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George Reeves (Michigan)

George Reeves came to Michigan from New York state with the flow of migration westward via the Erie Canal in 1837. Around this time, Prof. Wm. Kirkland of Utica, N.Y. had finished platting the village of Pinckney. Reeves and a partner by the name of Minot opened a store in one of Kirkland's buildings and operated it there until 1841 when Reeves took over the interests of Solomon and Bignall in the large saw mill at Hell Creek. At the same time he acquired about a 1000 acres of land along the creek and soon built a flour mill and a distillery, damming up the creek for power. The three industries flourished for years.

Soon after erecting the flour mill Reeves built a general store near his farm which by this time had seven houses occupied by people who worked for him and a district school which was to have as many as 70 pupils at one time. The work of building the village practically completed, Reeves was sitting one day with a group of friends in the general store when someone asked him, "What are you going to name your town?" He hastily replied, "I don't care, call it Hell, if you want to." The name stuck from that moment on. All efforts to claim Reevesville or Reeves Mill as official names failed and Hell it remains to this day. It is said George Reeves regretted his levity to his dying day. Outsiders always used the name in derision, though the adverse publicity did not seem to hinder progress and business in the community.

The flour mill reportedly produced over a 100 barrels of flour a day; there was more wheat available than needed, even in those days, at the mill so Mr. Reeves distilled the surplus into whiskey, much in demand by area farmers at harvest time, barn raisings and other gatherings.

It was a custom to take the first bushel of wheat threshed to the distillery to be made into whiskey. The distillery sold whiskey in barrel lots and at one time, two teams were kept busy on the road with deliveries in the early 1860s. Following the Civil War, the government raised the tax on whiskey to such an extent that it was no longer profitable to distill it. The Hell distillery sold it locally as low as 10c per gallon, when it was tax free. After the tax was added, in advance of the revenue agents, the whiskey would be dumped in hogsheads in the nearby lake until the government agents departed and would then be recovered for sale.

The distillery finally closed, the flour mill burned down; the saw mill stopped after all the timber was cut down. Mr. Reeves died in 1877. His wife and seven daughters survived. The Reeves farm was sold in 1924 to a group of Detroiters, the dam was raised and old Reeves pond became a beautiful lake named Hi-Land Lake.

• Adapted from a writeup at http://www.moonrise.org/other/hell.shtml

• Hell, MI (Hell,_Michigan)