Pontiac, MI news and local guide

The Pontiac Company's 15 members, chaired by Solomon Sibley of Detroit, were the first landowners, and Sibley, Stephen Mack and Shubael Conant formed a partnership to develop the town. Solomon and Sarah Sibley largely paid for its first buildings, and while he traveled as territorial congressman and judge, she was for two years the company's most active go-between with settlers. In 1825 the Sibleys helped Elizabeth Denison, a free Black woman who worked for them, buy 48.5 acres in Pontiac, and she is believed to be the first Black woman to buy land in Michigan Territory. Pontiac, Michigan's first inland settlement, became a village in 1837, the year of statehood, named for the Odawa chief who had his headquarters in the area decades earlier during the resistance to white encroachment. It became a city in 1861, drawing doctors and lawyers and becoming an industrial center, with woolen and grist mills powered by the Clinton River. Sources Wikipedia: Pontiac, Michigan