Smith Bayou

Hezekiah (1816-1896) and Lucinda (1824-1884) Smith were free African Americans who moved from Ohio to Michigan and settled near Ferrysburg in the 1840s. Hezekiah worked as a blacksmith and eventually became a prominent landowner and farmer in the region. In 1849 he purchased forty acres on the shore of Spring Lake. By 1862 he had expanded his farm to 253 acres. He amassed 503 acres over his lifetime. Here he grew cereal crops and more than twenty acres of apple and peach trees. The fruit he produced received several premium awards at the county fair, and the State Board of Agriculture cited his orchard as “one of the finest” and among the oldest around Spring Lake. The State Horticultural Society also praised the quality of his trees. While the Smiths lived here, this arm of Spring Lake became known as Smith Bayou.

[Back]: By 1880 nineteen African American families lived in Grand Haven, Spring Lake, and Ferrysburg. Hezekiah Smith was a leader of this community from the 1860s to the 1890s, as well as president of an association of African Americans who lived in Muskegon and Ottawa Counties. In October 1860 they elected Hezekiah to represent them in Battle Creek at the Colored People’s Convention held to “advance the condition” of African Americans. The Grand Haven News reported that Smith pledged to his constituents “to do all in his power to secure for them the right of suffrage.” Hezekiah represented the community again in 1894 as one of seven delegates to an equal rights convention in Grand Rapids. After his wife Lucinda’s death, Hezekiah re-married twice—first to Helen Hicks in 1884, and then to Sarah Miller in 1894. Sarah inherited his farm.