D. M. Ferry & Company Boarding House

D.M. Ferry & Company established a stock seed farm on Section 26 in Avon Township in 1902. In 1912, the company expanded northward into Section 23, and bought 113 acres north of Hamlin Road, where it established experimental gardens and company housing. The Avon Township farm grew stock seed that was then shipped to the company's growers to produce seed for sale to the public. The stock seed farm was sold in 1944 when encroaching development made it difficult to produce pure strains, and the experimental gardens were sold in the mid-1950s.

Ferry had begun operations in Detroit in 1867 and became successful nationwide by developing a large retail network to sell packet seeds to the home consumer. In 1930, D. M. Ferry merged with one of its suppliers, the C. C. Morse Company, forming the Ferry-Morse Seed Company. The merged company became the largest breeder and grower of garden seeds in the world at the time.

In 1913-14, the company addressed a need for employee housing by constructing a 20-room boarding house on the north side of Hamlin Road for unmarried workers, as well as a group of family bungalows for married workers. The Pontiac Press Gazette of March 11, 1914 noted:

"L. S. Shueller has been awarded the furnishing of all the rugs, carpets, curtains, bedding, etc., for the large new boarding house of the D. M. Ferry seed farm."

Items in subsequent issues of the newspaper noted that T. E. Nichols of Rochester was supplying the furniture for the new boarding house, and the ladies of the Catholic church society of Rochester were furnishing all of the linens.

After the seed farm property was sold, the former boarding house became a private apartment building.

Preliminary Historic District Study Committee Report, Ferry Court Historic District, Rochester Hills, Michigan. Rochester Hills, Mich.: City of Rochester Hills Historic District Study Committee, 2002.

"L. S. Shueller has been awarded the furnishing...," Pontiac Press Gazette, March 11, 1914, p.5.