(P.44) In his first address to the county pioneer, society Judge Turner discussed the first settlers in a social way. He could not remember any extensive colonization but said that "there were to be found among the early settlers men from Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales, New England, New York, Ohio and the Canadas. They had never seen or heard of each other before. This sort of mixed settlement was as pleasant as any. The mormon is doomed to see the hated gentile climb his fence ere it is scarcely built. The most carefully consorted communities can scarcely preserve their exclusiveness for an hour. I conclude therefore that Livingston county made as much progress and had really as much amusement as any other."

     Hon. Jerome W. Turner once said: "Howell was a town from the start with a grin on its conntenence, which never relaxed but continually flowed into guffaws." In 1839 Shubael B. Slitter emigrated to Howell from Ann Arbor, where he had moved from New York four years before, and bought of Simon P. Shope the tract east of the village on the Grand River road as it was by this time called, about where it is crossed by the Ann Arbor railway. On this land there (P.45) was a house built by Alexander Fraser for a residence to which Sliter added a log and a frame addition and opened a hotel. To this hotel and its proprietor is largely due the reputation for fun which Howell soon gained abroad.

     In an impromptu address to the pioneer society in 1873 Judge Turner told this story: In these early days court week was the great occasion of the new county. Everybody was at court. The crowd that gathered at Sliter's at such time, was far beyond all his limited sleeping accommodations. His bar room floor was literally covered with jurors and witnesses during the nights.

     One night when the floor was about as densely populated as it could be with sleepers two lawyers named George Danforth and Olney Hawkins from Ann Arbor, crawled out the back way, and by inducements in the shape of Indian corn, succeeded in calling two large hogs to the bar room door and getting them inside. Then they started a bulldog Slitter owned after the hogs and quietly but swiftly retired to their beds in a rear passage. It Slitter's dog ever had any failings they could not be urged against his persistency as a biter. The scene that followed would baffle description. The squealing of a captured hog is always very thrilling but when dinned into the ears of sleeping men at the dead of night, and it is accompanied by vicious kicks and thumps on their bodies it is alarming. (P.46) The condition of affairs in these days is best described by two gentlemen who were here at the time. We quote from Judge Turner and his son above quoted.

     "Men from the east who had no design of settling here, staged it out from Detroit, or over from Dexter, to spend a few days in laughing. One man I know, who resided in the city of New York, who has since told me that he was accustomed to travel through almost every town in the United States large enough to hold a meeting house without finding one that could equal Howell for fun. There was an abandonment about it, too, that gave it zest, men laughed in hearty deep-chested tones here in the back woods, and assembled to see the perpetration of a practical joke in more numerical strength than they did at a funeral. Nobody was in a hurry, no one was careful or troubled about many things, we had actors and an audience. Men forsook what little business they had for simple sport. One man I knew--Elijah Coffren, a carpenter and joiner by trade,--who would come down from the roof of a promising job to join in a little hilarity, and not be able to get away from it so that he could return in a month. The super-urgent business was fun; that was a complete plea to any declaration for damages on account of any delay in work. Even shows which were supposed to carry about with them a sort of stereotyped humor which can make an hour passable, were tame concerns here in those early days and it was two to one that  (P.47) something laughable would happen to them before they left the place. Subjects of mesmerism underwent copious inundations of cold water; the magic lantern cuirass suddenly grew cloudy with ink, and the return of pewter and tin sixpences astonished the showman when he counted up after the performance. Apropos of this there were at an early day, organized in Howell, companies of squirters who were armed with pint and quart squirt guns with which they deluged all bibulous individuals. A man could get on a drunk in the daytime but he had need to watch the sun very closely and not be seen around after nightfall.

      "Some of the subjects of this sport were somewhat ugly; for instance Levi Bristol, a square fighter, a man who would have been known as an athlete among the Thebians, but who usually got cornered when he came to town. He was emphatically an ugly customer and he asserted in all sorts of forcible inelegance, that 'the first man who squirts any water onto me'll get his head knocked off,' I remember as though it were but yesterday, his standing one afternoon nearly in front of Kellogg & Austin's store--present location --and he looked like one of Dumas' 'colossal wrestlers' in the Olympic ring, as he dared the whole town to furnish him an antagonist who should come bearing a tin squirt gun. Boy as I was I had read the story of Goliath of Gath, and when I saw a single person, a stripling in size emerge from a building on the street with a quart squirt gun at 'present arms' and advance (P.48) toward this gawk, I I must confess I thought I could see a complete repetition of that historical incident. I do not know that I was, certain then or that I am entirely positive now who the lad was who went out against him but he had a wonderful similarity to one Leander Smith, who once lived in Howell, so similar as to puzzle people as to the question of identity. A fine stream from the youth's gun struck Bristol fair and square in the eyes! Bristol plunged down like a kingfisher, and whirled himself along in knots and spirals through the dirt of the street uttering the most abominable yells that ever issued from human lips. He did not seem to know where he was going or to have the least care. He burst through the front door of Elisha Hazard's grocery, knocking over a counter and roaring like a bull of Bashan! Well, whisky and pepper-sauce, in equal parts is not a very pleasant eye lotion, and Bristol's visits to Howell became more and more infrequent and of a less turbulent character.

     "The general store was a rendezvous and its mammoth stove became somewhat of a social shrine. There the people gathered and there they brought out their jewels, like the toads, after dark. These jewels served our purpose then, let us hope that they may not be entirely unregarded now."

