My Genealogy Hound

DAVID S. RECTOR, who was an honored pioneer settler of Sodus Township, Berrien County, Mich., was a man of sterling integrity, and, possessing business qualifications of a high order, he held with ability numerous official positions of trust in his home township and was mourned by all who knew him when, after a long life of busy usefulness, he passed away on the old Rector farm, located upon section 14. Born July 14, 1814, in Wayne County, N. Y., our subject spent the days of early youth in the home of his childhood, and, trained to industrious habits, arrived at maturity a self-reliant and enterprising man, well fitted to cope with the trials and difficulties of life. His parents, David and Hannah (Hickey) Rector, were lifetime residents of the Empire State, his father having been born in Wayne County, where he spent his entire days. Mr. Rector was twenty-one years of age when he first visited Michigan with the intention of making this State his permanent abiding place. Finding the climate then malarial, and there being a large increase in the sickness of the district in which he had settled temporarily, he returned again to the old New York home well content.

The next year, however, our subject and one of his brothers concluded to try their fortunes in Michigan, and again David S., Jr., journeyed to the Wolverine State. The three brothers, traveling by way of the Lakes, had a narrow escape from shipwreck. They had taken passage at Buffalo on a keelboat in tow of a steamer coming directly to St. Joseph, Mich. In a violent storm the tow became parted from the steamer and for two miles drifted at the mercy of the wind and waves. When the storm subsided they manned the oars and brought the boat safely into port at Cleveland. Reaching St. Joseph, our subject worked a short time at boating, but was soon engaged by a Mr. Larew to assist in the erection of a sawmill on Pipestone Creek. Mr. Rector was employed most of the time for three years by Mr. Larew, and in 1839 settled upon a tract of land located upon section 14, which he had entered previously, in what is now Sodus Township. He had some time before partially cleared the land, to which he added afterward the one hundred and twenty adjoining acres, and by diligent toil and excellent management brought a large part of the acreage into a high state of cultivation.

For fifty changing years, season after season, he tilled the fertile soil, and here brought his young wife, in maidenhood Miss Sarah Tabor. The husband and wife were wedded in 1843, and into the pioneer home came four daughters and five sons, seven of whom are married and two are yet at the homestead. As Mr. Rector was the first settler to make a permanent home in Sodus Township, it was a fitting token of the appreciation of his efforts as a progressive pioneer that he should have been the township, to give it a name. In remembrance of his old home in New York, he called it Sodus.

In 1869 our subject built a gristmill on Pipestone Creek, on section 2, which for many years was popularly known as the Rector Mill. Having a sound constitution and being of strictly temperate habits, Mr. Rector lived to a good old age and died upon his seventy-fifth birthday, his death regretted as a public loss by all the people of the township. Fraternally, he was a valued member of the Ancient Free & Accepted Masons, and in 1875 received the degree of Masonry in Occidental Lodge No. 56, at St. Joseph. In 1874 our subject, his wife and three of their sons and daughters joined the Benton Harbor Grange of the Patrons of Husbandry, but afterward united their interests with the Sodus Grange, with which Mr. Rector affiliated until his death. He was never identified with any church, but he was a strong believer in the doctrine of universal salvation and was ever generous to the needy and suffering. Politically, he was a Democrat and was held in high esteem, being elected to many of the important town offices. Our subject was in every sense of the word a representative pioneer settler, and materially aided in laying the broad foundation of the present advancement of Michigan.