Gov. Fred M. Warner

Fred M. Warner, born in England in 1865, spent most of his life in Farmington, where the Warner family lived for many decades in a large white Civil War Era house at the center of the city's historic district. An agriculturist and businessman, he established the first of his thirteen cheese factories in 1889 and served as Farmington's state senator from 1895 to 1898. From 1901 to 1904 he was Secretary of State, then was elected to the first of three terms as governor of Michigan, serving from 1905 to 1911. As a Republican governor, he championed many Progressive era programs, including regulation of railroads and insurance, conservation, food inspection, child labor laws, direct primary elections, and woman's suffrage. He died in 1923, leaving a legacy of reform-minded years.

Farmington, Michigan · United States