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And change had oft succeeded change.

June 2, 2010 in Books, History | No comments

This just in from George Washington Stark! An astonishing poem about the poignancy of tearing down a neglected old property — in this case, the former home of General Lewis Cass. Rumor had it that the Chevalier Cadillac himself (the “shrewd lord of Mont Desert” ) had the house built for the chief of the Hurons in 1703. The poem was written, according to Stark, around the time that they tore the house down — in the early 1880s.

Puts today’s feral houses — and the city’s right-sizing plans — into perspective.

Half hid beside the noisy street,
Gray with old storms and summer’s heat,
The ancient house seemed all alone,
Hemmed in by walls of brick and stone,
But straight its roof, its frame was sound
From gable peak to level ground,
Of sturdy beams so square and stout
That time could never wear them out,
For many a frigate safely rides
With lighter keel and frailer sides.
Strangers would pause to ponder o’er
The low-browed eaves and deep-set door,
And wondering, ask what freakish fate
Had saved that humble pile so late,
When all beside was new and strange
And change had oft succeeded change.
But men are hurrying to and fro,
Intent to lay its glories low;
Thick through the air the shingles fly,
The roof no more shuts out the sky.
But vain each furious effort seems
To wrench apart the seasoned beams,
The oaks that lent them largest stood
Of all the giants of the wood,
That towered aloft, serenely great,
When bold Champlain sailed down the strait.
And not a withered bough was seen
Or blemish on their crowns of green,
When the shrewd lord of Mont Desert
First spoiled them of their branches fair,
And bade his artisans to bring
And shape them for the Huron King.
Well-mortised joints with bolt and brace
Held the broad timbers in their place,
Unmoved by storm or earthquake shock
As buttresses of living rock,
Now ax and lever, day by day,
Wear slow the stubborn logs away;
And deep-sunk balls and hatchet cars
Give token of long-ended wars,
When rival tribes came prowling ’round
And made each spot a battle-ground
And day by day a curious throng
Marks the dull task and tarries long,
Well-pleased to find some relic slight,
Memorial of its former plight —
Perchance a hammered bolt or key
Brought hither from beyond the sea
When great King Louis held the throne
And claimed this region as his own.

It looks like Stark got this from Farmer, who attributes the poem (“not written for public eye”) to Judge James V. Campbell. Stark published a (mercifully) abridged version of the poem.

Today I sat on the porch and read the first chapter of City of Destiny straight through while I drank a beer. It’s flowery and fanciful and regrettably dated. But its grand prose swept me away; it was like holding a lush, too-generous little biopic in my hands. What makes it imperfect as a work of scholarship make it an ideal summer swashbuckle. About Detroit! I’ll be swooning on my porch if you need me.

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Tuesday with General Friend Palmer: The Lost Dauphin

April 19, 2010 in Books, History | No comments

ROYALTY SAW DETROIT.

Prince de Joinville and Suite Spent a Day Here, While Dauphin-Hunting.

WHAT.

Along in the latter while thirties and early forties, I was clerk in the book store of Sidney L. Rood in the Cooper Block of Jefferson Avenue, this city. I recall in incident that happened, in which the Prince de Joinville and his suite figured.

As usual, General Friend Palmer has either no gift or no great concern for dates. Luckily, other people kept better records than he did. In 1841, François-Ferdinand-Philippe-Louis-Marie d’Orléans, prince de Joinville, stopped through Detroit on his Great Lakes tour, part of a broader visit to the United States.

In Detroit, they visited with Lewis Cass, who sent them off with a historian who could answer (in French) their questions about Detroit under French rule, since they were curious. They also stopped by Sidney L. Rood where, according to Friend, they “remained quite a time looking over the French books in stock that I submitted for their inspection, and they purchased quite liberally.”

The real excitement in this story is that the Prince de Joinville was en route to Green Bay (travelling on the steamer Columbia) to meet the Reverend Eleazer Williams, who either claimed to be, or was suspected to be, the Lost Dauphin of France.

The legend of the Lost Dauphin — which guessed that Louis-Charles, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s little boy, who allegedly died in prison, had actually been smuggled to safety, and could return to take the throne  — was evidently a pretty saucy topic, even abroad, during the Restoration.

