Ransom Sheldon was the founder of Houghton, a city in the county of Houghton, Michigan. Around 1850, Sheldon bought land near Portage Lake and later opened a store on southern side. (Ten years later he would build Pewabic House, the oldest still-extant building in Hancock, Michigan.) An investor in several lumber yards, in 1871 he was elected as president of the town, a position he held for seven years until his death. Wikipedia
The definitive Wikipedia entry for Ransom Sheldon. Wikipedia is the biggest multilingual free-content encyclopedia on the Internet. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ransom_Sheldon
