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- To these sons, Alexander, born, July 27, 1748, and William, born, November 14, 1751, the reader may now be introduced. Both were born in Ireland at the parental seat of Dunturky, which lies in County Antrim, a few miles north of Belfast. Both spent the years of their youth in Albany and were in the dawn of their early manhood when they came to Detroit. The misfortune which had attended their father in the old home was quickly reversed by them in the new one. They engaged in business and despite their youth and want of experience throve so amazingly that by the opening of the Revolution they were numbered among the leading merchants of Detroit. The war that began on the seaboard in 1775 worked to their individual advantage, for Detroit was the center of British governmental authority and military activity in the West, and enormous sums of money were soon being spent upon activities incidental to the prosecution of the war. Alexander and William Macomb became the fiscal agents of the government in Detroit, and from this employment and their private business enormous profits were reaped. By the close of the war, when they were still in their early thirties, no one stood higher than they in the official and commercial life of Detroit. In the Burton Historical Collection are five large books of record of the firm of Macomb, Edgar and Macomb (William Edgar was admitted as a partner during the war, and before its close had
1See Calendar of the Sir William Johnson Papers (Albany, 1909), inedex entries.
5 ALEXANDER MACOMB. 5
amassed a comfortable fortune), whose contents disclose many interesting, and frequently quaint, pictures of the life of Revolutionary Detroit. For example, we learn that Justice Philip Dejean, Detroit's notorious hanging magistrate, "rented" a stove at one time; or we follow the articles of daily food and apparel of many a famous "father" of Detroit; or, again, we may learn the names and the daily wage of the Detroit citizens who in 1780 marched under Captain Henry Bird against the settlements of infant Kentucky, and returned to Detroit conveying several hundred despairing, woebegone captives.
The prosperity which attended the business career of Alexander and William Macomb found reflection, of course, in their social and other activities. Their trade, for government purposes alone, says Mr. Burton, exceeded, in some years, half a million dollars. "They were Indian traders, general merchants, real estate dealers, and bankers, and probably carried on many more pursuits that were required in the village."2 Among other activities, they became large holders of real estate. They obtained Grosse Ile from the Indians in July, 1776; and William, many years later, became the owner of Belle Isle. He also purchased the St. Martin farm with its mansion, which became his home until his death in 1796. Unlike Alexander (in the career of whose famous son we are chiefly interested), who removed to New York City at the close of the war, William continued a resident and foremost citizen of Detroit to the end of his life. Illustrative of his status in British Detroit is the fact of his election in 1792 to the Provincial Parliament of Upper Canada, in the first popular electoral contest ever held in Detroit. Belle Isle, Grosse Ile , and the St. Martin farm (better known today as the Cass farm) were all included in the extensive estate which, at death, he left to his heirs. To the present moment his descendants have been numerously represented on Grosse Ile and in Detroit, and before returning to the narrative of Alexander's career and family, we may summarize briefly the story of William's descendants.
On July 18, 1780, he married Jane Dring, a woman of French Huguenot antecedents. They had eleven children, three of whom died in early childhood, two of them victims of the distressing epidemic which afflicted Detroit in the autumn of 1785. Three sons and five daughters grew up, married, and in their turn reared families. With astonishing regularity these descendants of William Macomb followed military careers, or (if women) became the wives and mothers of soldiers. In our limited sketch, only a few of the more noteworthy among them can be noticed. William Macomb II married Monique Navarre and lived on Grosse Ile. She perished untimely in 1813 from exposure and fright resulting from an Indian
2Michigan Pioneer Collections. XXXV. 568
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1751 - 1796 (44 years)