Eleazer Williams was one of dozens and dozens of men who claimed to be the Lost Dauphin, but without knowing any of the other stories, I’ll go right ahead and say his might have been one of the most interesting. Born sometime in the late 1800s, probably to at least one Mohawk parent, Williams made his name as an Episcopalian minister, missionary and self-styled leader of the New York Indian tribes. Under pressure from the government to relocate, and possibly imaging some sort of grand Indian empire, which he could rule, in the west, Williams moved to Green Bay as part of a land settlement.

The Prince de Joinville would later say that his only interest in meeting Eleazer Williams was in the Reverend’s capacity as an Indian leader, but Williams insisted that it was the Prince’s primary mission in travelling to America in the first place, and that the Prince had news to deliver. From My Scrapbook of the French Revolution (1898), here is Williams’ “own account” (who knows if that’s true) of what transpired:

The prince not only started with evident and involuntary surprise when he saw me, but there was great agitation in his face and manner, a slight paleness and a quivering in the lip which I could not help remarking at the time, but which struck me more forcibly afterwards in connection with the whole train of circumstances, and by contrast with his usual self-possessed manner. He then shook me earnestly and respectfully by the hand and drew me immediately into conversation.
… The prince spoke to this effect: “You have been accustomed, sir, to consider yourself a native of this country, but you are not. You are of foreign descent. You were born in Europe, sir, and however incredible it may at first seem to you, I have to tell you: you are the son of a king.”

Williams would say that the Prince had offered him a vast estate if he would renounce his claim to the throne, but he decided to stick to his honorable and modest guns and refuse the offer, which angered the Prince. The Prince, once again, completely denied this story, and of course it’s easy to see who’s more likely to be right in this situation. The story blew over in a few years, but for some time Williams was a minor sensation. He enlisted “historians” to defend his royal cred in the press and even anonymously authored an article of his own repeating the evidence that he was “the Bourbon among us.”

And what was Friend Palmer’s take on Green Bay’s own Lost Dauphin?

It appears that Louis Phillipe had heard that a man named Reverend Eleazer Williams … claimed that he was the son of Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette, and consequently the dauphin and entitled to the throne of France.

… When [the Princes] saw and spoke to him, however, they became convinced he was either a wilful imposter, or a person deceived by foolish stories.

Williams was well-known in Detroit. When the first St. Paul’s church on the east side of Woodward Avenue, between Larned and Congress Streets, was consecrated on August 24, 1837, he read the consecration service.

So now you know. Also, fun fact: there used to be a “Lost Dauphin State Park” in Wisconsin, near Eleazer Williams’ home there. It’s closed now.

More on the Reverend Eleazer Williams here and here.

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Tuesdays with General Friend Palmer: Goose Yokes

March 29, 2010 in Books, History | No comments

(This occasional series on passages dug up in Early Days in Detroit used to run on Fridays. Then I changed my mind.)

I am a little in love with this story tonight. General Friend Palmer begins a chapter dedicated to the early business men of Detroit with the story of Peter John Desnoyers, born in Paris in 1772 and enticed to the United States by a swindler:

Just previous to the French Revolution, a company had been formed in America known as the Sciota Land Co., which opened an agency Paris and offered large inducements to mechanics and artisans of moderate means to invest in its lands. It was represented that they were eligibly located on a large stream called La Belle River, abounding with fish of an enormous size, embracing magnificent forests filled with wild game, that there were no military enrollments and no quarters to find for soldiers.

… After a voyage of 60 days reached Havre de Grace, Md., and thence proceeded to Gallipolis, Ohio, which was said to be within the company’s domains. They arrived there in 1790. Upon reaching this spot they found that the title deeds which they held were worthless, the company of whom they purchased not owning a foot of the land they had sold.

Wow. So, the Desnoyers get all the way here, having sold most of their worldly possessions, without speaking much if any English, without knowing a soul. And they’re completely stranded. Peter J. Desnoyers is 18 years old.

The Desnoyers spent some time with a small community of other French settlers in Ohio, then moved to Pittsburgh, where Peter J. makes the fortunate acquaintance of Michael Dousman. Dousman had heard good things about Michigan and convinced Peter J. to join him en route to the territory, along the same trail covered by Mad Anthony Wayne’s army. (Michael Dousman would later get rich as a fur trader on Makinac Island; during the War of 1812, he was captured by the British, and when he continued to sell goods to their garrison upon his release, he was branded a traitor. More here.) Michael Dousman and Peter J. Desnoyers arrived in Detroit in 1796, when they were both 24.

detroit 1796

(A map of the city in the year Peter Desnoyer came here. Source.)

