Death Of Rev. S. D. Breed
DEATH OF REV. S.D. BREED
Rev. Samuel D. Breed, after an illness of about four months, died at his home, No.. 317 E. Ann st., this morning at 10:30 o'clock. He had been long identified with Michigan and the Congregational churches of the state. He was born in 1820 at Volney, New York. In 1888, when but 18 years of age, he came to Michigan alone. For three years he worked as a farm hand summers and attended Leoni and Grass Lake academies in the winter. Before he was of age he took up land in Ingham county which he cleared and brought under cultivation. After 10 years there he moved to the present site of the village of Chelsea and built the third dwelling house there. Here he opened the first shoe shop and for several years conducted a large business successfully. During the years of his residence in Chelsea he was identified with the whole life of the place, religious, civic and business.
He was an ardent abolitionist and his home was a station on the famous underground railway from slavery to freedom. He was present at the birth of the republican party under the "oaks at Jackson. " Having acquired some property, he determined to gratify his life long ambition to preach the gospel and in 1859 he became a member of the first class in the newly established theological seminary at Chicago. He was ordained in 1861 and his first pastorate was over the Congregational church in the Child's neighborhood, Augusta, this county. He remained in this field for five years. Later he held pastorates at Grand Blanc, New Haven, Napoleon and Rochester. Desiring to give his children educational advantages he moved to Ypsilanti in 1875 and in 1885 to Ann Arbor where he has since resided.
He was married in 1841 to Miss Orpha Fenn, of Sylvan, who died in 1843. She left one child Reuben O. Breed, who while a student in the university in 1862 enlisted in the army and soon died. In 1848 he was married to Amelia E. Bosworth, of Smithville, New York, with whom he lived until her death in Ann Arbor in 1873. She was the mother of four children who now mourn the loss of a faithful and loving father. The children are Rev. Dwight P. Breed, Ph D. , for 20 years a Congregational minister in this state, but now of Creston, Iowa; Miss Amelia M. Breed, who has been her father's home maker; Rev. Merle A. Breed, pastor of the First Congregational church in Westboro, Mass. ; and Miss Gertrude T. Breed a teacher in the Ann Arbor high school. The funeral will be held from the house on Friday at 1 o'clock and the interment will be in the Vermont Settlement cemetery, four miles north of Chelsea, among the friends of his early manhood, the pioneers of the county.