Family history written by Jean Hebert Brown

"The day books were written by my great-grandmother Jennie Kedzie Stone. When my mother, Katherine Sayre Brown, decided to work on her genealogy, she decided to trace her mother's family, although she did do some work on her father's family as well. But her mother's family was more interesting to her and had been a part of her life.

In the spring of 1795, the family of Adam and Margaret Kedzie came to the United States from Scotland. They settled in Delaware County in Stamford, New York. The family had five sons and two daughters. In 1826, their son William moved to Michigan with his wife, Margaret Telford Kedzie, eventually settling around Monroe. They called their settlement Kedzie's Grove, but it later became known as Petersburg.

The family spent the summer in a rented house in Monroe, while the father went 25 miles up the Raisin River to clear some land and build a log house, which the family moved into in October. It took two years of hard labor to clear the acres so they could plant corn and wheat. The summer of 1828, the father became ill and in six days he died leaving his wife with the children.

One of the sons of Adam and Margaret Telford Kedzie was William Kedzie, who was born in Delhi, New York June 29, 1816 and died in Deerfield, Michigan June 8, 1895. He was married to Marion Burnett, born in Washington County, New York, July 23, 1833, and died in Deerfield, Michigan May 21, 1874. Margaret and William Kedzie had four boys, Robert, William, James and George.

Robert Kedzie was a chemist who joined the faculty of Michigan Agricultural College (now Michigan State University) and in 1863 was appointed Professor of Chemistry. The Kedzie Laboratory on the MSU campus is named for him.

Their son, William, is my relative. He married Marion Burnett, and they had three children, including a daughter Jennie Kedzie who was born in 1860 in Deerfield, Michigan. She married George Augustus Stone.

George Stone became a prominent citizen in Petersburg. He owned a lumberyard and did well financially. He liked to write doggerel poetry, and left us lots of his little poems as well as his autobiography.

Jennie Kedzie Stone, his wife, my maternal great-grandmother, is the author of the day books.

George Stone and Jennie Kedzie had three children, one of whom was Ida Stone Sayre, born 1883, my maternal grandmother. Ida attended Adrian college and gave a speech at the commencement on "The Rights of a Woman." In 1910 she got a teaching credential and taught Latin, German and English.

Ida Stone married Frank Valentine Sayre who was born February 14, 1885. They married in Petersburg on June 26, 1912. Frank's parents had both died. Frank became an electrician and moved to Detroit where there were more opportunities for employment. Ida occasionally taught school, often as a substitute teacher.

Ida Stone Sayre and Frank Valentine Sayre had three children, one of whom was my mother, Katherine, born in 1915. She attended Wayne State University, obtained a teaching credential and taught art in elementary school until she married.

My mother married George John Brown, born on a kitchen table in a tenement in Kilmarnock, Scotland in 1906. I was their first child, born on Mare Island, a Navy base in Vallejo, California, August 17, 1944. My dad, a lieutenant commander, was stationed there during World War II to repair submarines, as he had a degree in engineering.

When the war was over, the family back to Detroit, and built a house in Grosse Pointe Farms. I graduated from Grosse Pointe High School in 1962. I moved to San Diego, California in 1977 and have been here ever since."