a blog by Peter Leonard
My great-grandfather, John Patrick Leonard, was a man who progressed from farmer to carpenter to real estate developer. In 1894, when he was 19, he owned a farm in rural Sanilac County, MI, near the town of Forester on the shore of Lake Huron.
By 1910 he had moved in towards Detroit, to a development call St Clair Heights which would one day turn into a Chrysler assembly plant.
"Conners Creek" on the map above turned out to be somewhat of a talisman for John, as he would work in the 1910s as a carpenter at the Conners Creek Power Plant for Detroit Edison.
Image courtesy jbcurio.
By 1912 or 13 John had built a house in the growing community of Grosse Pointe Park, a few blocks away from the Detroit city line.
He also built at least one other house on the same block, for the Luderer family. Here's his daughter, my great-aunt, standing in the doorway of that house, while it was under construction:
This part of Grosse Pointe Park was pretty undeveloped around 1913:
Here's John relaxing on the back steps of his own house on Lakepointe::
Members of the family are buried at the Mt. Olivet cemetery in nearby east Detroit. Photos, new and old, of the area are online here.