After some time as an enlisted armorer, Desnoyers — a silversmith by trade — opened a shop with John Piquette in 1803. Two years later, the entire city burned down. According to an article in this Pioneer Society report, Peter Desnoyers hauled all of furniture out to the city limits, near the corner of Jefferson and Woodward, then plunked his five-year-old son Peter under a table to keep an eye on the goods. When that story was reported in the Free Press in 1876, the table was still in good condition and in the younger Peter’s possession.

In the land auction that happened after the fire, Peter bought a lot at the corner of Jefferson and Bates street and re-opened his shop. And what a shop it must’ve been, according to the General:

Mr. Desnoyers was about the first merchant here (that I remember) to keep marbles, the delight of the average boy’s heart in the early days, and I presume they possess the same charm for those of the present day. All the boys attending the old University School on the corner of Bates and Congress Streets nearby used to patronize him extensively. I myself squandered many a penny for marbles at the old gentleman’s store.

Aside from marbles, Mr. Desnoyers kept in his store as great a variety of articles as possible. It was a common remark when a citizen was in quest of an article that was difficult to be obtained elsewhere, that it could be found at Desnoyers’s, which generally turned out to be true. This became so proverbial that on one occasion, a gentleman made a wager with another that he could name an article that Desnoyers could not furnish. It was agreed. They entered the store, and one of them very seriously inquired of the salesman of versatile resources if he had any goose yokes. “Oui, monsieur” was the prompt reply, and he proceeded to a drawer and produced the article asked for. The merriment of the party was beyond reasonable bounds, Mr. Desnoyers entering as heartily into it as his customers.

(ASIDE: In my efforts to find out what a goose yoke is, I have come across this same story about the outrageous wager that a general store would carry goose yokes, one from James Hike’s general store in 1850s Illinois, the other from the Historic Howell Works Company and General Store at the Allaire Village in New Jersey. This must have been some sort of proverbial legend, like an elaborate way to say “everything and the kitchen sink.” Only it’s everything and … goose yokes. And for the record, this is what a goose yoke is.)

The General remembers Mr. Desnoyers as a man of “great perseverance and industry and strict integrity” who nonetheless was not afraid of a really good joke. In 1877, someone whose memory we must take with a grain of salt wrote this of Peter J. Desnoyers, 31 years after his death:

Monsieur Pierre Desnoyers, that fine looking, smiling, sweet-voiced old gentleman whose bon jour! bon jour! would arrest you as the voice of a lute, whose rosy cheeks, fine mouth, pure teeth, and large blue eyes, with that drooping lid, present the portrait of a fine old Frenchman …

The elder Peter J. Desnoyers, who came to Detroit after he lost everything, then lost everything again in the fire, spawned a whole dynasty of high-society Desnoyers with their “elegant, old-fashioned furniture and costly wines” admired by the pleasant company they kept (including the Palmers, by the General’s recollection). In 1835, Peter J. Desnoyers’ daughter Elizabeth married James A. Van Dyke, who served as mayor of Detroit in 1847. Together they bred a whole bunch of Desnoyers Van Dykes.

And it all started with a land scam. So there you have it; now go out, take some chances and make those lemons into ade.

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City of Destiny

March 23, 2010 in Books, History | 6 comments

city of destiny autograph

How do you ignore a book with a title like City of Destiny? Maybe if it’s crowded in with other dreamy promises with the literary fiction, you might walk right by, but not when you see it jacketed in soft blue cloth on a dusty shelf of Michigan history books. Because then you know: that’s my destiny. After all, here I am.

For some reason, I didn’t want to drop $15 when I saw this at John King on Saturday, even after I glanced a trove of newspaper clippings from the 1960s stuffed between the back pages. But City of Destiny haunted me, and when my fiancé came to bed that night, I whispered, half-crazed, “I need to go back for that book.”

So yesterday I went back for that book. When I brought it home, I opened the front cover to find the author’s autograph. And when, one-by-one, I unfolded the yellowed newspaper clippings that had stretched the book’s bindings, they were all about him: George Washington Stark.

Stark was born (on George Washington’s birthday) in 1884, the son of a Irish immigrant Great Lakes captain. He grew up in a house on Congress street near Elmwood Cemetery, which he said in an interview with the Detroit News on his 80th birthday “gave me my flair for the historical scene.”

Stark took a summer job at the archives Free Press in 1905 and spent a few years as a copywriter and a police reporter for the Detroit Times. In 1914, he left for The Detroit News, where he stayed for the rest of his career as a self-proclaimed “ink-stained wretch.” At the News he met his wife, Anne Campbell, the official News poet. That any newspaper ever employed a staff poet amazes me.

