Farmington: Quakers from New York

Farmington's story begins with a group of Quakers who followed Arthur Power west from New York in eighteen twenty-four. Power and his fellow Friends settled in what is now Oakland County and built a community they first called Quakertown. Two years later, in eighteen twenty-six, they renamed it Farmington, after Power's hometown in New York state, a choice that reflected where they came from as much as what they hoped to build.

Farmington Township was formally established by the Michigan Territorial Legislature in eighteen twenty-seven, and the village incorporated in eighteen sixty-seven. Through the twentieth century, Farmington absorbed the suburban growth spreading northwest from Detroit. Today the city covers about two point seven square miles with a population of around eleven thousand, a compact historic core surrounded by its far larger neighbor, Farmington Hills.