Compendium of history and biography of Hillsdale County, Michigan Elon G. Reynolds, editor.

HILLSDALE COUNTY, MICHIGAN.

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train on the Lake Shore road. At the end of his
railroad service, in January, I869, he came to
Jonesville, to become the clerk and salesman in
the hardware store of J. S. Lewis, where he was
employed for thirteen years. In 1873 he was
appointed postmaster of Jonesville by President
Grant, and held the office for eleven years thereafter. He also served for one year as the village
recorder and also one as the village marshal. In
politics he has ever been a lifelong Republican.
With patriotic zeal during the Civil War, he
made two attempts to join the Union army, but
was each time rejected for physical defects.
Mir. Sinclair is now one of the few pioneers
living in the county, being a fine type of that
hardy race which reclaimed this section of the
state from the wilderness and made it fruitful
with the products of civilization and cultivated
life. His high character, genial manner, obliging disposition and his constant regard for the
rights and feelings of others have ever secured
for him the respect and esteem of all classes.
His life has been an inspiration and a stimulus
to useful endeavor. It has blessed the community with a citizenship, elevated and elevating
to all interested in progress and development
of the township and county, and it has been productive of great good in itself, and, of much
greater good, in its resulting effect upon the
conduct of others.
HON. FREDERICK HART SMITH.
"Not honored less than he who heirs, is he
who founds a line." Among the men of different types, accomplishments and achievements
in our complex American citizenship, which, in
the sweep of its enormous and intense activity,
lays every faculty under tribute, no class, perhaps, strikes the imagination more forcibly or
enlists the fancy more agreeably than the pioneers
of a new section of country, who command the
wilderness to comeliness and on its virgin soil
found families and become the patriachs of a
race. To this class belonged Azariel Smith, a
manufacturer in Connecticut, who lost all his
property by fire in I838, and then determined to

remove with his family to the new West where
a fresh start could be made. He had heard of
Michigan ag a promising field for enterprise, and
came alone to this state on a prospecting expedition. Finding the conditions satisfactory,
he purchased I6o acres of timber land located
in what is now Somerset township, Hillsdale
county, paying for it a small sum of money left
to his wife as a legacy. Inspired by a renewed
hope, he labored industriously in making a little
clearing in the dense woods, building also a rude
and unfinished house of modest dimensions,
then returned to Connecticut for his three
young sons, George A., Frederick H. and LeGrand J., and one daughter, Julia A., who afterward became the wife of Alonzo Strong. All
these are now deceased, the sole survivor being
Charles A. Smith, of Hillsdale, who was born
in this state.
The journey from the old Connecticut home
to the new one in the wild West was an event
of magnitude. The route led by the Erie canal
to Buffalo, across Lake Erie to Toledo, from
there on the old strap-iron railroad to Adrian,
the trip lasting three weeks. From Adrian to
Somerset township the family traveled by an ox
cart, and this was far from being the least
tedious and difficult part of the journey. And
when the end was reached and the new house
occupied, the difficulties of the situation were not
lessened, but rather increased, by the hard conditions of life on the frontier. The father was
obliged to walk to Brooklyn in the morning and
back at night, eight miles each way, to work at
his trade as a stone-mason, the mother and
children being left to clear the land and put in
the crops, to fight the wild beasts and to entertain the Indians, who were always friendly.
The food was of the simplest character, their
shelter from inclement weather was not complete, their only means of starting a fire was by
a spark struck from flint and steel. Most of the
conveniences of life, such as they had been used
to, were unattainable for years. Yet here they
lived and labored, bearing their lot with cheerfulness, performing their duties with diligence
and zeal, steadily improving their condition and