Elizabeth Denison Forth, known as Lisette, is recognized as the first African American to purchase land in Oakland County. Born around 1786 to an enslaved family in what would later become Macomb County, she escaped to Canada at age twenty-one and later returned to the Michigan Territory as a free woman. Though still limited to domestic work, she served the households of prominent people, including Judge Solomon Sibley and Sarah Sproat Sibley, and saved her wages. In 1825, with Solomon Sibley arranging the sale, she bought Pontiac land for $226 as a woman of color, later invested in property elsewhere and in various businesses, and sold the Pontiac property eleven years later for $950. She spent her later years working for the Biddle family in Wyandotte and Grosse Ile. Remembered for exceptional dignity, conviction, and compassion, she refused to let enslavement define her, and when she died in 1866, her will provided funds to build a chapel to offer the poor man and the stranger wine and milk without price and without cost.