Little did the stern though kind-hearted citizens of Owosso, Michigan realize that on the eventful morning of June 12, 1878, the newly-born second son of James Moran and Abigail Griffen Curwood would in time plummet across the literary horizon as the brightest star to have appeared in years. His name was James Oliver Curwood.

From the outset the parents had trouble with their new son, finding it very difficult to please his childish desires. Perhaps ancestry had a bearing here, and if it did, it may all be traced back to the thrilling career of the famous Captain Frederick A. Marrayat, great seaman and popular novelist of yesteryear. He was the lad’s great-uncle.

Jimmie Curwood’s birth took place in the days when Owosso was a small town of some eight thousand population, and trees grew in the center of the streets. It was that era of the nineteenth century when livestock and fowl were free to roam about the city at will, and the horse and buggy played an important part in the development of transportation.

Likewise so it was in that district of Owosso known as West Town. It was in this particular part of town that Jimmie Curwood played so much with his friends (bad though they were), and came forth from bitter schoolboy battles unscathed. Later in life he remarked about West Town in the following manner:

“Had I continued to live in West Town at Owosso, I might have become a genius, but Fate determined a change was advisable when I was six years old.”

The city of Owosso today is far removed from what it was in the childhood days of James Oliver Curwood. Today luxurious homes line the paved streets and tall buildings dot the skyline where once stood low flat ones. Beautiful homes have filled up the empty spaces that were once wide within the city limits, but that same feeling and general atmosphere of drowsiness persists just as it did fifty years ago.

Tall, stately trees line the smooth streets and many automobiles traverse these thoroughfares where once the old horse and buggy moved slowly along.

Today Owosso is in the very heart of the Michigan vacationland. Running practically through the very center of the city is the smooth flowing Shiawassee river, better known as “Sparkling Waters.”

Although Owosso has grown in population from eight to fifteen thousand since Jim Curwood’s birth and boyhood days, her people remain very much the same as they were then.

West Town! A haven for growing children and a headache for grownups. It was here in West Town that Jimmie Curwood grew up and also where he all but drove his very patient parents insane with his juvenile rascality.

With his chum, Charlie Miller, it seems that there was hardly anything the pair of them would not attempt to do. Stealing fruit and playing “hookey” from school were just a few among the many items that always kept the good citizens of Owosso on the constant alert.

They fished, hunted and trapped all along the banks of the Shiawassee, which flows through the city in a great sweeping bend (when they really should have been in school). The river is flanked on either side by some of the most perfectly shaped trees that man has ever looked upon.

Jimmie and Charlie often staged and executed raids upon the fruit stands of old Mike Gazzera. Then as they would run away with their plunder tucked safely beneath their dirty blouses they would glance back and see the grey-headed old Italian shaking his fist at them and threatening them with all types of punishment. Fortunately enough for both, old Mike thought far too much of them and never actually carried out his plans of chastisement.

Probably the one outstanding characteristic of Jim Curwood as a young boy was the fact that he was seldom if ever clean of face or clothing. Try as she might to keep her bewildering offspring clean, his dear old mother seldom succeeded for much more than an hour or two at a time. For immediately after having been thoroughly cleaned up young Jimmie would head for the nearest schoolboy fight or the dirtiest part of West Town and proceed to get himself dirty again. Indeed he was a child prodigy and therein lies the reason for the old saying, which is sad but true: “why mothers get gray.” It is indeed no wonder that the townspeople would oft-times shake their heads and sigh:

“Them two’ll never amount to a hill of beans.” But Jimmie and Charlie amazed and fooled them all.

At the rather seedy, uneventful and undecided age of five years, when a youngster wants to be everything from a minister of the gospel to heavyweight boxing champion of the world, both Jimmie’s and Charlie’s parents decided that their sons should embark upon some sort of careers. Before Jimmie was born, his parents had decided what their second son would do for his life’s work. They had chosen music and the classics for him; Charlie’s parents had chosen literature and the arts for him.

So for a short while Jimmie practiced his music lessons but soon gave them up as hopeless, as did his parents, for the lad hated music lessons at that age with an undying hatred. As far as Charlie’s future in the field of literature was concerned, he too abandoned his parents’ choice.

