Arafed portrait of a man in a military uniform standing in a doorway

Baron Pierre Decatur presides over the agricultural heartland of Van Buren County from his columned river estate Stratford Manor. His lineage traces back through French Canadian voyageurs and early Dutch settlers along the Hudson River Valley to noble families originating in Belgic Gaul AD 1600s era. Family crests and seals document ancestral knights serving under Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor known for consolidating the Seventeen Provinces. Baron Decatur’s grandfather supported American revolutionaries during the War of Independence providing strategic boats and geography guidance allowing daring night maneuvers outflanking and raiding occupying British and Hessian garrison encampments. These risky specialized operations enabled Continental forces to gain strategic advantages securing victory at Saratoga and Yorktown. For loyalty despite mixed allegiances along the St Lawrence frontier, grandparents received interior land grants across uncharted Michigan as lifelong pension from Virginia Colony congress. These hereditary deeds passed down once frontier settlements pushed west of Detroit toward Lake Michigan and Chicago. Baron Pierre based along the strategic Paw Paw river helps oversee crops feeding Chicago stockyards and lumber nourishing growing lakeside cities. From his columned manor Stratford, built by French masons using Ancien materials shipped through Saint Lawrence seaway canals, Decatur tracks harvests, markets and infrastructure build-out. Come October equinox festivals, four generations share bounty alongside chiefs still holding treaty rights across lands their tribes once inhabited.