Thousand Days of Yesterday

“Captain John Dix was born in Littleton, Massachusetts in 1796 and to sea at sixteen. He bore the title Captain, served on a privateer in the War of 1812, and was shipwrecked off New Zealand. We can only speculate why he chose to emigrate to the Territory of Michingan in 1824. Apparantly, after years at sea, he had returned home, met and courted a girl from a “good Massachusetts family.” Consequently he must have determined to make a name for himself and prepare to support a wife in the style to which she was accustomed.”
(Excerpt from Of Dixboro: Lest We Forget by Carol Willits Freeman)

Captain John Dix rode into this area from Massachusetts in 1824 and decided that the sandy loam-flowing creed and abundant timber made it a perfect spot to settle. He purchased 470 acres for $586.40 and began the village of Dixboro.

On this site, 1880, Frank Bush built his family home on Plymouth Rd., which for many years to come was the main route between Ann Arbor and Detroit. An old hand pump, visible outside the north windows at the west end of the dining room, tapped the purest and most abundant water supply in the area and was used by the Dixboro settlers whose own well ran dry.