GEORGE CARRINGTON, merchant at Trent, Muskegon Co., Mich. (and also farmer, sections 33 and 34, Ashland Township), was born in Leicestershire, England, April 6, 1831, and is the son of John and Mary (Abeshaw) Carrington, and of unmixed English lineage. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1840, and located in the town of Marcellus, Onondaga Co., N.Y., three years later removing to Greece, Monroe Co., N.Y., where Mr. Carrington grew to man's estate.
Our subject was possessed of an active, ambitious temperament and a desire to take advantage of the privileges and possibilities accorded to every man under the institutions of the American Government. He could not but contrast the improvement in the confitions of his family in a land of social and political equality with their state in the landthay had left; and his ambition was fired to make an honest attempt to place himself on the grade accorded to successful effort, incited by a laudable desire to attain heights reached by men of no greater worth or capacity. On reaching his majority he went to California and engaged in gold-mining, at which he was occupied three years with satisfactory results. He then sold his claims and returned to his parents' home in the State of New York. He fixed upon Michigan as a favorable point for a location and in the spring of 1858 settled in Ashland Township. He bought 160 acres of land, to which he has since added by purchase 26 acres. Of this tract he has put 70 acres in first-class condition for farming, with all necessary buildings and a suitable residence.
In 1870, Mr. Carrington desired to extend his business connections, and in November he suspended agricultiral pursuits and founded a mercantile business at Trent. His initial stock represented a cash value of $700. The correctness of his judgment in the selection of a business and locality is substantiated by the fact that he is at present carrying a stock worth about $6,000, and doing an annual business of $15,000, with every prospect of a further proportionate increase in trade. But he has never lost his love for agricultural pursuits, and when his commercial affairs reach a status assuring their safe management by delegatd parties, he contemplates a return to his first love, for the purpose of placing his home in attractive and satisfactory condition to pass his sunset of life and to experiment in scientific farming.
Mr. Carrington was married Dec. 16, 1857, in Greece, N.Y., to Sarah, daughter of Thomas and Mary (Davis) Mitchell. she was born in the vicinity of Hastings, England, Jan. 12, 1837, and her parents were also natives of that country. They came to the United States in her infancy and settled in Monroe County. To Mr. and Mrs. Carrington three children have been born, as follows: Libby, Sept. 28, 1858; Jennie, May 31, 1869; and Anna, born Nov. 4, 1869, died in infancy. The mother is a lady of gentle, affable character, alive to the necessities of those about her, kind, sympathetic and charitable, forming opinions in the law of love, and exercising toward all the spirit of lovely benignity she acquired in its fullness during a trail of almost unexampled acuteness, having been during 17 years an invalid and suffereing the distress attendant upon active disease. She has to a certain degree recovered health and devotes her renewed strength to the benefit of those with whom she is associated.
Mr. Carrington is a thorough type of his nationality and an essential American, adopting the characteristics of the people of whom he is one by assimilation and retaining his British traits of gayety and good fellowship. He is bluff and hearty, considerate and energetic, and public-spirited to the last degree. He is a true gentleman in the best acceptance of the term, and holds an elevated position in the estimation of those with whom he is brought in contact in business or society. He is an adherent to the principles of the Republican party and belongs to the Order of Masonry. One of his connections in the latter is with the Blue Lodge, No. 131, at Newaygo, and the other with the Royal Arch Chapter of Sparta, Kent County. He is also actively connected with the Order of Odd Fellows, Lodge No. 302, at Trent.