Jesse Lee Stout was the son of David Stout, and a native of Tuckerton, New Jersey. He came from a family of remarkable longevity, being one of the fifth generation from rfieir paternal ancestor, Richard Stout, an Englishman, who settled in New York city previous to the year 1640. The maternal ancestor was a Danish lady, Penelope von Princeps, who, with her family, was wrecked off Sandy Hook, where nearly all who escaped the perils of the sea were murdered by the savages on shore. The history of the early New Jersey families records the fact that Penelope, wounded and left for dead, was finally discovered and cared for by an Indian chief, who thought to get a price as a ransom from the colony in New York. After her recovery she reached her destination, where she met her future husband, Richard Stout. It is presumed that "he loved her for the dangers she had passed, and she loved him that he did pity them." At least, they married, raised a large family, and with it moved to Middletown, New Jersey, where they purchased a tract twelve miles square. Prior to the war of Independence this town contained more than two hundred persons bearing the family name. It is quite probable that most of the Stouts in the United States descended from the first proprietor of Middletown. Jesse Lee Stout was born in 1805, and when a mere child came with his parents to Ontario county, New York. He was educated at the Canandaigua academy, and in 1828 was married to Olivia Price Abbey, the second daughter of John Abbey, an early settler of the county.

In 1831 the family removed to Michigan, settling in Troy, Oakland County, upon the southwest quarter of section 9. In 1837 the eighty acres next west on section 8 were added to the homestead, and the entire original estate is still retained by the family. Mr. Stout lived to see his adopted State rise from a Territory to the position of a State, and the primeval forest change to the cultivated field. He died at the homestead in 1874. In his character generous and unassuming, in habits strictly temperate and industrious, in his religious life consistent and exemplary, he illustrated the sterling virtues of a pure life, and in death he will not be forgotten.

His wife, Olivia Price Abbey, at the date of this notice, survives him. She was born in 1805, in Ontario county, New York. A pioneer in western New York, and a pioneer in Michigan, she doubly realized the meaning of the word. To the mother, whose domain is the little world of her cabin home, the privations of early settlers are well known and appreciated. The present generation will never realize how much of their own comparative ease has depended upon the fortitude and bravery that nerved that mother's heart and led her to master the adverse circumstances of early settlements.

Mrs. Stout has raised a family of four children, three sons and one daughter. The latter, Ann Elizabeth, died in 1848, at the age of fifteen years. The sons, Byron G., William H., and Wilbur F., are at this writing all living. What they may yet do to make them worthy of mention in a history similar to this remains for the future. We may safely say that they will attain such distinction if they emulate their parents' virtues.