Author: Schenck, John S.
Title: History of Ionia and Montcalm counties, Michigan.
Publication date: 1881
Michigan County Histories Website

HISTORY OF IONIA COUNTY, MICHIGAN - "ABRAM S. WADSWORTH'S FOIBLES"
Early History of Abram Scranton Wadsworth in Portland, Ionia County, Michigan

Elisha Newman in' 1833, and of urging forward his originally-conceived project of utilizing the power on the Looking-Glass River began work upon the task of damming the Looking-Glass. It was a good deal of a job, and an expensive one, but it was put through without a halt, as was the building of a saw-mill.   Not long after Newman set the Looking-Glass to the business of turning a mill-wheel for them, one Abram S. Wadsworth appeared upon the scene and determined to make the waters of the Grand River serve him a similarly useful purpose. He purchased some land on the west side of the stream, threw a dam across it,  and began at once to build a saw-mill and grist-mill near where R. B. Smith's grist-mill stands. Although Wadsworth displayed an extraordinary amount of zeal and energy in his undertakings and promised great things, he accomplished little or nothing. His mills he never finished, and his dam was twice carried away by floods. Thereupon he grew discouraged, sold his mill-machinery to the Newmans, and departed for other fields. He continued elsewhere, however, to fail in his enterprises, just as he had failed at Portland. His energy was something remarkable, but his judgment was the rock upon which he invariably went to pieces. On one occasion, however, his energy and judgment combined to put him in the way of a paying speculation. Despite his repeated failures, he was a sanguine person, and he found, moreover, plenty of people who gladly manifested confidence in him.

To some of these people, resident in Portland, he proposed, in the year 1849, the scheme of locating mining-lands in the Lake Superior region, there being at that time a high fever abroad in favor of mining land speculations in that newly developed country. Wadsworth's proposition to his coadjutors was that they should supply the funds for building a vessel and equipping her for a voyage to the mining-country, and that he, personally directing the voyage, would locate the mining-lands for his friends and himself, and as a natural result they would all make their everlasting fortunes. The confiding Portlandites were carried away with enthusiastic and golden anticipations touching the tempting bait held out by Wadsworth, and with one accord they entered into the project with open purses. Wadsworth built his vessel at Portland, rigged it sloop fashion, named it the " North Star," loaded it with provisions, and set sail one day amid the general hurrahs and wild enthusiasm of the villagers, who to forcibly express their delight
improvised an old mill-crank as a cannon and made the welkin fairly ring. Wadsworth poled down the river and out into the blue waters of Lake  Michigan, but how he progressed thereafter and what happened to him and his
gallant bark and crew are not matters of such certain elucidation. In a general way it may, however, be narrated that neither he nor his gallant crew, nor yet his gallant bark, returned to Portland to cheer and sustain the hearts and hopes of' the trustful capitalists who had sent the noble Wadsworth forth upon the world.