| The Highland
Township Historical Society THE DEGARMO FAMILY |
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The DeGarmo family of Highland can reportedly trace its ancestry back to Pierre deGarmeaux a/k/a Pierre Villeroy; a Frenchman who settled in Beverwyck, New Netherlands (now Albany, New York) and married circa 1682 Catrina Van Der Heyden [Note 1]. The immediate progenitor of the Highland family was Henry E. DeGarmo, born August 29, 1809, in Poughkeepsie, New York, who married Martha Virginia Denniston. By 1840 Henry and his wife had settled in Ypsilanti, Washtenaw County, Michigan, where their son, Archibald Denniston DeGarmo, was born on July 12, 1845. By 1850 the family had relocated to Ann Arbor [Note 2], and in May, 1858, settled in Lyons, Ionia County, Michigan, where Henry E. DeGarmo engaged in the merchantile business. Some years later Henry E. DeGarmo came to Highland Township and took up residence on a farm on Milford Road, immediately north of Highland Cemetery. Here, circa 1866-67, he built the impressive brick home shown in this engraving published in Durant's History of Oakland County, Michigan (1877) - one of the few all-brick 19th century buildings in the township. Henry E. DeGarmo died March 1, 1873. His wife, Martha, lived another twenty years before her death on August 24, 1893 [Note 3]
[1] - See, e.g., the ancestral file submitted to the LDS FamilySearch.org web site by Roger G. Skildum, as well as information posted to a variety of genealogical bulletin boards concerning the DeGarmo/deGarmeaux family.
[2] - Henry E. DeGarmo is found on the 1840 Census for Ypsilanti and 1850 Census for Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, Michigan.
[3] - For more on the ancestry and descendants of Henry E. DeGarmo, see the biography of his grandson, John A. DeGarmo, published in Elam E. Branch, History of Ionia County, Michigan, B. F. Bowen & Co. (1916), pp. 150-152, posted in the Biographies section of this site.