JOHN STRANGE

From "Past and Present of Eaton county" - 1906

JOHN STRANGE was one of the earliest settlers of Eaton county and left upon its annals the record of a life of signal usefulness and honor. He developed a farm in the midst of the primeval forest, in Oneida township, and lived to enjoy the glorious fruitage of his earnest toil and endeavor and to witness the opulent prosperity which time brought to this favored section of the Wolverine state. The death of this sterling pioneer occurred July 12, 1887, and it is but consonant that in this publication be perpetuated a memorial epitome of his life and labors.

Mr. Strange was undoubtedly the last representative of the sixth generation of the family in America, the genealogy being traced back to John Strange, who was born about 1610 and who is said to have come from Timbridge-Wells, England, where Stranges still reside, tracing their ancestry back to time of the conquest, to America. The next in line of direct descent to the subject of this memoir was Lot, who married Mary Sherman and who died in 1699; his son Lot, 1699-1786, married Hannah Hathaway, and their son John, 1724-1776, married Joanna Joselyn. Of the children of the last named the descent is traced through Charles, 1758 -1834, who married Esther Babbitt, their children being thirteen in number and the subject of this sketch having been the twelfth in order of birth. He was born in 1802, in Freetown township, Bristol county, Massachusetts, where he was reared among the rocks and sands, unaccustomed to the forest and unskilled in the use of ax or gun.

In company with his brother George he came to Michigan in 1836, making Eaton county his destination. He purchased a tract of government land in Oneida township, selecting that which was most heavily timbered, ten miles distant from any habitation. October 5, 1836, the brothers slept on the ground in the forest, near the spot where John Strange, the younger of the two, was laid to rest many years later and where his remains now repose. The next morning they selected the six hundred and forty acres to which they duly entered claim. They then returned to the landlooker's hut, ten miles away, where, at three o'clock in the afternoon, they partook of the first meal they had tasted since breakfast the morning before.

Mr. Strange did not make permanent settlement upon his embryonic farm until June; 1838, when he returned here from the east. In 1840 he was joined by his brother Charles, who had passed two years upon the ocean and several years in Canada. In 1842 his brother George also returned, the two owning their land in common. In the meanwhile, on the 1st of October, 1840, John had married Miss Emma O. Sprague, a school teacher, in the home of whose brother-in-law, Samuel Preston, he had boarded during the two years of his residence in Eaton county.

Veritable pioneers were these three brothers, though not "to the manner born," they turned their attention to all kinds of work, showing a versatility partly resultant of training and partly of compulsion or necessity. Charles was a mason by trade. George had been a sailor twenty years but had a smattering of many trades and tried his hand at all, skillful, indeed, but exceedingly slow in his manipulations. The house and all its furniture represented the handiwork of the brothers, puncheon floor to riven shingles; bedsteads, bureaus, tables and chairs. Some of these articles of furniture are still in use and under ordinary conditions will be available for this purpose a century hence. The best mechanic could not be ashamed to have produced the work. But the forests proved formidable to these sturdy men. Save for grappling with the forest they had not learned the various arts that had been utilized by the pioneers of America for generations preceding them, for domestic manufacture of farming  implements as well as apparel was the necessary order of their day. All clothing, including shoes and hats, was as a rule made within the home, from raw hides, wool, hemp, flax and straw. For more than half their lives their food was cooked by the open fireplace. Many generations lived to practice all these homely arts, but only their own generation spent half of their lives in the midst of these. and then lived to see them a thing of the past.

They lived to see their township reclaimed from the virgin forest into fruitful and beautiful farm, with substantial buildings and other modern accessories, and to witness the upbuilding of a thriving city within the limits of the township. They courted and read by the light of ignited wicks of rags immersed in bear's oil; later utilized the improved "tallow dips," or candles, survived the age of kerosene and lived to toy with electric lights. They brought the sickle, made hay rakes, scythe-snaths and cradles, and lived to see them discarded and their
fields harvested with the self-binders. John Strange drove on an ox sled fifty miles to mill, but lived to see his grandchildren flying about on bicycles. He walked weary miles to post a letter, paying twenty-five cents in postage to send it a distance of four hundred miles, but he lived to see the postal rate dropped to its present diminutive standard and to see the telephone in hourly use. His children had the Indians for frequent callers in their childhood home, but he
lived to see these children the intimate friends of college presidents, congressmen and governors. He sent them to school in the house his own hands had built, the structure having wooden door latch, open mud-and-stick fireplace, puncheon floor, slab benches and rudely constructed desk along three sides of the wall, but he lived to see these children all college graduates and high school teachers or college professors.

As a pioneer citizen Mr Strange held in turn every township office save one. The nine school districts in Oneida township, each two miles square, owe their form and somewhat of their efficiency to him. He and his wife, with their two sisters and the husbands of the latter, and also a cousin, founded and organized the Oneida Presbyterian church, in May, 1848. All of his children, by birth or marriage, and all of his grandchildren, have become members of this church. He was a man whose life was ordered upon the highest plane of rectitude and honor, and he died, as he had lived, a meek, humble, truthful Christian, having been in his eighty-fifth year at the time of his demise. His cherished and devoted wife survived him by about eighteen years, being summoned to the life eternal in March, 1905, at the age of ninety-five years. They became the parents of four children: Mary Ann, who was born September 24, 1842, is the wife of Joseph McAMullen, of Oneida township, and of their four children two are living; Daniel, who was born March 4, 1845, is more definitely mentioned further on in this context; John Sprague is a resident of Oneida township and is the subject of an individual sketch appearing on other pages of this work; and Dalston P., who was born October 1, 1850, remained a bachelor until his death, which occurred February 4, 1880; he was graduated from Michigan Agricultural College as a member of the class of 1871, completed a
post-graduate course in 1872, and became a successful teacher, having been an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota for two 'years following 1872, and afterward having been a student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in the city of Boston, and also in the University of Michigan. Professor Dalston P. Strange became a physicist of international reputation. He visited Colorado and other states in search of health, but finally returned to the old home in Eaton county, where he remained until his death, having been, as has been consistently said, a "student and a child of God."