Axford, William

The Hon. William Axford, one of the earliest settlers of eastern Michigan, and in an early day one of the most prominent business men in northern Oakland, died at his late home in Clarkston, Thursday morning, September 16, 1886, after a lingering illness of Bright's disease, with paralysis as the immediate cause of his death. The deceased was born in Windon, Ontario, March 28, 1813. He came to Michigan and to Macomb county in 1822 at the age of nine years, settling with his parents about three miles east of the now village of Rochester. In his young manhood he taught school for a short time, afterwards going into mercantile trade in the town of Avon. In 1842 he located as a merchant in Clarkston, doing a successful business for some 25 years, when he retired from active life, in order to look after his landed estate which was
quite large. During his residence in Independence he was supervisor for several terms, and for several terms chairman of the county board. He represented Oakland county in the legislature of 1850, and was a member of the constitutional convention of 1850, a body which formed our present organic law. He was married in 1844 to Ellen C. Axford, of Oxford, Warren
county, New Jersey, with whom he lived until his death. He had no children, but leaves many more remote relatives, his nearest of living kin being
Livingston Axford, Esq., of Holly. He was a man who impressed himself on a community; possessing the elements of leadership, which at times were strongly manifested, to a degree of dictation. It was not easy for him to love his enemies, but to those he liked he was a true, sacrificing friend; one who would protect and defend with his substance those to whom he was socially and in business attached. He was a clear headed man in the performance of public duties, and in his own affairs his books were always honestly balanced. He was always ready to render to every man his due, and was rigid in a like demand from those indebted to him. Right wrongs no one, and he dies free from the stain of demanding more than his own. He was a man of strong convictions on all social and political questions. Politically he affiliated with and was attached to the old school democratic party, whose traditions and principles he clung to as an inherited political treasure, which he never parted with, or made political traffic of. Socially his fellowship did not cover a wide range; he was devotedly attached to home and locality, in the latter years of his life seldom leaving the home hearth, or aberrating from the beaten local trail of association. He was intimately identified with the growth of Clarkston, and did much in a substantial and advisory way to advance the material interests of the village. Six nephews, all Axfords, were, at the request of the deceased, selected as his pallbearers.