History of Oakland County Michigan a narrative account of its historic progress, its people, its principal interests / compiled from the official records of the county, the newspapers and data of personal interviews, under the editorial supervision of Thaddeus D. Seeley.

CHAPTER XXVIII

AVON TOWNSHIP
JAMEs (;RAHAM\I., ORIG(; INAL SETTLER-THE HERSEY-RUSSELL-GRAIIAM
COIMBIINE —IEM()RIES OF THE OLD HERSEY [MILL-MILL STONES
FROM BOWLI)ERS-STONY CREEK VILLAGE-ROCHESTER PLATTEDPIONEERS OUTSIDE OF ROCHESTER-FIRST CORPORATION OFFICERSROCIHESTER INDUSTRIES-WESTERN KNITTING MILLS-CREAMERY
AND FLOURING MILL-THE SCHOOLS-ROCHESTER UNION SCHOOL —
WATERWORKS AND FIRE PROTECTION-ELECTRIC LIGHT AND POWERROCHESTER NEWSiPAPERS-THE CHURCHES-ROCHESTER SOCIETIESBIOLOGICALJ F\ARM, )P\RKDALE-FERRY SEED FARM.
According to the original act dividing Oakland county into two townships, approved June 28, I820, Bloomfield township embraced the
southern two-fifths of its area and Oakland township the northern threefifths; Avon, of the present, therefore was included in the old Oakland
township, and so remained until the 6th of April, 1835. As the first
settlement in the county was made within its present limits, it has generally been considered a miscarriage of historic justice that it did not
retain the name of Oakland itself.
JAMES G(RAIIAM, ORIGINAL SETTLER
These historic events are embalmed in the following statements:
James Graham, the bona fide pioneer of the county and the township,
was an Irishman who emigrated from his native country some years
before the Revolutionary war and settled among the Pennsylvania Dutch.
His neighbors are said to have pronounced his name as if spelt "Grimes,"
and at his death, or, at least, as his eulogy, Albert G. Greene, a Rhode
Island literary man and scholar who spent the later years of his life in
what was then the west, wrote:
"Old Grimes is dead, the good old man;
We ne'er shall see him more;
He used to wear an old blue coat
All buttoned up before."
James Graham raised a large family before he moved to Avon township, having- previously lived six years in Canada. His first location in
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