Harry P. Guy

	Harry P. Guy

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Doraville Whitney was the first Black settler in Isabella County in 1860. The first documentation of an African-American settler in Mecosta County Michigan was James Guy. His deed was signed by Abraham Lincoln. He obtained 160 acres in Wheatland Township on May 30, 1861. Lloyd & Margaret Guy were the first Black settlers in Montcalm County in 1861. The Homestead Act of 1862 allowed each settler 160 acres in Michigan. By 1873 African-Americans owned 1,392 acres in the three counties of Isabella, Mecosta and Montcalm. In the 1860's most of the land in Remus was owned by the Old Settlers.

SECTION 1

James Guy

SECTION 2

John Welcome Guy

SECTION 3

John Welcome Guy Family Pictures

SECTION 4

Harry P. Guy

Circa 1900

Ragtime Jim - 1930

Harry P. Guy was born July, 1870 in Zanesville, Ohio to Samuel (b. 1843, Ohio) and Lucy A. Guy (b. 1847, Virginia), he was about eight years old when he began the study of piano, violin, and pipe organ. As a youth, he peddled the black-owned Cleveland Gazette, and along with his brother Erin and sister, Ella M. Guy, he participated in a variety of musical events sponsored by his school, Hill High (class of 1886) and church, St. Paul A. M. E. He apparently had the opportunity to meet members of Donavin's Original Tennesseans when they appeared in Zanesville, including the black tenor and composer H. M. Wilson, as well as Alexander Luca of the famed Luca Brothers.

"During that period when Detroit was known as the 'City Beautiful' and 'where life is worth living'" wrote historian and Afro-American reporter Fred Hart Williams in his unpublished memoirs on Detroit, "Harry P. Guy was one of Detroit's unique and unusually gifted musicians. Guy's extreme modesty, his obvious efforts at self-effacement withheld from him the fame and wealth which should rightfully have been his. His superb arrangements of music compositions, his ability to infuse them with the magic of his inborn melody and harmony of tone, quite often was the measure of success of an otherwise mediocre composition. He was equally at home with arrangements of serious dimensions and with so-called popular forms of musical output. Harry P. Guy was the soul of music. Money seemingly mattered little. It was nothing unusual for him to neglect to place his name on manuscripts as the arranger. In consequence scores of musical successes carried only the name of the composer and lyricist."


	Guy

There are "Old Settlers" who came from Canada via "The Underground Railroad." It was the most dramatic nonviolent protest against slavery in the United States that began in the Colonial Era and reached its peak between 1830 and 1865. An estimated 30,000 to 100,000 slaves used the "railroad" to get to Canada; many others escaped to Mexico, the Caribbean, and Europe.