The term Old Settlers refers to the group of mixed race people that came to MI in the late 1800's and settled in the newly opened land in the Mecosta, Isabella and Montcalm counties. The title is well known through out the area and most know it refers to that group and anyone who descended from them. Volume two covers the original Old Settlers that came whose last names begin with D-R and follows each one of their descendants through every generation down to the current living generations. It includes photographs, family stories, articles and obituaries. They were an amazing group who settled the land, cleared it, farmed it, built homes, schools, churches, roads, married each other and raised families. There are many historical sites and monuments still there that are overseen by their descendants. Our history is kept alive by thousands of descendants and hundreds who work on genealogy and share their knowledge.

Once an ancient revered hunting and gathering site for Chippewa Indians, Isabella County today is home to one of the nation's largest Native American tribal-owned casino/resort complexes. Incorporated in 1859, during the turbulent times just ahead of the Civil War and birth year of the United States oil industry, the area became a modern-day commerce center. A rough-and-tumble timbering center saw Michigan's first lumber millionaire plat a town, and hardworking immigrants carved farms, villages, and towns from the timbered-out wilderness near the center of the Michigan Lower Peninsula. From harvesting lumber above the ground to harvesting petroleum below the ground, the area ushers in an oil boom just in time to be saved from the financial tribulations of the Great Depression. Today, thousands of young people flock to the area each year to attend Michigan's fourth-largest university, Central Michigan University. This is the saga of Isabella County, told as the county celebrates 150 years of economic and cultural diversity.

Forbidden Fruit is a collection of fascinating, largely untold tales of ordinary men and women who faced mobs, bloodhounds, bounty hunters, and bullets to be together—and defy a system that categorized blacks not only as servants, but as property. In the true love stories of Forbidden Fruit, you will meet sixteen couples who fought for love—love between slaves, between slaves and masters, and between slaves and free black folks. There is the fugitive slave from Virginia who spends seventeen years searching for his wife. A Georgia slave couple that sails for England with federal troops trailing behind. A white woman who falls in love with her deceased husband's slave. A young slave girl who is delivered to her fiancé inside a wooden chest. Acclaimed journalist Betty DeRamus gleaned these anecdotes from descendants of runaway slave couples, unpublished memoirs, Civil War records, census data, magazines, and dozens of previously untapped sources. This is a book about people pursuing love and achievement in a time of hate and severely limited opportunities. Though not all of the stories in Forbidden Fruit end in triumph, they all celebrate hope, passion, courage, and triumph of the human spirit.

Between 1910 and the mid-1920s, more than sixty black students from the South bravely traveled north to Ferris Institute, a small, mostly white school in Big Rapids, Michigan. They came to enroll in college programs and college preparatory courses—and to escape, if only temporarily, the daily and ubiquitous indignities suffered under the Jim Crow racial hierarchy. They excelled in their studies and became accomplished in their professional fields. Many went on to both ignite and help lead the explosive civil rights movement. Very few people know their stories—until now. Haste to Rise is a book about the incredible resilience and breathtaking accomplishments of those students. It was written to unearth, contextualize, and share their stories and important lessons with this generation. Along the way we are introduced to dozens of these Jim Crow–era students, including the first African American to win a case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Belford Lawson, the lead attorney in New Negro Alliance v. Sanitary Grocery Co. (1938), a landmark court battle that safeguarded the right to picket. We also meet one of Lawson’s contemporaries, Percival L. Prattis, a pioneering journalist and influential newspaper executive. In 1947, he became the first African American news correspondent admitted to the U.S. House and Senate press galleries. There is also an in-depth look into the life and work of the institute’s founder, Woodbridge Nathan Ferris, a racial justice pioneer who created educational opportunities for women, international students, and African Americans. Haste to Rise is a challenge to others to look beyond a university’s official history and seek a more complete knowledge of its past. This is American history done right!