Week 32 2026 - Neighbors and Community - Lorraine Sheridan / Perrinton

The Sheridan family has been in Perrinton, Gratiot County, Michigan since the 1850's when Patrick Sheridan filed for 80 acres of land in Gratiot County through the Bureau of Land Management in Ionia. 

The first school in Perrinton was built in 1888 and had 52 total students with one teacher. The brick Perrinton High School was built in 1917 and was the one that my mom (Lorraine Sheridan) would have attended. 1939 was the last graduating class when Perrinton and Middleton consolidated and they built the Fulton High School that we know today.  At the time of my mother's High School years (1939-1942) the town's population was less than 400 persons.  Including students from Middleton along with Perrinton, 33 were in the graduation class of 1942. Mom's sister Alice Sheridan was in the first graduation class of the new High School in 1940.

My mom's 'Autograph Book' from 1939 has comments from friends from her community.  Some were neighbors and others were just school friends. Lucille Ayers, Isobel Sowers, Judy Thomas, Curly (June) Norton, Byron Wright, Mary Frances Howe, and Elinor Martin, are some names that are included.


Lucille Ayers graduated in 1941 and in December 1942 while she was working in the Lyons Plant in Detroit with her brother Lewis and my mom Lorraine, she met and married Hansford Hancock, a soldier from Kentucky. They eventually settled in Westland, Wayne, Michigan and are buried there.

Dear Lorraine: Crackers are dry and so is cheese, 
and so is a kiss without a squeeze.

Byron Wright, served in WWII in the South Pacific, married and settled in Lansing, Michigan.

Dear Lorraine: May your life be like a piano 
Grand upright and square.


Elinor Martin and mom were good friends and lived in the same area of Perrinton. Her father worked at the Borden's Condensary in Perrinton.  She married Robert Baker of Perrinton and they settled, raised a family and died there. 

Dear Lorraine, may your life be like a ford
 "a rattling success"

Every community has families who were once familiar faces—neighbors who shared in the daily life of the town before eventually moving on. Some remained lifelong friends, and their connections endured through letters, visits, and shared memories. (Ex: Geraldine Vinton Wilkinson) Others disappeared from the community, becoming little more than names recalled in passing. 

Perrinton has unfortunately never grown into the thriving community its early settlers envisioned. Men and women arrived with hope, investing their savings, labor, and dreams in the promise of a prosperous village that would support generations to come. They built homes, opened businesses, established churches and schools, and believed they were creating a lasting legacy.

Today, with a population of about 500, Perrinton remains a quiet reminder of the hopes and hardships of its earliest settlers. While the village may not have become the bustling town and community they envisioned, the lives they built there continue to echo through their descendants.

Barbie

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