In 1835 the land around Hamilton became available for settlement, and John Fee and his wife, Mary, arrived from Ohio in March of that year. At age 25, he claimed 120 acres near Ball Lake, and by the time he died in 1873, he owned 1400 acres in Steuben and DeKalb Counties. Other early settlers included Elias O. Rose, who purchased land southwest of Hamilton Lake in July 1835; Gideon Ball of New York, who bought the land including Ball Lake in September 1835; and George Swift of Massachusetts, who arrived in 1836 in an oxen-pulled wagon. Settlers found a region of dense forests, small clearings, log cabins, rough roads, and hard labor, where neighbors helped one another build houses and where a yoke of oxen, an axe, a rifle, a scythe, and a cradle were considered fair equipment. The first years brought back-breaking work, hunger, accidents, illness, and deaths from diseases such as fever and ague, typhoid, bloody flux, and canker rash, while wolves and isolation added to the hardships. Most houses had only one room, cooking was done in open fireplaces, and before matches, keeping fire from day to day was difficult, making the borrowing of fire from neighbors a common necessity. Mrs. John Fee recalled campfires of homesteaders and covered wagons clustered around Ball Lake at night. By the end of 1836, most of the land in Otsego Township had been purchased, and within a few decades the region had changed from wilderness into farms and small communities. The settlers also placed strong emphasis on education, locating schools so that no student had more than two and one half miles to walk, and by 1880 Otsego Township had ten schools.