History of Detroit, a chronicle of its progress, its industries, its institutions, and the people of the fair City of the straits, / by Paul Leake ... [Vol. 3]

HISTORY OF DETROIT
CLARENCE M. BURTON. Student, historian, lawyer and man of
affairs, Clarence M. Burton has such status in the Michigan metropolis
that no publication of the province assigned to the one here presented
can be consistent with itself if there is failure to accord to this honored
citizen specific recognition within its pages. No resident of the state has
a wider and more intimate knowledge of Michigan history, even to the
most obscure details, than has Mr. Burton, and his contributions to its
records have been of inestimable value. A man of the highest literary
appreciation, of most comprehensive reading and study, and of distinctive
intellectual force, he has given in most generous measure to perpetuating
matters of historic interest in Detroit and Michigan. He is a member of
the bar of the state, though not engaged in the active work of his profession; is a citizen of intrinsic loyalty and public spirit; and is known
as one of the representative business men of Detroit, where he has provided and assembled most complete and authoritative abstracts of land
titles for Wayne county, the same affording the best of reference facilities.
For a number of years he has also been an extensive operator in the local
real estate field.
Mr. Burton is a native of Sierra county, California, where he was
born on the 18th of November, 1853, and he is a son of Dr. Charles S.
and Annie E. (Monroe) Burton, both of whom were born and reared
in Seneca county, New York. In 1855, when he was but two years of
age, his parents came to Michigan and established their home at Hastings, the judicial center of Barry county. The father devoted the major
part of his active life to the practice of medicine and both he and his
wife continued to reside in Michigan until their death.
Clarence M. Burton secured his preliminary education in the public
schools of Hastings, and in 1869 he entered the literary department of
the University of Michigan, in which he continued his studies for three
years. In 1872 he became a student in the law department of the same
'institution, in which he was graduated in March of the following year,
after a creditable examination. The day succeeding his graduation and
incidental acquiring of his degree of Bachelor of Laws, Mr. Burton
came to Detroit. As he had not yet attained to his legal majority, and
was therefore ineligible for admission to the bar of the state, he entered
the law office of Ward & Palmer, under whose directions he continued
his study, with incidental professional work of a preliminary order,
until the 19th of November, 1874, when he was admitted to practice in
the circuit court of Wayne county,-the day following his twenty-first
birthday. The firm with which he had been associated made a specialty
of extending loans on real estate securities, and his duties had been
largely in the examining of land titles. John Ward, the senior member
of the firm, was also a member of the firm of E. C. Skinner & Com843