Brooks Farm

Washington Stanley was born in Shaftsbury, Vermont, in 1807, the youngest of twenty-one children. As a young man he grew dissatisfied with working conditions in the mountains, and one day 'he threw his axe into a brush pile and declared he would not do another day's work in Vermont.' He removed his young wife, Lydia, and widowed mother to Troy Township in Michigan, where they settled one hundred and sixty acres in 1826. The rude log house which was on the land when they bought it probably served the family for a time. The farm prospered, and in 1852 Stanley built a fine two-story house of cut fieldstone. By then he had six children, Lydia had died, and he had remarried. In 1873 when he sold the farm to his daughter Elizabeth and her husband Frank Ford it totaled four hundred acres. It was Stanley's granddaughter Alta Peabody who sold the farm to William Brooks in 1911. William Brooks and his wife and eleven children developed the farm into a thriving dairy farm. It operated as such until the mid 1960s when all but three acres was sold to land developers. Surviving members of the Brooks family still reside in the home. Within commuting distance of Detroit, Troy is rapidly losing its rural character. The Brooks Farm contains a handsome fieldstone house, a stone machine shop with attached smoke house, and other original farm structures. The farm is already a contrast to its surroundings, but buildings like these will become increasingly rare as further urbanization takes place.

The Brooks Farm features a handsome 1852 farmhouse of cut fieldstone, original stone machine shop with attached smoke house, as well as hog and dairy barns, corncrib, silo, well-house, chicken coop, and windmill. Most of these are original. The two-story house has a gable roof and shuttered windows 6 over 6. At the top of the building is a cement slab with the date '1852.' Gothic detailing appears in the front and side entrances while the cornice is a Greek Revival feature. To the back of the house a one-story porch has been screened in and the attached woodshed has been enclosed. Only minor alterations have been made in the house-which is in excellent condition.