Many things enter into the course of a child’s life even as they do with a grown-up, and consequently the career of a musician for Jimmie did not materialize. Instead the lad developed into one of the world’s foremost authors and conservationists of his time. It was Charlie Miller who became quite adept as an accomplished musician.

With the surrender of Lord Cornwallis came a man of adventurous spirit and Dutch descent into the land of the Mohawks and the Oneidas. As he journeyed through this country making friends with the Indian tribes, he chanced upon and fell madly in love with a beautiful Mohawk princess from a little village near the head waters of the Canada river. As to her name, it has not been learned, but as to her beauty, all the men and women of those days readily vouched. For she was as tall and as slender as the most delicate reed. The tiny moccasins which covered her feet were the smallest ever seen by her tribe. Indeed, she was the pride and joy of that village of Mohawks and of all tribes who had seen her as she roamed the forests.

Jim Curwood’s mother very distinctly remembers seeing this wilderness beauty. At that time Mrs. Curwood was but a child of ten and the lovely Indian princess was well past her eightieth birthday.

Her beauty was indeed bewitching and all white men, as well as the redman who had set eyes upon her loveliness, fell in love with her. Her hair was long, black and radiantly glossy. The shoes she wore upon her feet were so small that Jim’s mother, then but ten years of age, could not have put her feet into them.

It was the adventurous Dutchman wandering through the Mohawk region shortly after the Cornwallis surrender who married the Indian princess. This man was Jim Curwood’s phlegmatic great grandfather, an adventurer of the old school who ended up by marrying an Indian chief’s daughter. It is little wonder that young Jimmie became such a carefree, vagabond lover of the deep forests. Indian blood flowed deep within his veins and throughout his entire life the forests, the streams and the lakes were his home despite the fact that he owned a mansion in the very heart of civilization.

Shortly after the blond Dutchman had wooed and won his princess, there was born in England a man who later became a great naval officer in the Queen’s navy and a world famous writer of sea tales. A man who delved deeply into his memories and imagination to spin yarns of thrilling adventure on the land as well as on the swelling sea. His name was Captain Frederick Marrayat. That famous personage turned out to be a great-uncle of Jim Curwood’s.

Several years later it was these same stories of adventure, gallant battles and of brave men, which caused a lad named James to run away to sea and come to America in search of adventure and thrills. When he left England, he never returned.

Upon landing in America young James fought in the Civil War, where fighting blood ran fast and free. Here was what he had been searching for and at last he had found it. Years later that man became the father of Jim Curwood.

The little house in which Jimmie Curwood first saw the light of day no longer stands. Some time ago the two-story frame building was razed and so far no other construction has been erected in its place. However, a marker has been placed there, showing that it was on this particular lot that James Oliver Curwood had been born many years ago.

As time went on the two youngsters, Jimmie and Charlie, still persisted in getting into more and more mischief. People were beginning to shake their heads in disapproval and consequently Mr. and Mrs. Curwood began wondering what they should do to curb their son’s mischievous habits. For hardly without fail when anyone saw Jimmie, son of a shoe repair man, and Charlie, son of a saloon keeper, he was almost always sure to see something happen.

Both boys always ran about barefooted (something which you seldom see today), with dirty faces, hands and clothing, with no crowns in their hats whatsoever. It is little wonder that Jimmie’s hair became bleached by the sun and his face gathered a harvest of freckles.

As youngsters most children have peculiar ambitions, but those of Jimmie Curwood’s as a lad of seven were outstanding among childhood desires. It seems that his ambitions were just one or two paces behind his vivid imagination. For some day he hoped that he might be wealthy enough to buy an entire stock of bananas at one time. Then and only then would he be fully able to get his complete fill of the fruit he loved so well. His second ambition was to ride astride the large bustle worn by Kate Russell to Sunday church. Miss Russell was a cook at the combination saloon-hotel which was operated and owned by Charlie Miller’s father.

Despite all the obstacles that confronted them, Mr. and Mrs. Curwood were perhaps two of the happiest people in all of Owosso. They had a fine family and Mr. Curwood was making a fairly comfortable living with his shoe-cobbling shop. They had no luxuries, for they could not afford them, but they did have all the necessities that made for a comfortable happy life.

