Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Sessions, Alonzo 1886 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/mi/mifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Marilyn Ransom mlnransom@chartermi.net May 20, 2013, 7:27 pm The Ionia Sentinel, Thursday, July 8, 1886 Hon. Alonzo Sessions died at his home in the township of Berlin on Saturday morning at 4 o’clock, aged 76. His last illness was of several week’s duration. The funeral will take place from the residence at two o’clock Tuesday afternoon. He will be buried in the spot selected by himself in a grove near the residence on the farm. A sketch of deceased will be published tomorrow the day of the funeral. Alonzo Sessions was born August 4, 1810, in Marcellus, Onondaga county, New York. He was of New England stock, his grandfather having lived on a rough farm in the state of Connecticut. Amasa, the eldest of eleven children, was the father of Alonzo. At the age of nineteen he made his way on foot to the wilds of central New York where he taught school and cleared land, alternately, till he earned enough to pay for a farm on the east side of Skaneateles lake, where he died in 1838. His wife, Phoebe Smith, was a daughter of Job Smith, an officer of the revolutionary army. Her brother was sheriff of the county and member of the legislature. Alonzo was one of nine children and was trained in habits of frugality and industry and in the strictest of religious tenets, his parents being members of the Baptist church. Being a diligent student he early acquired a good education and taught school. In 1831 he went to Bennington and engaged as clerk in a store for two years, receiving as compensation for his services, board and ten dollars a month. In 1833 he left his native state for Michigan, traveling from Detroit on foot, most of the way, via Mt. Clemens, Romeo and Pontiac to Farmington, where he struck the Grand river trail and followed it through Shiawassee, Clinton and Ionia counties to the present side of the city of Ionia, where he found five families, part of them living in unfinished log cabins, and others in Indian wigwams. He then embarked on a balleau to Grand Rapids, and thence went on foot, by way of Kalamazoo, to White Pigeon where the U.S. land office was and entered his land. The next winter he spent in Ohio, teaching school in Dayton till 1835, when he bought a team and came through to his land on the south side of Grand river. The journey consumed sixteen days and from Marshall was through an unbroken wilderness. He built the first log cabin in the township of Berlin and the first bridges across the small streams between Ionia and Saranac. In 1837 he married Celia, daughter of Samuel Dexter, an d pioneer of Ionia, and sister of the late John C. Dexter and Stephen F. Dexter, now of Evart, Mrs. Don Jones and Mrs. Tibbetts. By her he has had 13 children, seven of whom and Mrs. Sessions survive him. The farm, which at first consisted of 360 acres, increased to 800 and though hewn out of the wilderness has come to be one of the most valuable in Ionia county. Mr. Sessions has been greatly honored by his fellow citizen s in the matter of official positions. He was the first supervisor of Berlin and chairman of the first board of supervisors for Ionia county, and held the office, at intervals, 18 years in all. He was justice of the peace for several years; was sheriff in 1841-42; member of the legislature in the lower house in 1856-58 60; during his last term in the legislature he was appointed assessor of internal revenue for the fourth Michigan district and held this position four years. In 1872 he was a presidential elector on the republican ticket and chosen president of the electoral college. In 1876 he was elected … (illegible)… and re-elected in 1878. When the national banking law was passed he, with others, started the First nation bank of Ionia, of which he has been a director since its foundation and president since 1866. In politics he was a republican. He never united with any religious denomination of the church. He was of a stern, unyielding disposition, direct and inflexible of purpose himself and intolerant of the opinions of those who differed with him. In his business relations he was the soul of honor and he had no sympathy for the weaknesses, or charity for the failings of others, and had a hearty contempt of dishonesty in any of its forms. His austere and cold bearing toward others repelled many who would have liked to be his friends, but if he encouraged close intimacy it must have been with a limited circle. The rugged virtues of his character commanded the respect of his fellow citizens, while he did not win their affection like men of a more sympathetic mold and with more of the milk of human kindness in their composition. Yet, in spite of all this few men have wielded greater influence in the community, or done more to set an example of sturdy manhood and honest endeavor than Alonzo Sessions. He was certainly an exemplar of personal honesty and unflagging industry, and viewed from almost any light, his life must be pronounced a success. If he appeared to take too morose and desponding a view of human nature and the motives that govern men, it was perhaps because he…(illegible)…detected so much that was unworthy, selfish and ignoble, that his mental vision was obscured to the good that is in men. He was inclined to be a pessimist in his measure of men’s characters and motives. He had a lofty ideal to which few can attain and indeed of which he himself fell short. But if we could all come as near it, taken for all in all, as he did, it would be cause for profound thankfulness. His funeral took place Tuesday afternoon at 2 o’clock from the residence in Berlin, and a large number of Ionians went over to attend it. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/ionia/obits/s/sessions20359nob.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/mifiles/ File size: 6.2 Kb