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

PERSONAL SKETCHES

397

probate court of Oakland county not only his personal ability and
resourcefulness but also his worthiness to fill the important office in
which his father had previously given eight years of effective service.
Judge Stockwell is a son of the late Judge Joseph S. Stockwell, who
was one of the revered and honored citizens of the county at the time
of his recent death, and to whom a memoir, with due record of the
family history, is dedicated on other pages of this volume, so that a
repetition of the family data is not here demanded. Judge Ross Stockwell was born in Birmingham, in Bloomfield township, Oakland county, and the date of his nativity was December 19, 1876, he being a
son of Judge Joseph S. and Mary E. (Wiley) Stockwell, both families
having been founded in America in the colonial period of our national
history and both having given patriot soldiers to the war of the
Revolution and also to the war of 1812. The Stockwell family was
long established in Vermont, but it was from the state of New York
that Alvah Stockwell, grandfather of the subject of this review, came
to Michigan territory about the year 1830 and numbered itself among
the pioneer settlers in Oakland county, where he wrought the herculean
task of reclaiming a farm from the forest wilderness. Judge Ross
Stockwell profited by the advantages of the public schools of Pontiac
and those of the Ferris Institute, at Big Rapids. He finally entered
the law department of the University of Michigan, and in the same
he was graduated as a member of the class of 1901. After thus receiving his degree of Bachelor of Laws and gaining admission to the
Michigan bar, he established himself in the practice of law at Pontiac,
where he developed a substantial and representative law business of
general order. From 1910 to 1917 he served on the bench of the
municipal court of Pontiac, and in the latter year he was appointed
to fill out an unexpired term as judge of the probate court of the county,
popular election having since retained him in this office. The Judge is
known as one of the loyal and progressive citizens of his native county
and has given co-operation in the furtherance of measures and enterprises tending to advance the civic and material welfare of his home
city and county. He is a director of the Pontiac Commercial & Savings Bank, is a stalwart in the ranks of the Republican party, is affiliated with the Knights of Pythias, the Independent Order of Foresters
and the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, and he and his wife
are communicants of the Protestant Episcopal church. On the 23d
of June, 1903, was solemnized the marriage of Judge Stockwell to
Miss Lizzie Belle Sawyer, who was born and reared in Michigan and
who is a daughter of Joseph E. and Lizzie V. Sawyer, her father having been born in New Hampshire and having long been a substantial
citizen of Pontiac, Michigan. Judge and Mrs. Stockwell have four
children: Joseph S., Eleanor, Frederick and Isabell, the elder son
having been named in honor of his paternal and maternal grandfather.
Joseph S. Stockwell.-In the death of Judge Stockwell, on the
morning of January 17, 1925, Oakland county was called upon to
mourn the passing of one of its most honored and distinguished
pioneer citizens-a native son of Michigan and a representative of a