Monroe County, Michigan Monroe County, Michigan Monroe County is a county located in the U.S. state of Michigan. As of the 2010 census, the population was 152,021. The largest city and county seat is Monroe. The county was established as the second county (after Wayne County) in the Michigan Territory in 1817 and was named for then-President James Monroe. Monroe County comprises the Monroe, MI Micropolitan Statistical Area and is included in the Detroit-Warren-Ann Arbor, MI Combined Statistical Area. It is also considered a northerly extension of the Toledo Metropolitan Area. Before the county's formation, the primary settlement was Frenchtown, which was settled
James Monroe Unlike Jefferson, Monroe was rarely attacked as an atheist or infidel. In 1832 James Renwick Willson, a Reformed Presbyterian minister in Albany, New York, criticized Monroe for having "lived and died like a second-rate Athenian philosopher." Monroe owned dozens of slaves. According to William Seale, he took several slaves with him to Washington to serve at the White House from 1817 to 1825. This was typical of other slaveholders, as Congress did not provide for domestic staff of the presidents at that time. As president of Virginia's constitutional convention in the fall of 1829, Monroe reiterated his belief that slavery