MORES H. BAILEY

MORES H. BAILEY is a citizen known to practically every resident of Eaton county, where he has maintained his home for sixty-six years, being a representative of one of the early pioneer families of the state and having been prominent as a surveyor, both for the government and in a private way, in this section of the commonwealth for many years, while he now resides on his fine farm property in Windsor township, where he has made his home since 1851. He and his estimable wife put forth and place on challenge the claim to being the oldest married couple in the state who were both born and married within its confines. Mr. Bailey was born in Troy township, Oakland county, Michigan, august 7, 1834, about three years before the state was admitted to the Union. He is a son of Benjamin F. and Marcia M. (Huntington) Bailey, the former of whom was born in Niagara county, New York, and the latter in the state of Vermont. They were residents of New York state until 1829, when they came to Michigan, numbering themselves among the very early settlers of Oakland county, where they remained about a decade, having removed to Eaton county in 1839. Here the father took up two hundred and ninety acres of government land in Windsor and Benton townships, reclaiming about eighty acres of the tract, which was a dense forest and finally taking up his residence in Eaton Rapids, where he lived for a long term of years and where his wife died. He passed the closing days of his life in Lonoke, Arkansas. He is well remembered by the older pioneer citizens of Eaton county, having been a citizen of prominence and sterling worth. He is survived by his three sons, all of whom were born and reared in Eaton county, the subject of this review having been the first in order of birth. Dr. William H. is engaged in the practice of medicine in the city of Detroit, Michigan, and Benjamin F., likewise a physician and surgeon, resides in Keoka, Iowa. Both were technically educated in a medical college in the city of Cleveland, Ohio. Mores H. Bailey was about five years of age at the time of his parents' removal to Eaton county, and he well recalls the scenes and incidents of the pioneer days on the embryonic forest farm, where deer, bear, wolves and other beasts of the wilds were much in evidence, as were also the Indians. He was afforded the advantages of such schools as were established in the semi-wilderness and later was enabled to amplify this discipline under higher instructions, having gained a thorough and practical knowledge of the profession of surveying and civil engineering so far as the same was brought into requisition in the earlier days. He did much and careful work in connection with the completion of government surveys in this section of the state, and has followed his profession as a vocation during the greater part of his active career, though he has incidentally reclaimed his fine farm, of eighty acres, in Windsor township, where he took up his abode in 1851, a few years prior to his marriage. At the time when he located on the property it was covered with the native timber and settlers were few and far removed from each other. He has erected good buildings on the homestead and the same is one of the valuable farms of the county, its operation being still conducted under his direct supervision though he ahs to a large degree retired from active labor. In politics Mr. Bailey has ever been found arrayed as a stanch supporter of the principles and policies of the Democratic party, in whose local councils he has been a valued factor, while he has ever shown a deep interest in all that has tended to conserve the material, moral and social advancement and prosperity of the county in which he has so long lived and labored. The family are supporters of the Presbyterian church of Dimondale, of which Mrs. Bailey is a member. In 1857 Mr. Bailey was united in marriage to Miss Charlotte Towsley, daughter of Orange Towsley, who was one of the first settlers in Windsor township, where he took up his residence August 8, 1837, having had to cut his way through the forest for a distance of thirteen miles in order to reach his land and then having to fell trees in order to make a clearing adequate to accommodate the tent which was his first domicile. Mr. and Mrs. Bailey became the parents of five children, all of whom are living except the first, Millie, who died at the age of three years. William resides in Dimondale, this county; Bell E. resides in the state of Oregon; L. T. remains at the parental home and has the management of the farm; and Hiram resides in Dimondale. All of the children were born and reared in Eaton County, where the family has been one of the prominence from the earliest pioneer days to the present.