland Street into Laphamville. The present extension of 11 Mile Road down "Darrow" Hill to E. Main Street and a new road south along Northland Drive rerouted the southern extension of Barker’s road at a much later date.

Also, during 1845, William Thornton erected a machine shop on the river bank just south of Lapham’s sawmill, taking water power for the machine shop from the headrace of the sawmill. It would seem a most unlikely time and place to start such a venture or small industry, but those were days of locally handcrafted tools and implements; days when the blacksmith forge and simple, metalworking machines were a vital necessity to the welfare of every pioneer community.

And last, but not least, the pioneers of Laphamville were young and vigorous people with pride and love and great expectations for their growing families of children. Intellectual and education parents, they demanded equal education and "book learning" for their children and were not long in providing such opportunity.

The fall of 1845, Laphamville’s first public school was instituted in a small slab shanty near the site of the present post office building on Courtland Street, possibly in the same crude shanty Freeman Burch and his family had been vacated, or a building of similar construction nearby. The teacher of that first school was Amy Ann Lapham, a teen age daughter of Smith Lapham. Her name should remain enshrined forever, with honor and distinction, in the annals of Rockford’s history. Amy Ann Lapham, 1828-1922

1846 brought an ever increasing stream of new settlers into the area north of Grand River changing the Plainfield-Sheridan Indian trail into a pioneer road as they traveled it northeast from Plainfield village into Plainfield, Cannon, Courtland and Oakfield Townships.

And then there were those with different destination. They turned off down the winding wagon track into the Rogue River valley and Laphamville, and on northwest along the river into adjacent areas of Algoma Township.

But not all those who came to Laphamville moved on elsewhere. Some remained in Laphamville or located around the very edge of the little hamlet.

Among those was a young Dr. Russell L. Blakeley who came to Laphamville in April, 1846, located beside the wagon track on the edge of the hamlet, became Laphamville’s first doctor, founded Laphamville’s first church and Sunday School in 1847, and lent his efforts to the furtherance of public education and organization of Laphamville’s first school district in 1848. His full life story and contribution to Rockford history must be related in other chapters.

History then passes on over the years 1846 and 1847 with little mention of any other events closely related to Laphamville. It is certain, however, that more settlers and newcomers continued to increase the population of Laphamville and add to its status and pioneer prestige as the focal center of continuing settlement in adjacent township areas. So much so that 1848 ushered in events, both political and otherwise, which indicate a desire by Laphamville’s citizenry for even greater recognition.

The first of those events must have begun during the late winter or very early spring of 1848 for, in its issue of May 3, 1848, the Grand Rapids Enquire noted that a new Post Office had just begun established at Laphamville and Smith Lapham had been appointed Postmaster. No reference was made to where the new post office was located in Laphamville. So probably it remained in the Lapham home where Mr. Lapham had had his unofficial post office since 1845.

Thirteen days later, Tuesday May 16, 1846, the citizens of Laphamville assembled in the home of Mr. Lapham and, under the jurisdiction of Plainfield Township to which their "town" was then attached, organized Plainfield School District No. 3 and held Laphamville’s first election-the selection of Rockford’s first school board. Later that year, the new school board erected Laphamville’s first schoolhouse.

During 1848, White and Rathbun from Grand Rapids brought in a "stock of goods" and opened Laphamville’s first store in a small building erected across the road from William Thornton’s home. History gives us no further identification of Mr. White or Mr. Rathbun, how long they stayed in business, or of what type of merchandise their "stock of goods" consisted. But judging from a knowledge of other stores of those early days, the White and Rathbun venture was probably a general store, typical of its day, offering groceries,, medicines, dry goods, hardware and any other item for which the pioneers might have need.

The fall of 1848, before the 14^th session of the State Legislature convened, for only the second time, in Michigan’s new wilderness State Capital at Lansing, the citizens of Laphamville and settlers of T 9 N, R11 W held another meeting at Smith Lapham’s home. At that meeting they formulated a petition to the legislature to set off their "town" from Plainfield Township and organize it as a separate township named Algoma.

History does not say how many persons attended that meeting nor who suggested the name Algoma, but the name honored a steamboat then plying the lower Grand River between Grand Rapids and Grand Haven. Perhaps the settlers of Laphamville and the "town" selected the name Algoma because they sensed a common bond between the steamboat and themselves-0it, too, was a newcomer to the area; an emigrant from outside the region, and its name was worthy of perpetuation.

The Algoma was built at Mishawaka, Indiana in 1845 and spent its first, years running there on the St. Joseph River. It was a slow, powerful steamboat compared to others; an upper deck side-wheeler of 70.4 ton, 127’ long, 15’9" beam and 3’ 8" draft.

