This week I am back with more fascinating stories of the shorter variety stemming from the early days of our county, and I would like to open with the Barbers. Harvey Barber and his wife lived in a log house in a small clearing on section 31 of Ferry. One day, Harvey’s brother returned from the army and paid old Harvey a visit. He had with him “a Spencer carbine, a navy shooter and a sum of money, the amount of which is unknown,” according to Page’s History of Oceana.
But that’s not all Harvey’s brother brought home with him, as he returned sicker than a dog. He had “ague,” or as we know it today, malaria, and he was treating this disease with a medication known as quinine, a medication which he was unfortunately out of. Luckily for him, his sister-in-law, Harvey’s wife, told him that “she had found in Pingree’s shanty, in Ferry, between Maple Ridge and Reedville, a little vial, which she had buried in the cellar, but had saved the contents, which she was certain was quinine.”
Now I certainly hope nobody nowadays would ever consider taking mysterious, unmarked medications found in random shanty homes, but this was 1865, and Harvey’s brother examined the substance, concluded that it was quinine, and took a dose. Following this, he proceeded out of the house with Harvey to cut bean poles before he collapsed on the fence. Harvey brought him inside, where he died in a fit of convulsions.
As they were about to bury him, the neighbors got the word out to Dr. Hawley, who put together a jury and held an inquest. It was concluded the vial actually contained strychnine, but whether or not the Barber’s were guilty of an actual crime was never decided. Page’s History does mention that “an uncle of the Barbers had Harvey and wife arrested, but did not follow up the case.” It also mentions that the Barbers “went to the bad” following all of this, with Harvey ending up in a state prison for stealing in Mason County, and his wife ending up in jail in Hart for theft as well.
Another interesting story out of Ferry is that of the first death in the township. According to the wishes of Patrick McFarland, he was to be buried in a Catholic cemetery after his death. And so, his body was conveyed through the woods some 60 miles by J. W. Sweet and his team of oxen, from Ferry all the way to Grand Rapids. McFarland’s widow had no money to pay for the burial, but upon hearing the circumstances, “the Catholics of Grand Rapids raised sufficient by subscriptions to pay all funeral expenses and a surplus for the widow.”
Leaving tales of death and murder aside, a slightly happier story comes to us from the early days of Greenwood Township. In 1857, one Benjamin Ish of Oceana was to marry one Ellen Cunningham from Muskegon. They invited all of their friends together for a celebration, and the clergyman to perform the ceremony was supposed to come from White River with the mail carrier. However, when the minister arrived, they learned that he was not ordained, and so his work would not be legal and irrevocable!
“Nothing daunted,” it is written, “the happy pair waiting until 3 o’clock next morning, when a trusty messenger arrived with old Mr. Stewart, a justice of the peace, who lived five or six miles away in the wild woods of Newaygo. To make it legal—on a cold, chilly, star-lit night, under the canopy of heaven—the company crossed the road, and after crawling over a brush fence, stood on the soil of Newaygo, when the justice joined them as man and wife.” We are guaranteed that, as inauspicious as the marriage was, their union was a happy one.
