An Account of Oakland County / edited by Lillian Drake Avery.

HISTORY OF OAKLAND COUNTY

37

Alpheus Williams, a brother-in-law of Major Oliver Williams but not
otherwise related to him, and Captain Archibald Phillips built their
houses at that place. Williams' house was of logs, but Phillips' was
more pretentious, being constructed of sawed boards. The two men
came to Waterford for the purpose of erecting a saw-mill on the
Clinton river, and this they did afterl constructing a dam and raising
a pond. It is stated that this pond caused much sickness among the
early inhabitants of the place on account of the overflowed shrubbery
and weeds rotting in the water.
The first hotel began operations about 1830 under the ownership of Phillips, and the first grist mill was put up in 1844 by Dr.
George Williams, not related to Alpheus Williams. He built a mill
at Clintonville at the same time, the one at Waterford having three
runs of stone. A carding mill was built between 1840 and 1842 by
Richard Bronson on the old Williams property, part of which he
had bought. The first village lots were laid out in 1845 by William
T. Windiate, and additions have subsequently been made.
CLINTONVILLE
The village of Clintonville, in Waterford township, was founded
as early as 1830, when Samuel C. Munson came there and built a
grist mill and a saw mill. These mills supplied the needs of the
surrounding country for years, although they changed hands from
time to time. In 1835 John Osmun, Sr., bought the property for his
sons, and they kept it until 1844 when they disposed of it to Dr.
George Williams in 1844, that gentleman building a new mill on the
dam-site. Munson's house was the first to be built, a small log
structure, replaced in 1834 by a frame dwelling. This village is now
practically extinct.
DRAYTON PLAINS
Drayton Plains, a small village in Waterford township, received
its first settler in 1822-23, a man named Foster, although it is thought
he settled on the plain near the later site of the village. Jonathan
Perry and Harvey and Austin Durfee also came at an early day, the
Durfees being the first settlers on the ground where the village now
stands. Daniel Windiate, an Englishman, and his son-in-law, Thomas
Whitfield, built the Drayton Plains Hotel in 1838-39, two years after
they had built a dam and grist mill of three runs of stone. Windiate
had been a miller in England, his mill in the old country having been
called "Drayton Mill", and he gave his mill here the same name, the
name of the village being taken from that of the mill. No village lots
were laid out until 1860, when this was done by Lewis L. Dunlap,
although a considerable cluster of houses had been built before that
time. The first store in the place was started by another son-in-law
of Windiate, William Besley (or Beasley).
TROY CORNERS
In 1822, Johnson Niles, a carpenter by trade, settled on the northeast corner of Section 9 in Troy township. At that time there were
only about fourteen families in the township, and Niles quickly