Francis B. Stockbridge

Who was Francis B. Stockbridge?

Francis Brown Stockbridge was a U.S. Senator from the state of Michigan.

Stockbridge was born in Bath, Maine, the son of a physician, Dr. John Stockbridge, and attended the common schools there. He clerked at a wholesale house in Boston 1843-1847. He then moved to Chicago and opened a lumber yard. In 1851 he moved to Saugatuck, Michigan and engaged in the operation of sawmills. He was also interested in mercantile pursuits.

In 1863 he moved to Kalamazoo and there engaged in the lumber business. That same year he married Bessie, a schoolteacher and sister of George Thomas Arnold, a lumberman and business associate there. In 1869 Stockbridge became a member of the Michigan State House of Representatives and in 1871 a member of the Michigan State Senate. He was appointed ambassador to the Netherlands on July 12, 1875, took the oath of office but never proceeded to the post.

In 1882, Stockbridge purchased the site of the famous Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island and arranged financing for its construction from the three major transportation companies that rendered service to the island at the time: the Michigan Central Railroad, the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, and the Detroit and Cleveland Navigation Company. Together, they formed the Mackinac Island Hotel Company, which then built the Grand Hotel in 1887.