William Hadley Brockway was born in Morristown, Vermont on February 24, 1813. In 1820 he removed with his parents to Malone, New York, where he worked with his father, who was a blacksmith. William had little opportunity for an education. He went to Detroit in 1831, settling in Dexter, Michigan and worked as a blacksmith in Dexter and Ypsilanti. He taught the first school in Dexter, then taught the Wyandot Indians at Flat Rock. Brockway was licensed as a Methodist preacher in 1833, working first as a circuit preacher on the Huron Mission, the Ypsilanti Circuit, the Mt. Clemens Circuit and the Saginaw Circuit, before moving to Michigan's Upper Peninsula. As the leader of Methodism in the Upper Peninsula, Brockway worked with the Indian missions at Sault St. Marie and Keweenaw Bay, with the soldiers and white settlers at the Soo, with the Indian missions in Fond du Lac and Sandy Lake in Minnesota and with the copper miners on the Keweenaw Peninsula. He was chaplain at Fort Brady for eight years. In 1848 Brockway was appointed agent of the Wesleyan Seminary at Albion, Michigan and was the financial agent of what is now Albion College. From about 1858 he was largely engaged in real estate and general business and was involved as the contractor that built the division of the Lake Shore railroad from Jonesville to Lansing. He was State Senator in 1855; Representative in 1865, 1871-1872; sergeant-at-arms of the senate in 1863; trustee of the village of Albion for many years and spent several years its president; he was a trustee of Albion College and for many years was its treasurer; for sixteen months he was the chaplain of the Union Army's 16th Michigan Infantry. Brockway was instrumental in founding Bay View Association of the United Methodist Church in 1875, an educational and religious retreat on Lake Michigan. William Brockway died on October 21, 1891.
From the description of William H. Brockway Research Papers, Before 1999. (Michigan Technological University). WorldCat record id: 714119252
