Early Memories of Saugatuck, Michigan : 1830-1930
Author: Heath, May Francis
Publisher: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company; Grand Rapids, Mich: 1930

HENRY BIRD

Henry Bird was born in Lancaster, N. Y. in 1817 and he was married to Deziah Van House of the same place in 1840, coming to Michigan on their wedding trip, through from New York in a covered wagon over roads that were so terrible, they were tempted many times to turn around, but they kept on and settled at Croton where Mr. Bird set up a sawmill, later they moved to Wheaton, Ill., where they bought a farm adjoining that of Albert H. Gray, the steel magnate. While at Wheaton Mr. Bird became a charter member of the Masonic Lodge, and in the third year became its worshipful master.

They came to Saugatuck in 1866, when the town was in the heyday of its lumbering industries with which Mr. Bird became prominently identified and for several years he was engaged in the manufacture of shingles.

He also became a charter member of Saugatuck Masonic Lodge and at the time of his death at the age of ninety-eight, he was said to be the oldest Masonic Past Master in the United States.

Mrs. Bird also lived to a good old age of 86 and this venerable couple, when in life, numbered their descendants to the fifth generation.

There were four children, Henry, Mary Dean, Laura Pride and Charles E., three of whom are living, also twenty-one grandchildren, seventeen great-grandchildren.

They were identified with the M. E. Church and had resided in Saugatuck nearly sixty years before their demise.