He was born at Palmyra, New York, August 17, 1821. At the age of eight, he was tourist guide at Portage Falls on the Genesee River, New York, and at seventeen he was in Manitoba in the service of British fur traders. In 1842, he settled in Williams County, Ohio, where he founded the village of Pioneer. Between 1850 and 1860 he visited the Far West. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he entered the army and served a short time as spy and captain of scouts. He was then placed in charge of Rebel prisoners on Johnson's Island. He next entered politics as member of the Ohio House of Representatives, but being later defeated for the State Senate, he joined the United States Sanitary Commission and went again to the front. He soon returned and became trustee of certain landed property near the City of Detroit belonging to officers and soldiers of both armies. These lands he reclaimed at great expense from their original swampy condition, and built thereon the village of Norris, now part of Detroit. In 1770, he went west again and undertook to enter the Park region in June of that year, but permitted the swollen condition of the streams to defeat his project. He thus missed the honor which a few months later fell to the Washburn Party--a misfortune which he never ceased to deplore. In 1875, he again visited the Park, and in 1877, became its second Superintendent. In 1882, he returned to Detroit, after which he was employed by the government to explore old Indian mounds, forts, villages, and tombs, and to collect relics for the National Museum. He died at Rocky Hill, Kentucky, January 14, 1885. He is author of the following works: Five Annual Reports as Superintendent of the Park; "The Calumet of the Coteau," a volume of verse, with much additional matter relating to the Park; and a long series of articles on "The Great West," published in the _Norris Suburban_ in 1876-8.