In 1835, William and Carolyn Kirkland moved their family from New York to Detroit, and William, caught up in land speculation fever, purchased 1,400 acres in Putnam Township. Two years later, he platted a village and named it for his brother, Charles Pinckney Kirkland. The settlement stood in one of the state's finest and best settled agricultural districts and became the natural center of business for not fewer than two hundred or three hundred families. It soon had several shops, a temperance tavern, and a grist mill serving local farmers. In 1839, Caroline wrote A New Home — Who'll Follow? under the pen name Mrs. Mary Clavers, a successful and realistic account of her life as a settler in Michigan's wilderness. The family returned to New York City in 1843, and William died three years later. Caroline then opened a girls school and worked as a magazine editor to support her family, continued to write, and hosted writers such as Edgar Allen Poe and William Cullen Bryant in her home. She died in 1864.