In 1847, fulfilling Michigan's 1835 constitutional requirement to choose a permanent capital within the state's first decade, the legislature voted to move the capital from Detroit to unsettled Lansing Township in Ingham County because legislators believed the seat of government should be in the state's interior. Many citizens doubted the choice and thought it was a joke gone wrong. That year the capital commission platted the Town of Michigan and selected a site bounded by Washington and Capitol avenues and Allegan and Washtenaw streets for a temporary capitol building. When the legislature met there in 1847, many members had to stay in private homes and others slept on the capitol floor, and during that session the legislature renamed the capital city Lansing. In April 1847, legislators had considered the names Pewanogowink, Swedenborg, and El Dorado before choosing Lansing, after John Lansing, an American Revolution hero. At the time, the new capital was a wilderness troubled by wolves and a spinal meningitis epidemic called brain fever. Lansing was incorporated as a city in 1859. During the 1870s, its lyceums and literary societies hosted Mark Twain and Edwin Booth. The 1847 capitol, regarded as an old rattle trap, was replaced by the present building in 1879. Though primarily an agricultural community, Lansing developed into a manufacturing center in the 1890s, and in 1897 Ransom Eli Olds organized the Olds Motor Vehicle Company, Michigan's first operating automobile company.