Alexander Simpson Brooks, son of David and Catharine Brooks, was'born on the 13th of December, 1817, in the town of Ovid, Seneca county, New York, where he remained until he had entered his twenty-second year, when he went with his father to Avon, near Genesee, New York, at which place the father had rented eleven hundred acres of land. There he remained more than two years. On the 13th of January, 1841, he was married at Ovid, to Miss Amanda Leonard, by whom have been born to him six sons and four daughters, as follows : Lyman L., Martha C, Helen E., Charles S., Alice E., Henry, Kate M., Homer, Frederick Stanley, and Benjamin.

In August, 1842, he came with his family to Michigan, and settled on the west town line in Novi, on the farm which he now occupies. This land, three hundred and twenty acres, he had purchased in the year 1839 of his uncle, Benjamin Simpson, who had bought of Belknap, who made the original entry.

On this half section there were ninety acres cleared, and three log cabins built, each eighteen by twenty feet in size, and each with fire place. Two of these he moved together, which made him a comfortable habitation. Here he was completely shut in by heavy woods, and he says he was never so happy in his life as when he had cut away enough of these to enable him to see the light of a neighbor about a mile distant. There were no roads reaching to his farm when he came, and one of his first necessities was to construct them, so as to give him access to the outside world.
,/br>In his old home in New York his inclination had been towards the raising of pure blooded stock, for he believed then, just what his later experience has verified, that such stock alone are profitable to produce. It being his intention to embark in this enterprise in his new home, he made his commencement by bringing hither, in the fall of 1843, from New York, four head of Durham cattle and nine pure merino sheep. Barely avoiding the " Julia Palmer" disaster on the trip out, and also barely escaping the drowning of his stock at Buffalo by the unprecedented rise of water forced in by a westerly gale (the water rising eight feet deep during the night in the stable from which he had fortunately removed them at nightfall), and having lost, but recovered, them at Hamtramck, on the route from Detroit, he finally brought them safely to his farm in Novi.

Upon their arrival he was ridiculed by his neighbors on the poor appearance of the stock, their expensiveness, and, as they said, the tenderness with which they had been reared, which would make them worthless in the wilds of Michigan ; but the result has disproved all their prophecies and established the correctness of Mr. Brooks' ideas. The man who said most in ridicule of the stock when they arrived was the first to purchase them.

Mr. Brooks' array of stock today stands ahead of any in Michigan ; the only farmer who is able to make any show of comparison with his being Daniel M. Uhl, of Ypsilanti. He, Mr. Brooks, has now thirty head of Durhams, and has generally from one hundred and fifty to two hundred sheep, all of strictly pure blood, which yield him seven pounds per fleece. When he first took this farm it was under a mortgage, but this he paid long ago, and there has been none since. He has the same acreage which he had at first, but in cultivation and in the improvements made the change is very great. Besides this he has paid fully ten thousand dollars for land on which to establish his sons, of whom he has three married, to whom he has given one hundred, one hundred and ten, and one hundred and sixty acres respectively, one being located at Brighton, one five miles on the road towards Milford, and one near Novi Corners. With the assistance of his remaining sons he performs all the labor of the farm, except in the season of harvest. His average yearly production of wheat is one thousand bushels. He has aimed to attend strictly to his own business, and has never sought, nor willingly accepted, office.

It is admitted that his introduction of fine stock into Oakland has been more than a hundred thousand dollars benefit to the county, and it is his desire to impress on the minds of those who come after him that they can afford to produce none but good stock, and that the raising of such, if persevered in, is sure to prove profitable in the end.