After stints as city editor (“My staff all went to war,” Stark wrote in the obituary he penned for himself, “[So] we hired a bevy of lady journalists who had just graduated from University of Michigan. I had to show them all where the City Hall was”) and drama critic (“with theater at the height of its glamor”), in 1938 William Scripps asked him to write a column about “Old Times and Old Timers” in Detroit. Through his column, Stark began to work with the Detroit Historical Society. In 1942, he became its president. “An old police reporter never looked forward to anything like this,” he wrote.

Which brings us to City of Destiny, published in 1943. It’s World War II, and Detroit is the Arsenal of Democracy, an industrial power like none the world had seen, pumping out guns, tanks, planes and engines at fever pitch. The city is growing like crazy.

George Stark remembered pre-automotive Detroit, a muddy place full of spooked horses and barn fires, but also peace, quiet, gentility and tree-lined avenues. He wrote City of Destiny, a treasure box of city history told fast and loose from Cadillac to press date, as a project in context. How did Detroit’s destiny lead from the rough river shores of Fort Pontchartrain in 1701 to the nerve center of World War II and one of the biggest cities in America?

The Arsenal of Democracy years are despaired as the late Detroit golden age of industry and prosperity, really the beginning of the story we tell each other now: Once it was great, and then it fell apart. But with so many reconsiderations of Detroit’s destiny on the table, is there value in returning to pre-automotive history, a history no living Detroiter experienced? Is it worthwhile to remember that the growth and prosperity the city experienced from the ’20s to the ’50s came almost overnight, and in chaos, and that it may have been unsustainable from the start?  Or is it too dead, too irrelevant to Detroit’s immediate concerns, to bother?

George Stark died in 1966, and in more than one of these newspaper clips, writers express some satisfaction that he didn’t have to see the ‘67 riots, the rising crime, the desecration of his cemetery, the demolition of the monuments, the decay of the buildings — the end, in so many words, of Great Detroit. But in 1943, in his introduction to City of Destiny, Stark seems to get that “Great Detroit”  either always or never existed — that “Great Detroit” depended upon the industry, spirit and tenacity of its citizens only, and not its monuments or its machines.

From the introduction:

Since Cadillac came, the community, as outpost, village, town and city, has experienced both travail and triumph, each in heaping measure. It has endured fire and famine and pestilence and somehow survived them all. It has withstood rioting and the shock of savage assault and it has recovered from the humiliation of a craven military surrender. It has been rocked by political scandal and intrigue, but in every instance, it has quickly recovered its prestige.

These defeats and frustrations have been more than balanced by the triumphs. Or, if you prefer, THE TRIUMPH, for its present eminence is the result of no recent industrial development. Rather, it is the sequence of a long progression of men and events.

… Detroit is a changed community. Gone are its years of grace; the years of the wide-spreading elms about the lazy streets … The days of our grace are gone and the streets are crowded with newcomers.

Detroiters are still alive who remember when the population figure was the only index of glory. When Detroit surpassed Milwaukee there was great rejoicing. When it went beyond Cleveland, there was cheering and dancing in the streets. Today it is indifferent to the fact that it may at any minute pass Philadelphia … There is no time to think in population figures while the job still lies ahead. But since War’s beginning, Detroit has absorbed a population that would fill Cincinnati.

Somehow the housing problem is being met. Somehow the public health is being conserved … Somehow the enormous transportation difficulty is being overcome.

Detroit is opulent and generous.

The epitaph on George Stark’s tombstone in Elmwood is stained in glass at Mariner’s Church, where his funeral was held. I don’t know if it’s a coincidence or not:

no mean city

“I am a citizen of no mean city.” (Acts 21:39)

I can’t wait to spend more time with this book.

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Nancy Brown’s “Experience”

February 23, 2010 in Books, History | 1 comment

In the fall I wrote about the Peace Carillon on Belle Isle, an 85-foot limestone tower dedicated to Detroit News advice columnist Nancy Brown. It’s gorgeous, even though it’s starting to fall apart a little.

brown bell tower

So. Over the holidays, my fiancé’s uncle gave us a big box of antique books, figuring (uh, correctly) that we were into that sort of thing. We packed them up, brought them home and then forgot about them for a few months.

