The town of Pickford, a peaceful community if we ever saw one, nevertheless harbors a bit of a feud, which has smoldered for more than seventy years!
   Obviously, Pickford’s “feud” isn’t a feud in the shootin’, shoutin’, hard-feeling sense.  Mercy sakes, no!  But it’s there just the same – and there’s no telling when, if ever, it will be resolved.
   The point at issue in Pickford is:  Who came first, C. W. Pickford, or Jim Clegg?  And the prize at stake is this:  Whichever one of those two pioneer settlers first gazed upon the broad valley of the Munuscong will go down in history as Pickford’s first permanent settler.
   Almost every old-timer in the area is positive he (or she) knows the answer.  But the trouble is, the old-timers don’t agree with one another.  Thus, to a painstaking researcher like us, yours truly, it’s all very confusing – something akin to that maddening brain-teaser – which came first, the chicken or the egg?  To paraphrase that brain-teaser, we might re-pose the question this way:  Who Came First – the Pickford or the Clegg?

   One group, with a noticeably bored look, merely points to the name of the town – thus driving home the claim that Pickford’s first homesteader couldn’t have been anyone other than old Charley Pickford.  It is fairly well established, of course, that old C. W. – brawny, barrel-shaped, and bewhiskered – came down the St. Mary’s and up the Munuscong from Renfrew County, Ont., either in 1876 or in 1877.
   There was (and still is) some whispering about Mr. Pickford’s reasons for suddenly deciding to carve out a home in a newly opened and harsh country.  But basically Mr. Pickford was a good-natured, kindly man, whose principal expletive was a lusty “Common-Sense, No!” or Common-Sense, Yes!” – and folks liked him!
   Nevertheless, there are people in Pickford today who claim, name or no name, that Charley Pickford was not Pickford’s first settler.  That distinction, they say, belongs to James Clegg, and Clegg’s brother-in-law, John Crawford, who trekked down the old Mackinaw Trail from the Sault to look over the country.

   Clegg and Crawford are said to have selected some land for homesteading, after which they returned to “Canady” for their families.  According to this version of Pickford’s beginnings, Clegg and his wife, Catherine, and Crawford, and Crawford’s wife, Alice, along with their respective children, returned some months later – to find C. W. Pickford homesteading the property Jim Clegg had selected to homestead.
   The Pickford supporters contend that Charley Pickford like Clegg and Crawford, had been on the site before, at which time he staked his claim, then – also like Clegg and Crawford – had returned to “Canady” for his family.  It was during his absence, so this version goes, that Jim Clegg happened along – and unwittingly selected the very land Pickford had picked.
   The Clegg clique, on the other hand, contends there is nothing to show that Charley Pickford had filed homesteading papers on the land – if, indeed, he had – and that Jim Clegg, a peaceable man, did not see fit to make an issue of it.  Instead, he filed homesteading papers on some property about a mile southeast of his first choice, and there – in March 7, 1879 – Catherine Clegg gave birth to the first white baby born in the Pickford area.

   John Crawford bowed out of the looming Pickford “feud” by returning to his Canadian homeland, but Jim Clegg stuck until he died, about 40 years ago, at the age of 60.  The important thing today is this:  The town of Pickford’s first white baby, Alexander (Sandy) Clegg, still resides in the area, and is hale and hardy at 78.
   Sandy Clegg, of course, is in no position to swear just when his parents, Jim and Catherine Clegg, came to Pickford, but he’s convinced “it was before Charley Pickford came.”
   When his parents came, Sandy says, they brought their then three children with them.  These were Lizzie, the oldest; Will, and Rachel.  “I was the fourth born,” says Mr. Clegg, “and four more followed me – Frank, Orville, Bert, and Millie.  Of these, only Lizzie, Frank, and I survive.”

   Lizzie Clegg now is Mrs. Lizzie Sims, of Sault Ste. Marie.  Frank Clegg, now working at Kinross, divides his time between his two sons in the Lower Peninsula and his brother, Sandy, in Pickford.
   As a native-born pioneer still residing in Pickford, Sandy Clegg has the unchallenged distinction of having resided there longer than any man or woman still in the area.  His children include Mrs. William J. Johnston, Jr., and Mrs. Harold Beacom, both of Pickford, and Otto Clegg, of Elk Rapids.

   Charley Pickford, on the other hand, didn’t stick around nearly so long – nor is there any descendant of his family living in the area today.  He was born in 1828, so he must have been close to 50 years old when first he trudged across the stumpy, burned-over area between Stirlingville and the present Meridian Road at Pickford.

   Mrs. William H. Gough, now nearly 90, who was one of the original Pat Taylor’s daughters, still resides in Pickford.  She says C. W. Pickford established a store and post office during his second summer in the area – and that’s how the place came to be called Pickford.  But inasmuch as Pat Taylor and his family didn’t arrive until 1882, Mary Taylor Gough must have gathered that information from her husband, W. H. Gough, who came from “Canady” in 1877.  Mr. Gough died in 1943.
   It is fairly certain that Charley Pickford moved to the Sault in 1884 to take a government job, from which he resigned in 1887 to enter private business.  During his residence in the Sault he served for a time as a member of the city council.  He died in Washington, D. C., October 17, 1906, at the age of 77.

   Charles W. Pickford was married twice, his first wife having died in the Sault in 1901.  Of his 10 children, only three – Mrs. Myrtle Lemon, of Marquette, Mrs. Emma Pascoe, of Tacoma, Wash., and Bert Pickford, a hardware dealer of Pontiac – are believed to be surviving.
   Emma Pickford, in fact, was a teacher in Pickford’s first school.  A daughter by Mr. Pickford’s first wife, she married the Rev. James Pascoe, one of the town’s first ministers. 

   George Rye, who, at 79 still works his farm near Pickford and who was six years old when his father, Richard Rye, brought him to Pickford, in June, 1879 – the year Sandy Clegg was born! – recalls having Emma Pickford as a teacher. George Rye, incidentally, lacks only three months of tying Sandy Clegg’s record of longevity in the area.  As a boy he knew both Pickford and Jim Clegg, and he’s one of those who claim Clegg came first.

   Bert Pickford, C. W.’s only surviving son, still maintains a fishing camp east of Pickford on the St. Mary’s – but doesn’t often come up to use it.

   One by one, members of the Pickford family left the town their father established.  Today – 75 years after Charley Pickford stepped ashore from a small boat at Stirlingville – the old Pickford home still stands in the town.  That weatherworn structure – and the name, Pickford – seems to be all he left behind him.