In 18488, a prominent freight forwarding agent at Grand Rapids, Henry R. Williams, acquired the Algoma and brought it to Grand Rapids for freight and passenger service. Under command of Ebenezer Farley, it arrived at Grand Rapids April 25, 1848, the second largest steamboat to navigate Grand River up to that time. The next day, April 26, it began a scheduled, daily-round trip service to Grand Haven, carrying as its listed first freight cargo:77 barrels of flour, 3 boxes of furniture and 1 red chest. Total freight charges on the cargo was $11.38.

One other steamboat, the Empire, was also running on the lower Grand River in 1848, but until mid-July that year, only pole-boats carried freight on upriver from Leonard Street, Grand Rapids to Ionia and Lyons. Several shipments consigned to Smith Lapham at Plainfield were recorded by the Algoma in 1848.

One of those shipments, listed on "Up trip No. 16, May 30, 1848" consisted, curiously, of 1 mill saw and 1 bag of dried apples. The shipment was teamed around the river rapids at Grand Rapids and sent up Grand River to Plainfield by pole-boat. There it was received and signed for by Rev. Isaac Barker who delivered it to Mr. Lapham in Laphamville. Freight charges for the Algoma was .25 cents.

About June 15, 18848, Captain Farley left the Algoma and Captain Alfred X. Cary assumed command. The Algoma completed over a hundred round trips that season before river navigation closed down in late November, and continued running on the lower river for several years thereafter under Captain Cary and other well known river men of their day. Her owner, Henry R. Williams, became the first mayor of Grand Rapids when that village assumed city status in 1852, and her one time Captain Alfred X. Cary, in 1868, became a business man in Rockford.

On March 15, 1849, the legislature authorized the organization of Algoma Township, but further provided that T 10 N, R 11 W (now Solon Township) should be attached to Algoma. That dual identity of Solon with Algoma continued until 1857 when Solon became a separated township.

Then on Monday, April 2, 1849, less than three weeks after the legislature had authorized its organization, the settlers of Algoma assembled again in the most logical place then in the township-the new Laphamville schoolhouse-for their first township meeting and election. Smith Lapham was chosen moderator of the meeting and 84 electors cast ballots for township officers.

Elected to township were: Smith Lapham, Supervisor; William Thornton, Clerk; Albert L. Picket, Treasurer;’ Morgan Allen, John H. Jacobs and John Hamilton, Justices; William Hunter, Joshua Briggs and Jacob Morningstar, Highway Commissioners; Horatio N. Stinson and Morgan Allen, School Inspectors; James Fowler, Winslow Tower, William Davis and William Turner, Constables; and William Turner and Merlin Hunter, Directors of the Poor.

Smith Lapham continued as Township Supervisor through 1852, was elected again for one year in 1854, and again for another year in 1857. In 1856 he was elected to the State House of Representatives and in 1858, was elected State Senator from his district. He also served Algoma and Rockford as Justice of the Peace almost constantly for over thirty years.

Of the others elected to township office in 1849, William Thornton, Morgan Allen and Horatio N. Stinson also served as later Township Supervisors; Thornton in 1859 and 1860, Allen in 1856 and from 1861 through 1864, and Stinson in 1856, 1866 and from 1868 through 1876. Many others of those first township officers also continued to serve Algoma down through the years in different capacities.

The years from 1849 to the early 1860’s saw Laphamville grow from just a sawmill hamlet into a thriving village. Earlier historians took note of that growth and related some of the events which contributed to it.

With Algoma then an organized township and no longer a part of Plainfield, Laphamville’s citizens in May, 1849, held another school meeting in the schoolhouse and changed the school district from Plainfield District No. 3 to Algoma School District No. 1, Fractional with Plainfield and Cannon.

And with the new Laphamville schoolhouse readily available for township meetings and other purposes, the Algoma Township Board gave no immediate concern to providing any township hall or other meeting place elsewhere in the Laphamville schoolhouse until 1852.

That year the settlers near the center of the township organized Algoma School District No. 3, and one mile south of the township center, built a new schoolhouse, known later as the Gougeburg school. After that all township meetings were held in the Gougeburg school until 1869. Then Laphamville, by then renamed Rockford, again became the center of township affairs, and there they were to remain for the next half century or longer.

The fall of 1849, two brothers, John and Mike Furlong, came to Laphamville and started a second store exchange goods for lumber and shingles. There was very little money to be had around Laphamville or in circulation elsewhere at that time. What lumber and shingles they could not sell to new settlers fortunate enough to have brought some money in with them, they shipped down Rogue River and Grand River in lumber rafts to Grand Haven where it could be sold for shipment on to Chicago

Curiously, their store was located right on the same northeast corner of Main and Courtland Streets where William Hunter had his frame house. Thus we must assume that either Mr. Hunter sold out to the Furlong or rented them part of his house for their store. And apparently they were not too successful in their venture for history never mentions their store again--it only mentions the house

Just two years later, in 1851, another newcomer to Laphamville, Harvey Porter, acquired the William Hunter house and made it into Laphamville’s first hotel, the Algoma House. It continued to serve as a hotel until 1864 when it burned to the ground in the first fire ever recorded in Laphamville-Rockford history.

