This resident of Bloomfield township, son of Jacob and Susanna Sly, was born in Newtown, now Elmira, Chemung county, New York, May 13, 1823, and at the age of six months was brought by his parents to Michigan, where they settled in the western part of the township of Bloomfield, and where the years of his boyhood and youth were passed in the manner in which that happy period of their lives is usually passed by the sons of well to do Michigan farmers.

His first commencement of the business of life, upon leaving his father's roof, was that of laboring in the employ of Mr. James Hunt, with the intention of accumulating sufficient means to enable him to purchase land upon which to prosecute his chosen vocation, that of agriculture. It was a slow process, but by the practice of the strictest economy he finally accomplished it, and purchased, from Edward Warner, solely with the proceeds of his own labor, the land which constitutes the fine farm on which he now resides, in the southwest corner of section 29 in Bloomfield.

On the 1st of January, 1852, he was married to Miss Almira S. Drake, daughter of Deacon Melvin Drake, of Southfield. She is now an earnest and zealous member of the Wing Lake Presbyterian church. Three children have been born to them, namely: Melvin D., born April 27, 1853 ; Mary Eva, born July 29, 1856 (and died October 27, 1857) ; and Charles B., born April 21, 1866 ; both the sons being still living.

Mr. Sly's farm is an excellent one, though not of the largest, being seventy acres in extent. It is in a high state of cultivation, well stocked with fruit trees, and with its capacious barns and fine dwelling (the former built in 1865 and the latter in 1872, and of which a pictorial representation will be found on another page of this work), could hardly fail to be the cause of a feeling of honest pride in its owner, of whose energy and unaided labor all this is the result. Of the lands of his father, which lay opposite his own, in section 32, Mr. Sly never received an acre.