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Patriot Summary
Joseph Todd Jr. (1765-1848) served in the New York militia as a private in Captain Bertholf's Company, Colonel Henry Wisner's Regiment. Joseph Todd Jr. was born in Warwick. Orange County, New York on February 11, 1765. He married Julia Johnson and later remarried Patty Turner Lee. He fathered seven children. He arrived in Pontiac, Michigan, January 1819. Joseph Todd Jr. died August 4, 1848 and is buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Pontiac, Oakland County, Michigan. SAR Patriot Number P-305776 DAR Patriot Number A114375 Find-A-Grave Number 16352471From the History of Oakland County, Michigan by Thaddeus D. Seeley (1912)
Although it was through the agency of Stephen Mack that Pontiac was located and settled, yet the first actual settlers were Joseph Todd, his son-in-law, Orisson Allen and William Lester, and their families. Joseph Todd was born February 11, 1765, at Warsaw, New York, and was a resident of that place when he enlisted for service in the Revolution in April, 1781, serving ten months and twenty days as a private in Captain Peter Bertholf’s company, Colonel Henry Wisner’s regiment. His father also was Joseph Todd who was a second lieutenant in the same company.
In 1818, at the time he applied for a pension, he was a resident of Palmyra, New York, and it was in November of the same year that he journeyed to Michigan, taking twenty-eight days to reach Detroit from Buffalo. They were driven back to Erie three times by bad winds. From Detroit they moved by wagons to Mt. Clemens and soon after Mr. Todd and his party set out on an exploring tour into what is now Oakland county. It was now the middle of December and the snow lay ten or twelve inches deep. Each man carried a supply of provisions, a blanket and an axe. Two of them were armed with rifles.
The first night’s encampment was where the village of Romeo afterward grew up. They cleared away the snow and built a fire and then felled a hollow basswood tree, which they cut in seven foot lengths and split open. Each man took half a log, placed it by the fire and with his blanket snugly wrapped around him lay down in the hollow inside and had a good night’s sleep. The next day they camped where Pontiac now is. They returned to Mt. Clemens convinced that Pontiac would be their future home, and began preparations for moving thither. They were three days making the journey with a team. At the time there were four houses on the road, at two of which they passed the night. They reached Pontiac the 19th of January, 1819, and occupied the one log house that the company had built, making a little community of fourteen persons. There were no chambers in the house, no chimney, and no floor, except some split logs where they laid their beds. Here they lived until April, when their own houses were ready for occupancy.
Mr. Todd was not well after coming to Michigan, and by July the whole party were sick, not one able to help the other. Dr. William Thompson was the only physician in the county and he lived eight miles from Pontiac. Fever and ague was, of course, the complaint. Affairs, however, grew brighter after a little and Mr. Todd lived to see the village a thriving one, even boasting of the advent of a railroad. He married first, Julia Johnson, who died February 10, 1843, aged seventy-four. He married, second, Patty Lee, September 21, 1843. Joseph Todd died at Bloomfield, Michigan, August 4, 1848, and is buried in Oak Hill cemetery.