Meanwhile, in 1850, a blacksmith named John Cox had opened the first blacksmith shop in Laphamville, but just where we do not know. Nor do we know if he, too, was a newcomer to the hamlet or just some disgruntled employee of Mr. Lapham or Mr. Thornton. Both Lapham’s sawmill and Thornton’s machine shop required blacksmithing as part of their operations.

One thing, however, is still recalled about John Cox. He soon became very popular far and wide around Laphamville so entered politics as a candidate for Governor of Michigan. His ambition was really commendable and his confidence most extraordinary, for when Laphamville’s first state-wide political figure suffered defeat, he closed up his shop in disgust and moved away to another new field of endeavor.

In 1852, a third industry came to Laphamville when Chase and Judson erected a gristmill on the east side of the river south of Lapham’s sawmill and Thornton’s machine shop. Water power for the gristmill was provided by extending, but Mr. Judson appears to have been James F. Judson, long a resident of Laphamville-Rockford afterward.

By 1855, Laphamville was rapidly expanding eastward across the valley floor beyond Smith Lapham’s forty acres along Rogue River. New homes and buildings were being built haphazardly wherever convenient with little thought to future growth as a village.

So in 1856, to assure an orderly expansion out of what was fast becoming chaos, the property owners in the area had the hamlet platted into an unincorporated village with a fixed plan of roadways, streets and property lines. That way, new building sites could then be sold with ready access to streets and roads without encroaching upon any other person’s property.

As William Thornton was a qualified surveyor and civil engineer, he was selected to plat the area into the Village of Laphamville. Thus, William Thornton drew up the very first map ever made of Laphamville-Rockford and layed out and named all the first streets of the new village from Main Street east to Dayton Street, and from Courtland Street south to Division Street.

Then, through his efforts, many of the new streets were lined with new shade trees set out in orderly rows outside the sidewalk lines. Most of those trees were soft maples, but they also included some hard maples, popular and elms.

A few years later the results of Thornton’s efforts were so evident that village officials adopted a policy of continuing his project until Rockford became widely noted for its tree shaded streets. Thornton’s project lives on yet today, promoted by citizens and city officials alike, to preserve every one of those old trees still standing, replace them where need be, and line every new street with similar shade.

The names Thornton gave to those first streets are mostly self-explanatory except possibly Bridge, Monroe, Fremont and Dayton.

Although there was then no bridge across Rogue River at Laphamville, Thornton recognized that the only logical and feasible place for a future bridge, as constructed in those days, was below the dam at the end of a new street which led down to the gristmill. So he named that new street Bridge Street.

Monroe Street appears to have been named for Monroe Street in Grand Rapids. In 1856 Monroe Street in Grand Rapids, from Fulton Street to Pearl Street, was the subject of much widespread comment and controversy. It had just been paved with cobblestone at a cost of $10,150, an extravagant cost, many contended. Thornton apparently considered such progress of note and tried to capture some of the glory for Laphamville.

Fremont Street was named for John Charles Fremont of the newly formed (1854) Republican party and its candidate for President that year of 1856. Dayton Street was named for William Lewis Dayton, Republican candidate for Vice-President with Fremont.

Thornton’s fond hope that Fremont and Dayton Streets would honor the next President and Vice-President of the United States remained but a dream when Fremont’s Democratic opponent, James Buchanan, was elected instead. But even today, Fremont and Dayton Streets still bear mute testimony of Thornton’s political persuasion and of that of most of his 1856 Laphamville contemporaries who approved of the names he had chosen and declined to rename those two streets even after Fremont’s defeat.

The election of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War period a few years later only strengthened Republican leanings in Laphamville-Rockford, and for many years thereafter, political persuasion around Rockford and the outlying areas was predominantly Republican.

1858 became another year of great significance in the history of Laphamville-Rockford. It marked the culmination of another statewide controversy and the beginning of an effort which eventually brought great benefit and advantage to Rockford; one that vastly improved its communication and contact with out-state Michigan and beyond.

After several legislative approval of a large land grant, the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad Company, in 18858m began construction of a railroad from Grand Rapids through Laphamville to Cedar Springs. Construction of the railroad was soon interrupted by the Civil War, but was resumed as the war drew to a close.

