Adrian's Governors

William Greenly came to Adrian from New York in 1836, became a lawyer, and in 1838 was elected a state senator on the Democratic ticket. In 1846 he was elected lieutenant governor, and when Governor Alpheus Felch resigned a year later to serve in the U.S. Senate, Greenly completed Felch's term as Michigan's sixth governor. During his tenure from 1847-1848, the state decided to make the new town of Lansing the capital. Afterward he returned to Adrian to practice law and served as a justice of the peace and as the city's mayor in 1858-1859. Adrian's most successful politician was Charles Croswell, who was orphaned early, came to Adrian with his uncle in 1837, began studying law in 1846, and in 1854 was a delegate to the Jackson convention that formed the Republican Party. He began practicing law in Adrian a year later with Thomas Cooley, was elected to the Michigan State Senate by 1864, and in 1865 pushed Michigan's vote to end slavery through the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Elected Michigan's seventeenth governor in 1876, he served two terms until 1881, working to make state government honest, efficient, and inexpensive while promoting institutions such as orphanages, a state school for the blind, and a state reform school for girls. After his second term, Croswell returned to Adrian, took control of the opera house that later bore his name, and served as president of the Lenawee County Savings Bank until his death in 1886.

Adrian, Michigan · United States