AN OLD RELIC

Colonist, Volume XVIII, Issue 2038, 19 February 1876, Page 4

AN OLD RELIC

{From the Detroit Free Press.)

It "WAS one day in the early history of Detroit that John Snow was born. He would probably have weighed nine pounds if thero had been any scales in the territory to weigh him on. A? thero was no way to weigh him, he went his way unweighed (patent). When Jolm Snow had crawled'over the pioneer logs, rolled in the mud and eaten Johnny-cake until ho was fourteen years old, his mother diod. If his lather had been like some men, he would have put a weed on his hat, engaged a cheap housekeeper, and continued business at the old stand without any interruption. But he wasn't like some men. He married a cousin who had two or three children big enough to fight John, and so the boy's aunt becaoie his mother, and his father became his uncle. In due time John Snow had a sister. No, he hadn't either. It was a girl, but he didn't know whether she was a step-sister, or a cousin, or a halfsister. Some said that the girl would be his grandmother if she lived long enough, and he was almost discouraged. In about two years more a boy was born, and John figured and figured until he made out that he. was half-uncle to his step-brother, and that his step-brother was his own uncle. 'Whiie John was off on a fishiug excursion at Lake Superior one of his half-brothers married and John came home to find another baby. He wanted to know what relation he was to ! his youngster, and he marked the fence all'over with chulk, and could not reach any satisfactory conclusion. It rather seemed to him that lie was a quarter-brother or a step-uncle,, but there was the faot staring him in the fiico that the child's step uncle was also his step-grandfather, and it might be his own cousin for all he could make out. For two or three years John moped around, among the Indian's and fur-buyers, and then in a fit of desperation married one of his aunt-step-mother's daughters and became brother-in-law to his cousin-half-brother, son-in-law to his aunt-step-mother, and the same to his 'father-step-uncle. He might have liyed on and been happy if the public had let him alone^ but school-teachers went on and made out that'he was his uncle's aunt and his step-mother's grandfather,'and that he was no relation to himself, and he pined away and died. .

It isn't a great big four-story, with a basement and bronze trimmings, but John {Snow's weather-beaten tombstone was unearthed afc the Detroit Eastern Hay! Market, by some diggers, Saturday; and it ib well that his fate be known. ' ■ , : , j