We’re moving at the end of the week, and I’ve never really unpacked since I moved here from Wisconsin, so we’ve spent some time purging our hoard of clothes we might wear sometime, disassembled bikes we might put back together and ride sometime, CDs from the mid-90s that we might enjoy hearing again some (far distant) time, and, in particular, long neglected books that we might read sometime. This included the box full of antique books from Christmas, water-spotted and redolent of mildew.

Scott was the one who noticed Experience.

Published in 1932 at the Lakeside Press in Chicago by the News, the book — edited by Nancy Brown herself — shares twelve years of her favorite letters, from run-of-the-mill domestic quandaries (“What to do about my husband? Mom doesn’t bake the cookies we like anymore!”) to pining letters from homesick expatriates and too-long notes just to say hello and share an idle opinion. A girl from London who went to University of Michigan and fell in love with the city, then felt lonely for it when she went home to England, and had her husband write back to Nancy when she went blind. A Japanese houseboy who loved Belle Isle, but thought that the city’s pace was the “speedometer of a bee hive” and struggled to adjust.

I haven’t read a lot of these letters yet, but for the most part I love how rambling and earnest they are. They’re not Dear Abby-style, boiled down to the barest inquiry about in-law etiquette or what to do about a disloyal friend. Maybe they weren’t published in their entirety like they are in the book, but some of these letters are three or four pages long, full of asides, scene-setting and narrative development. Sometimes Nancy only responded with a sentence or two of thanks for sharing and a cheery “Write us again.”

The best one I’ve read so far is from “A Pioneer” (1928), who left his home in the city, doctor’s orders, when he contracted tuberculosis. He found a patch of woods he liked at the end of a rail line in Canada, started sleeping in a tent under a rock ledge, then he taught himself to trap furs, made a little extra money, built a log cabin by the lake, tried a little gardening and just sort of figured out how to live year-round in the wild.

I have kept buying a little at a time, till now I own over 2,000 acres, including the lake and the falls, all timber, except for my clearing. This is, in a sense, money wasted, for the land has no market value, and so long as I live I shall never cut a tree that is not necessary.

… There are neighbors two days trip to the South by canoe, while to the North, in two weeks I have found no sign that anything human had been there before me. I now have two horses, two cows and several chickens, a tractor and all the machinery I can use on the farm … I must get the work done in the least time possible for it is in the summer and early fall I study the game trails and plan my winter trap line.

So what’s the problem? The wife at home liked the farm and the up-north country folk, but one morning while they were eating breakfast, a bear (a friend of the pioneer’s since it crawled up in the tent with him one winter as a cub) wandered into the kitchen and asked for a biscuit or something. The wife freaked out, hit the bear, left town, then demanded her husband sell his land and come home! WHAT IS A PIONEER TO DO?

As ridiculous as this story is, Nancy recommends that the pioneer explain to his wife exactly how much money he’d managed to save as a trapper (seems he’d kept it kinda DL) and let her know that she could enjoy an occasional nice party and visitors at the farmstead in the summer and some alone cash-incentive’d alone time in the winter.

Not bad advice. I wish I knew what happened.

There’s so much more I want to share about this book, and I’ll try to post more terrific stories from Experience as I come across them. This book has made every stress of our move seem totally unimportant — a Christmas present I didn’t even know I had.

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Fridays with General Friend Palmer: “Convenience itself”

