He was born on February 22, 1814 at Coventry, Rhode Island. The son of John Baldwin and Margaret (Williams) Baldwin, daughter of Nehemiah Williams, he was the twelfth child in a family of fifteen. Both parents having died before he was twelve years old, the boy was forced to earn his living in a country store.
In 1837 he visited Detroit and in 1838 settled there and eventually established a highly successful business as a wholesale dealer in boots and shoes. In 1863 he became president of the Second National Bank (reorganized in 1883 as the Detroit National Bank) and remained president until 1887. On his election to the state Senate in 1861, his business training stood Michigan in good stead in dealing with a treasury emptied by theft and with preparations for sending troops to the Civil War. His health breaking down, Baldwin started for California by way of Panama, but his trip was cut short through the capture of the steamship by Admiral Semmes of the Alabama. The prisoners were released at a neutral port. Elected governor of Michigan in 1868, Baldwin gave his attention to securing the resumption of the long dormant geological survey of Michigan, including the copper and iron deposits, and to extending and perfecting the charitable and reformatory institutions of the state. A state public school for dependent children theretofore consigned to county poorhouses; an asylum for insane criminals; an intermediate reformatory for young convicts; and a board of charities and corrections; all, established on his initiative, marked advanced steps in establishing humane relations with and among the classes dependent upon the state.
On the death, in 1879, of his political and business associate, Zachariah Chandler, Baldwin was appointed by Gov. Croswell, and afterward elected, to the United States Senate, where he served fifteen months.
He was twice married: in 1835 to Harriet Day who died, January 24, 1865; and on November 21, 1866, to Sibyle Lambard of Augusta.
