Prior to the advent of sawmills in the area lumber, glass, sash, etc., was drawn by ox team from Ann Arbor or Detroit. A case in point being of Lewis B. Fonda who, in 1832, entered the W ¼ of the SW ¼ of Section 32. In 1834 he erected on it a frame house, said to have been the first in the county and at that time was regarded as a dwelling of considerable pretension. The timber with which it was built was drawn from Ann Arbor, a distance of 20+ miles, with ox teams. The family did not move into it until 1837.
Although brothers Almon and Maynard Maltby arrived in Brighton Township in the summer 1832 and Maynard bought 63 acres of land in section 31 (Brighton City), it was 1834 before the brothers built the dam across Ore Creek in the vicinity of Third Street. This supplied power for the Maltby sawmill. One of their customers was Chester Hazard of Genoa Township. During the winter of 1836-37, Mr. Hazard drew whitewood (tulip) tree logs cut on his own farm, to Maltbys mill below Brighton and had them sawed into lumber. It was principally of this lumber that the house was built. This was probably the first house erected in Genoa.
Aaron H. Kelly entered 63 acres in Section 6 and 208 acres in Section 7, Brighton Township in 1833. He soon built a substantial house and then a sawmill in 1837. This mill, operated by waterpower (upper Ore Creek), was known far and wide in those days and furnished lumber for many of the first buildings erected in the county. About the last work done by this pioneer mill was sawing a quantity of plank for the Detroit and Howell Plank Road. Further upstream, in Section 5, Rev. Wm. A. Clark by 1839 had also erected a sawmill.
In early spring of 1833, in Brighton Township, Evert (and Ruby) Woodruff entered 160 acres of Section 34, and by the last day of May he and his family took residence (probably a log cabin). During the summer an earthen dam was built approximately ½ mile south of the north section line. That fall he built a sawmill by the dam from which ran a sluice about one mile long. A three-story gristmill, with an undershot wheel was erected the next year near the end of the sluice. Both mills were supplied with water power from the stream known generally as Woodruffs Creek on what is now Pleasant Valley Road about four miles east of Town. By 1835, the sawmill was producing lumber for boards to lay two floors in Benjamin Blains cabin in the northwest corner of the Township. (This writer has not learned what happened to the sawmill.) Describing Woodruffs business acumen and reliability, the 1880 History of Livingston County states: ” To Mr. Woodruff the township is largely a debtor for the enterprise he manifested in the erection of mills, which aided greatly in its development.”
In 1867, Thomas Woulds, in company with Timothy Warner bought the Woodruff gristmill and changed the name to Pleasant Valley Mill. After expending considerable money in repairs, Woulds operated it about five years. Connected with the mill was a farm of 110 acres. In 1872, the partnership was dissolved with Woulds retaining the mill while Warner got the farm. In the spring of 1878, Mr. Woulds sold the mill to Mr. Nye. By 1934, William Ford (a brother of Henry Ford) owned the deteriorating gristmill, had it torn down at that time. The Fords used the millers house as a summer home until he sold it in 1957. It is now a private residence.
The construction of these kinds of mills usually resulted in other settlers and merchants locating nearby and before long Ore Creek Village were in existence.
Compiled and edited by Marieanna Bair from: “Michigan Memorabilia”: by Wm. Pless, 1880 History of Livingston County.