When the grading for the railroad neared Laphamville, officials of the railroad began urging Laphamville’s citizens to adopt a shorter, more flowery name for the village and post office, and for its future railroad station. The question provoked many different viewpoints and wide discussion until late 1865 when a general meeting was held in the village schoolhouse to try and settle the issue.

The old schoolhouse was crowed. Several names were discussed and manu older citizens wanted Laphamville just shortened to Lapham. The discussion was still inconclusive when the Rev. Volney Powell, newly arrived from Rockford, Illinois to assume the fourth pastorate of the Laphamville Baptist Church, proposed the name of Rockford.

That name, he said, was derived from the shallow but rocky ford down by the gristmill at the end of Bridge Street where travelers crossed the river. Put to a vote, the new name Rockford was adopted by a small majority and thus, the transition from Laphamville to Rockford began. However, mail continued to arrive addressed to the Laphamville post office for several years afterward.

By 1865, Laphamville had grown beyond the limits of William Thornton’s original plat so, in May, 1866, the village was re-platted as Rockford to include an area of Dayton Street and strip of adjoining Plainfield Township. The land annexed from Plainfield was possibly forty rods wide along the south side of Division Street from Fremont Street east to the range line between Plainfield and Cannon Townships at present Rockford Plaza. It encompassed the home of Dr. R. L. Blakeley. All early historians only state that a "Mr. Caukin" did the re-platting.

"Mr. Caukin" was Volney Worden Caukin, born June 25, 1819, who emigrated from New York State to Section 9, Grattan Township with his family in 1844, the third family to settle in Grattan Township. In 1846, at the first Grattan Township meeting, he influenced his fellow settlers to select the name Grattan for the new township and was elected Grattan;’s first Township Clerk.

He was a qualified government surveyor and was elected Kent County Surveyor in 1847-48. He was elected to the state legislature from the 29^th District in 1857 and while serving in the legislature, had the spelling of his last name changed from Calkin to Caukin. He was serving as Grattan Township Supervisor in 1866, the year he re-platted Rockford.

Volney Caukin later moved to Oakfield Township, and then to Sparta where he served as Sparta Township Supervisor from 1868 through 1871. His accomplishments were such that many early records of northern Kent County, Sparta and Rockford bear his signature.

In re-platting Rockford, Mr. Caukin added two new streets with new names: Lincoln Street and Washington Street. Lincoln Street remains today, still honoring the Civil War martyr President, Abraham Lincoln, but Washington Street is now the angling portion of Northland Drive from Rum Creek south to the end of Courtland Street at Lincoln Street.

In June, 1866, one month after Volney Caukin re-platted Rockford, the Kent County Board of Supervisors officially incorporated the Village of Rockford and authorized the election of a village council to administer government affairs of the village. There were 315 inhabitants in the village and the village still was all on the east side of Rogue River.

No historian ever recorded just when or where the first village election was held, but if previous events of a similar character can be used as criteria, the citizens of Rockford were not long in holding a public meeting at the village schoolhouse to elect a slate of village officers. Sixty-five electors cast ballots in Rockford’s first village election.

Elected as village officers were: Smith Lapham, Village President; George French, Village Clerk; Cyrus Kent, Robert House, M. T. Arbor, J. B. Hewitt, T. N. Barker and Dr. R. L, Blakeley, Trustees; Richard Briggs, Marshall and H. N. Stinson and William Hicks, Assessors.

The new village fathers proved able and capable men who administered village affairs with economy, prudence and justice. Village taxes were kept at low millage, liquor saloons were limited and controlled, drunkenness on the streets was curtailed; law and order prevailed, and street widening and improvement with shade trees and sidewalks was encouraged.

The close of the Civil War with the return of Rockford’s war veterans seeking opportunity and employment encouraged new investment and expansion in Rockford, Business began picking up again, lumbering and other industry was revitalized, and new building started going on all over town. In 1865, a second church building was built, another schoolhouse was added in 1867, the G. R. & I. Railroad reached Rockford that same year, trains began running to Grand Rapids by 1868, and 1869, fraternal organizations and lodges were being organized and the schoolhouse again required enlargement. In those post-Civil War years, Rockford was thriving.

1870 is remembered for two more significant events; the construction of Rockford’s first high school building, known several years thereafter as Rockford’s Union School; and the appearance of Rockford’s first known recorded history. That history appeared as part of the review of Algoma

Township in a "History and Directory of Kent County" compiled and published by Dillenback & Leavitt, and printed in November, 1870 by the Daily Eagle Steam Printing House, an early Grand Rapids newspaper publishing and job printing shop.

Although that early account of Algoma and Rockford history has several errors in dates, chronology and events as revealed in subsequent research of documentary evidence, it does accurately portray a picture of the people and the times.