The history of Crystal Township really begins with an 1855 government treaty, by which the Native American tribes in the Grand River area gave up their lands for a reservation to the North. In 1857-1858, those few Native tribes arrived in Pentwater via steamer ships, and then traveled to their new homes in Elbridge and Crystal townships. The government sought to furnish the reservation with schools, teachers and a blacksmith, and so on July 27, 1861, Jared. H. Gay arrived in Crystal.
He served as the town blacksmith for a salary of $600. It is around Gay’s blacksmith shop that the town of Crystal Valley began to take shape. In fact, it was Mr. Gay’s wife, Catherine Gay, who named the township, and it was “the beautiful crystal streams of water” that suggested the name to her.
The first white settler after Mr. Gay was a man named Dr. James J. Kitteredge, who located on section 16 in the fall of 1863. Funnily enough, the doctor had moved to Crystal in an attempt to abandon his medical practice and take up the farm life instead, but we are told, “it was of no avail, as the settlers were urgent for his services, and the demands of suffering humanity were too much for the kind-hearted doctor…”
Later in the same year, one Charles Willet arrived with his brother-in-law, Albert Aldridge, who was only 18 at the time. A man named George Lammon commenced homesteading 160 acres on Section 8 in 1864. William Murch and his son-in-law, Marion Huff, took up homesteading on Section 7 in 1866.
By this time, the township was already underway. Jared Gay began trying to separate the township of Crystal from Weare in 1865. At first, there were not enough registered voters, so he deeded lands to some of the other settlers; George Lammon, Charles Willet, and Albert Aldridge. However, there was some pushback from parties in Elbridge and Weare. Gay had to hire a lawyer out of Pentwater “to advocate his cause.”
He was eventually successful. Crystal Township was set apart from Weare in 1865, and the first town meeting was held in Gay’s blacksmith shop. Crystal Township in these early days was much bigger. It included present-day Crystal and Colfax. Colfax wouldn’t be set apart until 1869.
One interesting story from the old days of Crystal tells of a man named Henry Cole, who became buried in his own well and survived. This happened on April 24, 1871. Mr. Cole climbed down into his well to retrieve a dropped bucket. Near the bottom he used one of the stones in the wall as a step, and it collapsed, burying him under 26-feet of stone and dirt.
To help extract him, a “scientific well digger” named D. R. Walters came and carefully removed the stones for 12 and a half hours. As they drew closer, they were surprised to find Mr. Cole conscious and praying. A single stone weighing 25 pounds was resting directly on Mr. Cole’s head, and yet he received only bruising, with no serious injuries.
The two sources that record this event conclude it differently. Hartwick and Tuller’s books claim that Cole attributed his deliverance, “directly to the help of God.” Meanwhile, Page’s History of Oceana County says, “Some think it would have been as well if he had passed away when he was a ‘praying man,’ as he afterwards went back on the record.”
When Crystal was serving as a reservation, the Native Americans would receive an annual pension from the U.S. government. We are told that “these annual Indian ‘pension meetings’ were great events for the Indians and the early white settlers.” Well, one of these meetings was recorded in Page’s History of Oceana, as it would seem the government tried to pay them off in greenbacks, a type of paper currency issued during the Civil War that was not backed by the gold standard of the time.
This resulted in nearly 1,200 Native Americans residing at Gay’s for three to four weeks. During that time, they consumed, “five fat oxen, one cow and one heifer and…16 barrels of pork….” Mrs. Gay had five female cooks at her employ, and John Bean Jr. sent in 18 barrels of cider “to drown their grief.” The story is concluded with, “but John R. Robinson knew what would do better than this, as he had stronger liquors. He kept a barrel. The Indians were paid in greenbacks.”