Regardless of how honored and respected Mr. and Mrs. Curwood were in their home town, the townspeople still continued to frown upon the antics of the Curwood and Miller children. Was there ever to be an end to all of this childhood devilment? This was the thought that plagued the minds of the citizens of Owosso when the great change came about.

Business began to grow bad for Mr. Curwood at his cobbling shop and after long deliberation he decided to sell out and purchase a farm somewhere. He received many offers for his shop “as it stood,” and so after a great deal of bickering he at last managed to get a fairly decent price and it was announced to Owosso that it would soon be rid of one of her two “Tom Sawyers.”

Although he had kept it from his family all along, Mr. Curwood at last told them one night in the dead of winter. He had made the down payment on a farm down in Ohio, located near the villages of Vermillion, Joppa and Florence in Erie County.

It was to be a new life for them and since business had slacked off to such a point that he could barely make a decent living, both Mr. and Mrs. Curwood felt that he had made a good investment.

The next day Mrs. Curwood, Jimmie, his sister Cora and brother Edward began preparing to leave their old home. With what money he had received from the sale of his shop, Mr. Curwood paid all of his debts and at last had all of his business interests straightened out. Even though he was left with very little to begin his new life, he paid every bill which the family owed in Owosso.

A few days later the family began its pilgrimage to the new land of Ohio.

The little backwood’s town of Owosso thought a great deal of James Moran and Abigail Griffen Curwood and sorely hated to see them depart, despite the fact that they were taking with them one of the town’s biggest trouble makers. Still, regardless of what their outward appearances were toward Jimmie, deep within their hearts the neighbors and all who knew him, loved him.

The move from Michigan into Ohio was later to prove the most important change in all of young Jim Curwood’s life. Many things were to happen, many events to take place within the next five years that none of the Curwood family ever dreamed would happen.

When the family of five arrived at their little farm located not far from the cross-roads village of Joppa, it was in deep winter and their forty acres were covered with snow. The head of the family was highly elated over the prospects of his “sight-unseen” purchase and at once began making plans for it.

It was not until the arrival of spring, when the snows had cleared away, that Jimmie’s father found that he had purchased something which more closely resembled a stone quarry than a farm. As far as one could see there were nothing but stones and boulders all over the forty acres of his land.

One can easily imagine the thoughts that came into the elderly Mr. Curwood’s mind as he gazed out upon what he thought was to be his salvation. Instead of rich, fertile farmland, he had purchased a practically worthless land of stones.

One night at the supper table Mr. Curwood called upon his children to help him more than he had expected them to. The stones must be picked up and stacked in piles and the work of doing so must be left to the two young sons, monotonous, laborious and endless as it must have seemed to them.

Jimmie hated his daily task of picking up rocks from sunup to sundown, but he had enough foresight to realize that he had a job to do that must be done. So together, day in and day out, Jimmie and Ed picked up stones. Picked them up so their father could plough the fields and till the soil.

Life now was drab for Jimmie. Gone were the glorious, carefree days along the banks of the Shiawassee. In their place had come the ceaseless task of picking up stones and rolling huge boulders out of the way. No longer had he the ambition to ride astride Kate Russell’s huge bustle, nor to own a whole stock of bananas. Just as any young boy of seven years would feel, Jimmie hated and dreaded work, and especially this type. It seemed that the more stones he and his brother Ed would pick up, the more there were. For with every furrow that their father’s plough would turn over, there would always appear a fresh supply of rocks, both large and small.

The two boys piled stones into great stacks higher than their heads; they constructed stone fences and they piled rocks until there were stacks actually higher than the farmhouse itself. There were great heaps of stones all over the forty acres of land. As a matter of fact there was hardly enough room left to break up the ground anew and plant crops. It was rapidly and most assuredly developing into a serious situation. Then, suddenly, relief came from an unexpected source.

The highway department of Erie county came to their rescue and took 3,000 loads of the stones at ten cents a load. For at that time the county needed stones for road repair and for numerous other repair jobs.

