History of Michigan, / by Charles Moore. [Vol. 3]

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN

1685

Michigan, January 3, I888, to Miss Carrie Magoffin, who was born in
Wisconsin, a daughter of Rev. James Magoffin, a minister of the Episcopal church. This marriage has brought four children, namely: George
M. Humphrey, a graduate of the University of Michigan, in the law
department, and junior member of the firm of Humphrey, Grant &
Humphrey; Gladys M.; Winifred S.; and Watts S. Humphrey, Jr.
GEORGE GRANT. The second member of the Saginaw firm of attorneys, Humphrey, Grant & Humphrey, George Grant has been a practicing lawyer for the past thirty years, and belongs to an old family in
western Michigan.
George Grant was born at Ada in Kent county, Michigan, January
9, I852, a son of James and Isabelle (Spence) Grant. The parents
both natives of Scotland, settled in Ada township of Kent couhty in
I851, where the father followed farming. James Grant was born in
1813 and died at the age of eighty-nine years in I902. The mother died
at the age of sixty-eight. There were nine children five deceased, and
those living are: William Grant, a farmer in Ada township of Kent
county; George Grant; Albert, a merchant at Alexandria, Indiana, and
Robert S. Grant, a business man in Chicago.
The public schools and the Grand Rapids high school furnished
George Grant his preliminary training, and after graduating from the
Ypsilanti Normal, he taught school six years at Almont, Lapeer county,
Michigan. His law studies were pursued in the offices of Wheeler and
McKnight at Saginaw, and his admission to the bar came in 1883. Since
then he has been practicing at Saginaw, and for more than. twenty
years has been associated with Mr. Watts S. Humphrey. Mr. Grant is
a member of the Michigan State Bar Association and is president of the
Saginaw Bar Association. His Masonic membership included all the
degrees of the York Rite, the Knights Templar, and he belongs to the
Shrine. His church is the Congregational. A Republican in politics,
he has steadfastly refused any nomination, but has worked and interested himself in many ways for the welfare of his party.
Mr. Grant was married in July, 1878, to Miss Mary S. Fowler, a
native of Ingham county, Michigan. Of their three children, two died
in childhood, and the only survivor is George Grant, Jr., now associated
with the Michigan Glass Company.
ELLIOTT D. PRESCOTT. A native son of Michigan who has here found
ample field for definite and worthy achievement and who is today one of
the representative citizens of Muskegon county, where he is the able
and honored incumbent of the office of judge of probate, Judge Prescott
is specially eligible for representation in this history of his native state.
He was born in Kent county, Michigan, on the iIth of October, 1864,
and is a son of Langford G. and Adelia D. (Van Norman) Prescott, the
former of staunch English lineage and the latter of Holland Dutch descent
in the agnatic line. Langford G. Prescott was born in Oswego county,
New York, in 1833, and his wife was born in the province of Ontario,
Canada, in 1840. He was reared and educated in the old Empire state
and as a young man he came to Michigan, where he became one of the
pioneer agriculturists of Kent county, where he reclaimed and developed
a productive farm and where he was a citizen of prominence and influence
in his community. Langford G. Prescott was a man of high ideals and
exalted integrity of character, and as a devout member of the Methodist
Episcopal church he utilized his powers for the aiding and uplifting of
'his fellow men, as he served with earnestness and perfervid zeal as a
local preacher of the religious denomination of which both he and his