Avery helped document history

"There is no work I have ever done for the last 15 years for Oakland County that I have enjoyed as much as collecting and mounting the book of 1,000 pictures of old residents which will be exhibited at the Pioneer Society banquet..."
--Lillian Drake Avery, quoted in the Pontiac Press Gazette, May 2, 1922

   Born in Farmington on November 22, 1856, Lillian Drake Avery spent much of her adult life preserving and documenting history.
    A prolific writer, avid historian and artist, she combined family life with a love of geneaology and pioneer history. As a child, she moved in with a married sister in Ann Arbor to pursue an education. There, she met Aaron B. Avery, whom she married in 1879, after he had completed his medical studies.
    The couple settled in Farmington, where Dr. Avery established a thriving medical practice. Mrs. Avery served as the founding president of the Womens Literary Club and was a member of the Ladies Library Club. Her membership
in the Daughters of the American Revolution appears to have fostered her
love of history.
    While working through the DAR, she documented her own family tree, as well as that of others among her circle of friends, wrote biographies of Oakland County's Revolutionary War soldiers and chronicled details of the Underground Railroad as it existed in Oakland County.
    Mrs. Avery pushed forward a week-long Oakland County Centennial celebration in 1916 and collected volumes of information on Oakland County Pioneer Families. Much of her work remains in the collection of the Oakland County Pioneer Historical Society in Pontiac, where the Averys moved in 1885, with their daughters, Blanche and Lucille. Mrs. Avery died there in 1930.
    Memories of her childhood and a delightful collection of watercolors have been preserved in The Watercolors of Lillian Drake Avery written in 1985 by Farmington area historian Jean Fox.