LAKE SUPERIOR COUNTRY page-16

Health and comfort were the first considerations. Card parties and dancing parties were always in order. Concerts and lectures were also in vogue. There being few if any public halls, entertainments were held at private houses. Friendships were sincere and charity abounded. These pioneers were generous and their great benevolence reached out cheerfully to the poor and needy, in remotest corners.
Down to the year 1865, the upper peninsula had no resident judge. The district or circuit judge resided in Detroit and only visited the upper peninsula in the summer. He was attended by a number of lawyers from Detroit and other towns, who acted as attorneys and advocates in the business which came before this perambulating court. The court and retinue, while attending to business, were benefited by the salubrious air of the lake, went a fishing, dined out, in short, enjoyed a luxurious vacation. They gathered in most of the shekels to be had in the law practice of that country. his system was unpopular, for it prevented the settlement in the country of good lawyers, or impoverished those who had cast their lot in with us, and the great commercial and mining interests had to go half the year without counsel. In criminal cases it was still worse, for a man arrested in October, for supposed crime, remained in jail, a county charge, until the following June. If the prisoner was innocent, the hardship of the case was aggravated. Therefore at the session of the Legislature of 1864-5, the people of the upper peninsula, instructed their senator and representatives to bring in a bill for a new district, with a resident judge.