With the arrival of summer came long hard months of hot, back-breaking toil. Jimmie and Ed wore thick, hard callouses upon their hands, their backs seemed as if they were about to break, and the sun bronzed them until they began to look like Indians. Many times during the long three summer months Jimmie became overheated by the sun and fell in his tracks in that summer of ’85. But work had to be done if success in their new venture of farming was to be accomplished. There was little grumbling from anyone now with the realization that they must work and save if they were to live during the coming winter.

Directly across the road from the Curwood farm stood the home of Hiram Fisher, a kindly old farmer, who had developed a beautiful homesite and whose yard was filled with maple and pine trees.

The Fisher family was not as large as the Curwood’s, for there was but one child, a very lovely daughter named Jeanne who was young Jimmie’s superior by five years. Perhaps her outstanding characteristic was the beautiful brown hair which fell in glossy waves down to her trim and fragile shoulders. It was the most lovely head of hair that Jimmie or his family had ever set eyes upon. It is indeed odd that a boy as young as he was should take much notice of a girl’s hair, but its bewitching beauty made him secretly admire it.

She would always part it in the middle and let it flow down to her shoulders in long flowing tresses. She was gloriously beautiful for her age.

As time went on and Jeanne and Jimmie became better acquainted, he adopted a nickname for her that was to remain with her all the days of her life. He affectionately called her “Whistling Jeanne,” because of the beautiful tunes she whistled almost constantly.

She alone was the inspiration which helped Jimmie to hold his head high when he felt blue or useless. For Jeanne offered him companionship, untiring encouragement and wonderful guidance. She inspired him to greater things in life. Jimmie often was heard to make that remark both as a child and later as a grown man.

It was about the time that Jeanne was nearing her twelfth birthday and Jimmie his seventh, that this thought came to him:

“No matter how hard the work is, and no matter what it might be, I shall always do my task thoroughly.”

The stones that he had picked up all spring and summer finally set Jimmie to serious thinking. Every now and then after he had worked an hour or two, he would walk over to a shade tree nearby and sit down to mop the grime and perspiration from his brow. Then he would look out over the long, fertile fields that were once not so fertile and resolve that he could do anything that he should set out to do, if only he would adjust and drive himself toward it. The look in his young eyes denoted that of an adventurer. The eyes for thrills and dangers of the unknown. Even at the age of seven years, young James Oliver Curwood had begun to wonder what lay just over the brink of the next ridge.

Then, as if no such thoughts had even come to him, he would return to his task of piling stones; but as he worked he would experience a thrill, a feeling such as he had never known before as he stooped down to pick up the fragments of boulders. True, it was monotonous there in the hot broiling sun, but to Jimmie, there now was something creative in that piling up of rocks—something of which he was justly proud.

“I experienced a greater thrill when I had done three piles than I did when I had but accomplished two.”

With the arrival of fall and early winter, James Curwood saw that the work his sons and he had done had been a success. His crops had all turned out good and his farm was now a thing of beauty instead of a stone quarry. It was quite obvious that the hard labor and toil his sons and he had administered had not been in vain. Mr. Curwood being an honest and God-fearing man, thanked his Maker for his family’s salvation.

Each afternoon that winter after a hard day’s work, “the three men of the family” would trudge up to the small, white house to be greeted by the good mother and a meal of wholesome, plain, but substantial food.

The Curwood home was small, warm and comfortable, even though humble. The important item was that the little family was happy in its new home. In those days there were no electric lights, telephones, radios or motion pictures or even automobiles. So it was only natural that the fine Curwoods always were close to the “home fires.” Though meager and humble their home, no other family could have been happier.

They used the old type of Lion Brand coffee at two pounds for a quarter, and the usual stick of candy once a month or so. They had plenty of eggs and bread, for Mrs. Curwood raised hens and young chickens. Above all else, the neighbors nearby thought the world of the Curwoods and considered them “real, down-to-earth country people.”

As the winter of 1886 at last settled over them, Jimmie’s father and his family settled down to a long, cold winter, snug and secure in their own home, which by now was nearly paid for. The migration to Ohio had proved itself successful in every respect. No longer did Jimmie persist in his childish devilment, for there was neither the place nor the time for it.