My Genealogy Hound

Almeron Whitehead is one of leading and substantial citizens of Birmingham, Bloomfield township, Oakland County. He was one of the organizers and is a member of the Birmingham Brick Company, Limited, one of the partners in a large drug and grocery business at Birmingham, and owns a half interest in the Exchange Bank, a private financial institution which has done a prosperous business in Birmingham for some 18 years. Mr. Whitehead was born in Waterford township, Oakland County, Michigan, in 1851, and is a son of Almeron and Ann (Mais) Whitehead.

The father of Mr. Whitehead was born at Newburgh, New York, and died at Birmingham in 1878, aged 60 years. In his earlier years he engaged in clerking, but after coming to Oakland County he engaged in farming. He was a man of prominence and reliability, and was elected several years as supervisor of Waterford township and as county superintendent of the poor. He married Ann Mais, who was born in New York City, of Welsh and English stock, a daughter of a Baptist clergyman who lost his life nursing cholera patients in New York. Mr. and Mrs. Whitehead were consistent members of the Protestant Episcopal Church. Our subject is the youngest member, of a family of nine children born to them, namely: Mary, who died aged 16 years; Emma, who married Levi Bacon; Richard, who enlisted in Company A, 5th Reg., Michigan Vol. Cav., on August 16, 1862, at Clarkston, Michigan, for three years, was made 1st sergeant in May, 1864 and was killed while in action at Harris’ Shop, Virginia, May 28, 1864; Jennie, who married M. A. Leggett; Alvin H.; Isabel, who married John Allen Bigelow, of Birmingham, Oakland County; Ann, deceased, who was the wife of Hugh J. Hunt; and Dr. Charles, who was killed in a railway accident.

Our subject was educated in the common and high schools of Pontiac, and then spent three years on the farm. He located first in Birmingham in the capacity of clerk for his brother-in-law, who contracted to pay him $100 annually for a period of eight years, but at the expiration of six years admitted him to partnership. This continued two years and then Mr. Whitehead went on the road for a year in the employ of a Troy paper house, and then entered into a partnership with George H. Mitchell, in a drug and grocery business, a business association which has continued until the present time. Other enterprises in which Mr. Whitehead and Mr. Mitchell are mutually interested and which have been unusually successful, are the Exchange Bank, which was organized in 1886, and the Birmingham Brick Company, Limited. The latter is the offspring of the brick business of E. E. Daniels, and was organized by Mr. Whitehead, G. H. Mitchell and E. E. Daniels, at Birmingham, a capital of $15,000 being invested. They own the finest brick and tile yard in Oakland County, having a capacity of 25,000 bricks per day; from 12 to 14 men are employed in making stock and wire-cut brick, tile and foundation blocks, the last named being a specialty. Some 26 years ago Mr. Whitehead started a weekly newspaper and named it the Eccentric and until quite recently has edited it, this department now being in charge of Mr. Mitchell, who attends to its affairs.

In 1878 Mr. Whitehead married Emma Bodine, who was born in 1855 in Connecticut and is a daughter of John and Sarah Bodine. Their one son, Raynale A., born in 1884, graduated in 1903 from the Birmingham High School and in the fall entered the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is a young man with brilliant prospects.

Mr. Whitehead is identified with the Republican party. He has long been prominent in village affairs, is a member of the board of trustees and has been president of the village board for a number of terms, his good judgment in business matters making him a very desirable public official. Fraternally, he is a Mason of the Royal Arch degree, a Knight of Pythias and a member of the Knights of the Maccabees. The family belong to the Protestant Episcopal Church.