By Matt Mackinder
Clarkston News Editor

In 1832, Butler Holcomb bought 480 acres in Section 20 of Independence Township, which was to become the village of Clarkston.
Holcomb also built the fifth log cabin in Clarkston as well as the first mill for sawing lumber using the water power from the mill pond. He sold the mill and water rights to Jeremiah and Nelson Clark in 1838.
Holcomb’s Peachtree Farm, another historic piece of land built in 1865 located on 13 acres at 7300 Holcomb Road in Independence Township, was sold last November. The former owners, Dr. Sue Coleman and Mike Mosharo, had owned the property since 1987, moving in back in 1994.
The sale was for $510,000, to John Middlebrook, and was finalized Nov. 16, 2022.
“It used to be a working farm,” said Coleman. “At some point, there were horses and about 3-4 horse stalls in the barn. There was also a peach orchard, which is how it was named. It’s had a bunch of revisions and additions. If you go to the Clarkston Historical Society, you’ll see that these homes were not impressive. This one has the original fireplace and was a smaller home that got added on to.
“You call tell how old it is by the crappy Michigan basement that was probably the size of the house.”
Mosharo added that the cabin was originally the size of the living room area and built out from there.
“I’ve done some metal detecting there and at the front of the house, I found little bits of parts of horse wagons,” Coleman said. “Also, if you go down Allen Road, you can sometimes find remnants of antique bottles. There are probably many relics up and down the road.”
Mosharo said the kids had a great time with the house.
“Word got around and the kids would all go from the basement to the crawl space because the word out in the community was that there was a dead body there,” laughed Misharo. “And that the Underground Railroad ran through that property when it was working.”
Why was 2022 the right time to sell the Holcomb home? To Coleman, the answer was simple and very succinct, to the point.
“Well, we’re getting older,” Coleman said. “We wanted to sell it to somebody who would appreciate it and enjoy it like we did. We’re older and don’t want to deal with all the maintenance. We also like to go visit our grandchildren in Massachusetts and we don’t live close to the airport.”
“Unfortunately, in Clarkston, the animals have nowhere to go,” added Mosharo. “We always kept the property more as a wildlife refuge where animals knew they were safe. We didn’t allow hunting, and on the rare occasion we had a hunter, we kind of instilled the fear of God into them so they never came back. It was such a safe area that we had a female wolf raise her cub on our property. The DNR told us to give them privacy and they’ll move on on their own. That property has been a godsend for all the wildlife.
“People would let their pets out of their cars on I-75 as a way to get rid of them and these pets would find their way to our property and live in the woods because they didn’t know what the heck to do. We’d kind of take them under our wing and nurture them. It was an interesting environment.”
Mosharo noted that the property once had a 15,000-square-foot commercial greenhouse that they used for their own plant needs and “our own private health club.”
“You know, we’ve got a lot of fond memories, and every family that had it prior, we’ve had some messages from them where they would say to please take care of this old place,” Mosharo said. “They all had a connection with it.”

PHOTO: The Peachtree Farm property, located at 7300 Holcomb Road, sold to a new owner in November. Photo: Matt Mackinder