The subject of the present sketch, William B. Fosdick, was born in the town of Clinton, Dutchess county. New York, June 20, 1807, being the youngest in a family of six sons and four daughters. He received as good a common school education as the days of his boyhood afforded, and wrought at farm labor for his father until he was twenty-three years of age. For three years longer he continued to follow the same business for other parties. In the spring of 1833 he came to Michigan, and bought eighty acres of land in the township of Oakland, on section 27, built some fence, and sowed a few acres of wheat, and in the fall of that year returned to Dutchess county, where he spent one summer, and returned to his Michigan farm in the spring of 1835, and during the summer built a house, and returned in the fall again to Dutchess county, and brought from thence Miss Esther Cox, a native of that county, to his Michigan home as his wife. She was born January 5, 1808. To his original purchase of eighty acres Mr. Fosdick has added from time to time other tracts, until at present he owns two hundred acres; which, under his direct management and labor, has developed from the original forest to a most excellent farm, a view of which, together with portraits of himself and wife, and those of their son and daughter-in-law, may be seen on another page of this work. Four children have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Fosdick, two of whom died in infancy: Nelson B. was born August 13, 1841, and married Miss Emma J. Carpenter, daughter of Jonathan Carpenter, of Ottawa county, Michigan, in January, 1874, and now resides on the old homestead with his parents. Laura A., now Mrs. Axford Price, of Macomb county, was born December 17, 1837, and was married in November, 1863.

In political faith Mr. Fosdick is and has ever been a Jacksonian Democrat, but has, from choice, ever pursued the path of the private citizen, persistently refusing official positions.