the town site. By 1838 the mill was in operation. Before leaving the county, Seth Weed had made a contribution to the town by building the first house in Pontiac. After the Young brothers' deaths, Isaac Fellows came west to settle their estate. He liked the location and took up residence. Work started on the courthouse, but was far behind schedule. Early growth was painfully slow, so slow that rivals decided there was a good chance they could strip the honor and the business of the county seat from Pontiac. In 1839 they forced the matter to a vote. The case against Pontiac appeared to be solid. The proprietors of Pontiac, they argued, had not lived up to their obligations: the courthouse was unfinished and no bridge across the Vermilion had been built. Their new location for the seat of Government of Livingston County, four or five miles upstream would, they said, be more centrally located. They complained that the site of Pontiac had been poorly chosen and was low, damp, and generally unhealthy. The people of the county agreed. By a margin of 81 to 56 they voted to move the county seat. A two-thirds majority was needed to re-locate a county seat, and by a small margin, Pontiac was able to continue to be the location of the county offices. After considerable delay, the first Courthouse, a twenty-two by thirty-foot wooden building, was finished and, in 1847, the promised bridge across the Vermilion was at last done. Alas, just after the $450 bridge was opened, a sudden rise in the Vermilion swept it away. Second attempt to displace Pontiac The future of Pontiac was still doubtful. The 1878 History of Livingston County remarked, “the town of Pontiac was little more than a name.” In the early 1840s it still had only a half dozen cabins, an unfinished courthouse, and everything was so scattered among “clumps of bushes” that the town was almost invisible. In 1848 August Fellows, who now owned much of the town, had managed to set up a hostelry. It became a popular stopping place. Some of the first church services in Pontiac were held at the tavern. Fellows was no luckier than his in-laws had been ten years earlier. In 1849 Cholera swept through Pontiac, killing Fellows and two of his children. One early settler remembered that in Livingston County one person in two suffered