Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2013, All Rights Reserved U.S. Data Repository Please read U.S. Data Repository Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the US Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ ========================================================================= U.S. Data Repository NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization. Non-commercial organizations desiring to use this material must obtain the consent of the transcriber prior to use. Individuals desiring to use this material in their own research may do so. ========================================================================= Formatted by U.S. Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== SOURCE: History of St. Clair County, Mich. A. T. Andreas & Co., Chicago - 1883 [Page 551 - 553] EDWARD PETIT Edward Petit was born February 7, 1813, in a log house built by his father, near the foot of the present Court street, Port Huron. He was the oldest and now only living son of Anselm Petit. His mother was Angelique Campau, daughter of Simon Campau and Angelique Bourdon, from Quebec. Mrs. Campau, the grandmother, was one of fourteen children, seven sons and seven daughters. She died at the house of Lebby Campau, in Detroit, aged ninety- six years. A daughter married one McDougal, who kept slaves - two of them, named Jo and Callette - may be remembered by persons now living in Detroit. Callette, after the death of her mistress, went to live with Lebby Campau, at whose house she died. When Mr. Petit was but a few months old, the family was obliged to flee for safety to Detroit, where they remained till the close of the war (1812), when they returned home, and his father assisted in building Fort Gratiot. About the year 1821, Mr. John S. Hudson and wife, Mr. and Mrs. Hart and Miss Osmer opened a missionary school at the fort, for the benefit of the Indians and any that chose to attend. The first year they met with poor success, the Indians wholly re- fusing to receive instruction, believing or fearing that the missionaries wished to enslave them. But after getting an in- terpreter, named Javerodd, the school numbered some fifty or sixty, and was continued three years, until the missionaries were removed to Mackinaw. Thirty of the Indians followed them thither, thus proving their attachment to these self-denying, good people. At this school Mr. Petit took his first and only lessons, which were learned in a box of sand. Each pupil was provided with a sharpened stick, and formed letters in the sand after a copy placed upon the wall. After the inspection of the teacher, the work was rubbed out and another trial made. What a change have these fifty years witnessed! The chief amusements of Mr. Petit's boyhood were those of the Indian - hunting and fishing. The Indians were very numerous, and from them he learned their language - French being the language of his parents, and English settlers coming in, he learned simultaneously the French, Indian and English languages, all three of which he now speaks with fluency - and on this account, as well as his enterprising spirit, he was well calculated to trade for the fur companies, and in that trade he was employed almost from boyhood. He well remembers the visits of old Father Badin at his father's house, and in 1828, at St. Ann's Church, in Detroit, he received the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church from the hands of Pere Richard. During that year, and at only fifteen years of age, he en- gaged in the Indian trade and spent the winter on the Canadian side, near the Sauble. He took supplies of shot, powder, cali- coes and blue broadcloth, one and three-fourths yards of which was called a blanket. The Indians gave for them maple sugar and furs - otter, beaver, mink, marten and bear skins. Of the early visits of the steamer Superior, he has a distinct re- collection. About four times a year she was was accustomed to visit this place for wood, dry pine being deemed the only wood suitable for steamboats. A Mr. Hatch had a contract to supply the wood. The captain of the boat charged all who went aboard to visit her one shilling each. "Our whole family," says Mr. Petit, "visited the boat, and going on board, stood in mute admiration of the most beautiful thing we had ever seen. We thought we were in heaven." When in the Indian trade, in the employ of Gurden and Ephraim Williams, then of the fur company, Mr. Petit had a post on the Cass River, at a place called Skop-ti-qua-non, making a very short bend in the river, shaped like a horseshoe. The Indians on that river were numerous and unusually intelligent. The traders had plenty to eat, and plenty to do looking them up and bartering with them. Special interest had been awakened by the failure of all the traders to find an encampment of five or six families of Indians who had been gone all winter, and must necessarily have great quantities of furs, or skins as they were called. Party after party went out and returned, not having found them. The head of the camp was Tawas, a cunning old fellow, one of whose sons had blue eyes. Young Petit resolved to secure this prize, if perseverance would accomplish it, and started out with provisions on his back for a week, together with articles for barter. He took with him as guide an Indian with one arm. The other had been sacrificed to the revenge of the Indians, who had shot him be- cause he had murdered his own wife at la Riviere Delude. The two started off and passed over to Sebewaing, then following round the lake came down to the place now known as White Rock, where they encamped, after making for themselves a lodge of bark. Before morning, a drenching rain set in, and with nothing to cheer, and only one loaf of bread remaining, they set forth renewing their search, which was rewarded after as tramp of five miles. Tawas and his families were found pre- paring to make sugar. They had brass kettles of all sizes, which had been given them by the British Government. They had selected this spot on account of its facilities for fishing. When found they were almost in a starving condition, having no food at all except moose tallow scraps. Petit divided with them his only loaf of bread, and in return shared their hospitality in the shape of scraps of moose tallow for several days. He purchased, during this time, 500 marten skins at $1 each, which were readily sold at $2. Only the finest of the furs could they take away. The coarse ones were left for later traders; and, returning to camp rejoicing, his wages were quadrupled by his employers. Another winter, while in the Indian trade, he was three months with only one man for company, on the Canada side of the lake. Getting short of provisions, he sent the man forty miles, to Goderich, for food. The snow fell during his absence, and was so deep that return was impossible. The bread and crackers gave out, and he had nothing left but whole corn, without any salt. After some days, an old Indian came in from the hunting grounds on the Thames, bringing on his back a basket he had made from elm bark, filled with honey, found on his way in a tree. After that, to use his own expression, they "lived first-rate on corn and honey." As soon as the sun came out so as to melt the snow and form a crust, the man who had been sent for food re- turned on snow-shoes, and soon four Frenchmen came out, bringing relief to the starving trader. It was in this vicinity, on the Sauble, about forty miles from Sarnia, that he observed the ruins of an ancient house. Pacing the size, he found it to have been forty by twenty- four feet on the ground. On the middle of the south or gable end, was a chimney eighteen feet high, in excellent preserva- tion, built of stone with an open fire-place. The fire-place had sunk below the surface. This ruin had a garden surrounding it, ten or twelve rods wide by twenty long, marked by ditches and alleys. And most remarkable of all, even wonderful, inside the walls of the house a splendid oak had grown to be three feet in diameter and sixty feet high, without a limb and perfectly straight. It seemed to be of a second growth, and must have been 150 years in reaching the proportions observed. On inquiry of an aged Saguenay chief, eighty-four years old, he stated that a white man built the house at the time his great-great-great- great-grandfather lived, and that white people lived then in all the country round; that they were not Frenchmen, and that everything, no matter of how great or small value, was sold for a peminick, meaning dollar. Who could these generous white men of the north have been? After so varied an experience in border and Indian life, Mr. Petit, scarcely past middle age, resides in the place of his birth, blessed with ample means, the fruit of his own industry and well-directed enterprise. He is a zealous member of the Congregational Church, and lives to enjoy the luxury of doing good, and to help build up those institutions of benevolence and Christianity which, in so short a period of time, have changed the wilderness, where only the swarthy Indian roamed, to the city whose schoolhouses and churches guard and develop the intellectual, moral and religious culture of its thousands. For the facts and incidents of the foregoing sketch of early French settlers of Port Huron, I am largely indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Petit, and their only daughter, Mrs. Louise Petit Smith. ===========================================================================