Last Chance Mile: The Reinvention of an American Community

Chapter Two: Invention of an American Community

Chapter Two: Invention of an American Community

There was never a day when Sophie de Marsac Campau did not wake up to hardship and loneliness.

Her childhood probably ended as it did for most girls in the 1800s, at the age of 14. After that it was day after day of toil. Water was boiled and clothes were washed, by hand, in that hot, hot water.  If she was lucky, she had a hand-operated washing machine. Like most women, she probably just had a washboard.

Dirt was everywhere. Dust was on everything. Dust from the dirty paths that passed for streets, dust from the dried manure that fell from horses.  Flies and the diseases they carried were everywhere. Thick clouds of flies were attracted by outhouses, latrine trenches and mounds of garbage behind Grand Rapids homes.  

 Louis Campau, met and married Sophie in Detroit, then brought her to what would become Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1827. He put food on their table by establishing a trading post. 

Sophie spoke only French. The Indian women spoke their own language. The “Yankee” women who came before her spoke only English.

Sophie only had one friend. Mrs. Slater, the missionary’s wife, who spoke no French, but able to communicate with Sophie through a kind of sign language they created. They never spoke a word. What good would that have done?

Another day spent in Grand Rapids.

Aside from her husband, those sign-language conversations were the only human interaction Sophie had in this God-forsaken wilderness that Louis had decided to make their home.

This lesson Sophie learned would be handed down through generations of Grand Rapidians: if you are going to make it, you are going to make it on your own. The people of West Michigan are for the most part a very self-reliant breed. It is in their DNA. If you are first-generation, you pick it up through osmosis. Thought and culture molecules are everywhere. Grand Rapids doesn’t keep its norms and mores secret.

Another lesson learned that would prove to be very transferable to those who followed the Campau family was the lesson of capitalism, though it wasn’t known by that name in Sophie and her husband’s day. They were just making a living.

Louis, who would become one of the founders of Grand Rapids, was a fur trader. That only went so far. Campau made money however he could. Louis was a businessman above all else who woke up every day knowing that it was up to him to provide for himself and his incredibly lonely wife, Sophie.

Louis was just as much an outsider as Sophie, as were the Yankee men and women who preceded them.  But he carved out a place for himself in what would become Grand Rapids. His log huts and trading post were the first scars on the wilderness that before him and his people was unspoiled.

He was also more than just a fur trading, whiskey-selling business man. He was what generations after him would call, an entrepreneur. The people who built Medical Mile were no less a pioneer than Louis, and he was no less an entrepreneur. 

Two other men who would become legends in Grand Rapids also brought their families, along with their dreams and ambitions.  Louis, Lucius Lyon and John Ball were to form an uneasy alliance -- a triad of founding, development and promotion that would create the town that would be known as Grand Rapids.

Life never got any easier for Sophie. Her husband’s power and influence couldn’t buy her a friend. West Michigan’s weather didn’t make her life any easier. There are more cloudy days than sunny days in Grand Rapids, far more.

Their winters-- and ours today-- can be brutal. The summers are broiling and humid. The spring and autumn offer only a few months of relief. 

Sophie, Louis and the rest of the people of Grand Rapids had to deal with the torrential rains of spring and summer, along with the melting winter snow that forced them to wade ankle-deep through the mud, slop and horse manure to shop, to live, merely to exist.