A newspaper clipping (c 1900) contains a list of 41 farms, almost all in Brighton Township. From that list & research on background of these farms should show what life was like at that time. The Lamart Hicks Farm on Skeman Road is the subject of this issue.
Henrys father, Jacob, came to the U.S. in 1832, with brothers Phillip and Charles and sister, Mary Magdelene as very young children. Their parents, Charles C. and Maria Catherine Nadig came by sailing vessel, an ordeal of which our imagination is incapable. In the early 1830s German immigrants constituted a major portion of the stream […]
Of the early settlers to the Brighton Area, many were of a moral caliber, which assumed a responsibility to the community and the young state. Among them was John Gilluly, son of Irish-born parents, Thomas and Ann. John was born in Massachusetts. Research indicates John taught in the Brighton School District in 1845, 46,57, 59. […]
When husband William Henry died at 48 in 1835, it may be assumed his mercantile business in Hamburg, Germany, was sold. Perhaps the proceeds enabled Henrietta to bring her family to America. She and the children, William H. (21), Emma (15), Edward G. (11) and Charles E. (8) spent 10 weeks crossing the briney deep.
Eldad Spencer Field, with brother-in-law Norton Wait, came to Michigan within ten years of the completion of the Erie Canal. (The convenient and economical route over the Appalachian Mountains in New York opened the way for settlers to pioneer in Michigan Territory. Early Livingston County census records indicate a family of Fields in each township.)
As early as 1837, German Lutherans had settled in southeastern Livingston County. By 1842, they began meeting for public worship services, under the leadership of the pioneer Lutheran missionary in eastern Michigan, the Rev. Frederick Schmidt (born Sept. 6, 1807, in Wuertemberg, Germany; died August 30, 1883 at Ann Arbor).
Groups of settlers united as they headed west to Michigan from New York in the 1830s; many of them long time friends. (Not unlike the wagon trains which went West a few years later.) Arriving in Brighton Township they found no living quarters, merely a wilderness. Some land was level, some wet, much rolling, almost […]
Of the seven children of Godfrey and Sophia Westphall, Gustav was the youngest and the only one born in the U.S. His next oldest brother, Lewis H. (b. 1845), was born on the Atlantic Ocean during the long crossing from their ancestral home in Germany.
Why make the perilous 6-9 week journey over the Atlantic to an unfamiliar country, to a remote farm in Livingston County in the early 1800? Military conscription, political unrest and the hope of owning ones own land prompted many from Germany to begin anew in America; even to the extent of leaving family ties behind.How […]
