BRIGGS, John A.
John A. Briggs, who is engaged in the successful operation of his eighty-acre farm in Bethany township, Gratiot county, was born in Shelby, Orleans county, New York, April 5, 1830, son of Giles and Rebecca (Wilson) Briggs, natives of New York State, who came from Orleans county, New York, to Jackson county, Michigan, and in 1856 removed to Ingham county, where the mother died. Giles Briggs died in Gratiot county in his seventy-eighth year.

John A. Briggs was the youngest member of his parents' family of three children, and he was six years old when the family located in Ingham county, where he grew to manhood. In the spring of 1886 he came to Gratiot county and rented a farm in Bethany township for one year, removing to another farm for two and one-half years, at the end of that time settling on the land which he now occupies. This land, an eighty-acre tract, he had purchased on first coming to Gratiot county, since which time he has improved over half of it, and has erected good, substantial farm buildings.

Mr Briggs was married to Melissa Rounds, a native of New York, and they have had three children: Olive, the wife of Hermon Hufford; Louis J., and Jennie M. Mr Briggs is a citizen who has the best interests of the section at heart.

Contributed by Amy Robbins-Tjaden - Biographical Memoirs of Gratiot County, Michigan (J.H. Beers & Co., 1906)