     "There lived here, a good many years ago, a man who was familiarly called 'Old Cuff Simons,' of genial good-nature, but he was prone to take to much liquor. (P.49) The boys, on certain occasions of his intoxication, would deluge the old man with water to an extent which would satisfy any reasonable Thompsonian. One evening they were engaged in this pastime in a hotel kept by George Curtis in this place, and an elderly stranger, who happened to be present thinking it to be an imposition on the old man, strongly remonstrated with the boys against what he termed 'such shameful conduct.'  But what was his surprise when Simons turned upon him with open jack-knife saying: 'You're a transient person (hic) mind your own (hic) business; the boys are going (hic) to have their sport.' In New York or Boston such interference might have been regarded as timely by a besieged drinker, but at Livingston Center it was resented by the victim with far more warmth than by his persecutors."

     One day the boys secured an old crate in which dishes had been shipped, and got it ready for Simons when he should get on a drunk. It wasn't a great while before they had use for their cage. "Old Cuff" thought the joke a good one when they coaxed him out on the public square and got him into the trap. He roared and bellowed for awhile, imitating a wild animal. After awhile he tired of it and wanted to get out but the old crate war, fixed up too strong and it was half a day or more before he was released.

     About 1840 the land was full of prospectors and adventurers and these numerous hotels did a much larger (P.50) business proportionately than they would today. Although Sliter's was some distance from town and a long stretch of corduroy road lay between the village and the hotel it was a popular resort. It came to be understood however that the man who stopped there must expect to become the victim of some joke before he left and few got away without an experience more or less funny.

     Sliter afterwards settled in Deerfield where his wife died. After that he went to Kent county and started another hotel but lost it in a trade for land which only existed in the mind of the speculator who beat him out of his property.

      Allen C. Weston started some kind of a stage line between Howell and Detroit in 1838 and in 1840 began the erection of a hotel. Before it was finished his eyesight failed and he traded the property and stage line to Benjamine Spring for land on section 15. Spring completed the hotel and built a new stage which was probably as odd as the odd character who ran the line. It was painted red and named the "Red Bird." It was not only a vehicle for land traffic but carried passengers safely through the rapids near Detroit where it served as a boat.

     Spring was a worthy contemporary of Sliter. It is said that be had a boarder who was more prompt to meals than he was to pay his bill. Spring met him at the dining room door as he was coming out with several boarders one day, and handing him some (P.51) money, told him "for pity sakes when you come next time, stop and pay for what you eat." Spring acknowledged himself beaten when the boarder took his cash and calling the crowd with him, went over to the bar of another hotel and set-em-up.

     Spring was a great admirer of General Cass. The old veteran stopped at his hotel when campaigning here and Spring went into the dining room himself to see that his noted guest was properly cared for. Judge of his consternation when he saw the general pull a hair out of the butter. But Spring was not to be daunted and called out to his wife, in a voice which could be heard all over the room, telling her to go over to Gay's store and see if she couldn't find some butter in which the hairs were better rotted.

     One summer night in 1844, when a party of men were busy with cards at Spring's hotel their bottle was left so near the window that some boys reached in and stole it. The effect upon them was as a live coal which had roused Edward F. Gay who had decided to try and better the condition by building a temperance hotel. Accordingly he talked the matter over with his neighbors and decided to buy the lot where the Goodnow block now stands, at the corner of Grand River and Division streets. Unfortunately he told some of his neighbors of this decision and the opposition attempted to head off his temperance movement. Hezekiah Gates hurried off to Detroit the day before Gay was to go, and bought the lot. As soon as (P.52) he returned he began arranging for the erection of a hotel which afterwards became Union Hall and was prominent here for years.

     Mr. Gay learned of the Gates scheme just before leaving for Detroit, and selected another site which was the lot upon which stands the buildings occupied by the First State and Savings Bank and Barron & Wine's drug store. This hotel was the first brick building in Howell, and the first temperance hotel for miles around. The brick for its erection were burned on Mr. Gay's own farm in Marion, now occupied by Eastman's dairy farm.  Z. M. Drew furnished the lime from a kiln he had established near the Marion town line. Hon. C. C. Ellsworth afterwards a prominent lawyer here, was the first landlord. Mr. Ellsworth surely was Daniel like for he opened the hotel with a flag flying to the breeze upon which was inscribed "Liberty and Temperance." Mr. Gay kept the hotel for many years and then sold it. It was purchased after a while by Mr. Pebbles and its name changed to Livingston Hotel. It remained a temperance hotel until torn down when John Weimeister built the present block in 1869.

     Superstitious ones were not at all surprised at the fate of Hezekiah Gates and his project. The building of his hotel proved too great a project for his financial resources. Before its completion he was obliged to go into bankruptcy. The property was acquired by Taylor & McPherson and changed hands a number of (P.53) times until 1871, when Union Hall as it was then known, was burned.

     Shaft's hotel which was built a little later than the others mentioned, really belonged to this period. It's first owner was William C. Shaft who was Spring's opposition in the stage business to Detroit. It changed hands several times until 1865, when it was purchased by Benjamine H. Rubert who added a third story and ran the house successfully until his death. His son Seth B. Rubert ran the house a number of years. It has changed hands two or three times since Mr. Rubert died but still bears his name.