February 5, 2010 in Books, History | 5 comments

IN the earlier days the streets of Detroit in the absence pavements were very bad in the fall and spring seemed to predominate Cabs and public hacks were in a very lim ted number Peter Cooper colored Jackson a colored barber and George lierron an English barber were about the only persons owning and operating public conveyances and t heir services as may be supposed were taxed to the limit Men wore their heavy boots pants tucked inside and in the outskirts of the city a few boards and planks were laid down lengthwise so that people could manage with difficulty to get along In such a state of things the single two wheeled horsecart was very much in evidence and was a most important institution It was an invention of the old French habitants of the country They were used by all classes and were convenience itself A buffalo robe or blanket was spread on the bottom of the cart two or three ottomans or stools were put in in the absence of other covering for the bottom or floor of the cart hay or straw was used and the horse understanding his business as well as his master off he plodded ofttimes half leg deep in mud to church shopping or to make fashionable calls The carts were mighty enjoyable as I can testify having time and again been the driver on many many occasions sitting perched up in front and the ladies enjoying the bottom of the vehicle protected from the rough boards by soft buffalo robes or other means occasionally the lynch pin that apparently held the cart together would get out of place and the occupants be dumped in the mud!
When General Macomb visited Detroit Mrs Hester Scott took him around the city in one of these French horse carts borrowed for the purpose from Mr HD Harrison the Jefferson Avenue dry goods merchant and it was said that the general enjoyed it hugely Mrs Scott and her three daughters are no doubt well 646
These French carts were very enjoyable also in fine weather on short excursions with the girls into the surrounding woods particularly in October when they had put on their gay autumn attire and the hickory nuts and hazel nuts were plentiful How full of pleasure those trips were The distance to the woods was not great they came down to Elizabeth Street on the west side of Woodward Avenue and down to about Hancock Avenue on the east side and out on Grand River Avenue on the Jones farm not far from Perkins’s tavern and out on Michigan Avenue they came down to where is the hay market once Woodbridge grove and just in the rear of this grove was an immense field of hazelnut bushes which in the season were loaded down with nuts Out Woodward Avenue about where is Farnsworth Street were many acres of blackberry bushes loaded with their delicious fruit in the season And then the excursions in these carts down to that lovely driveway Lovers Lane in the vicinity of what is now Fort Wayne The lane came into the River road about where Winterhalter’s beer garden was and extended out quite a distance toward the Dix settlement My friend Ross in one of his articles in relation to early Detroit says of this lane and as the incident he relates to it is true I copy it

horse drawn cart

[Source]

Welcome back to Fridays with General Friend Palmer! So far it hasn’t been a complete disaster, so let’s continue! This week, General Palmer wistfully recalls Detroit’s bygone horse cart days. Maybe the Streets of Old Detroit exhibit at Detroit Historical Museum should explore incorporating an unpaved thoroughfare or two. It will be immersive! Wear boots!

I like when he casually mentions that sometimes the carts just fell apart.

In the earlier days the streets of Detroit, in the absence of pavements, were very bad in the fall and spring; mud seemed to predominate … Men wore their heavy boots, pants tucked inside, and in the outskirts of the city, a few boards and planks were laid down lengthwise so that people could manage, with difficulty, to get along.

In such a state of things, the single two wheeled horsecart was very much in evidence and was a most important institution. It was an invention of the old French habitants of the country. They were used by all classes and were convenience itself. A buffalo robe or blanket was spread on the bottom of the cart, two or three ottomans or stools were put in (in the absence of other covering for the bottom or floor of the cart, hay or straw was used), and the horse … off he plodded, ofttimes half leg deep in mud, to church, shopping, or to make fashionable calls. The carts were mighty enjoyable, as I can testify, having time and again been the driver on many, many occasions, sitting perched up in front and the ladies enjoying the bottom of the vehicle, protected from the rough boards by soft buffalo robes or other means; occasionally the lynch pin that apparently held the cart together would get out of place and the occupants be dumped in the mud.

Even famous people thought they were kinda fun!

… When General Macomb visited Detroit, Mrs. Hester Scott took him around the city in one of these French horse carts, borrowed for the purpose from Mr H.D. Harrison, the Jefferson Avenue dry goods merchant, and it was said that the general enjoyed it hugely.

And they were even a little flirty in the fairer seasons:

These French carts were very enjoyable also in fine weather on short excursions with the girls into the surrounding woods, particularly in October when they had put on their gay autumn attire and the hickory nuts and hazel nuts were plentiful. How full of pleasure those trips were! The distance to the woods was not great … out on Michigan Avenue, they came down to where is the hay market (once Woodbridge grove) and just in the rear of this grove was an immense field of hazelnut bushes which in the season were loaded down with nuts. Out Woodward Avenue, about where is Farnsworth Street, were many acres of blackberry bushes loaded with their delicious fruit in the season. And then the excursions in these carts down to that lovely driveway, “Lovers Lane,” in the vicinity of what is now Fort Wayne. The lane came into the River road, about where Winterhalter’s beer garden was, and extended out quite a distance toward the Dix settlement.

Sigh. The good old days!

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Legends of Le Detroit

February 4, 2010 in Books, History | 2 comments

If you like flowery Victorian prose, phantasms, grieving widows, pining French girls, French in general, haunted inanimate objects, werewolves,  lyrical two-page long set-ups about a grandfather telling his kid a scary story, or — especially — Indian curses, you are going to love the shit out of this book.

la chase gallerie

I loved this indulgent account of Rene LaSalle’s Griffin. As this totally made-up story tells it, the Indians were jealous of LaSalle’s magnificent brigantine, and he was cocky about it, so they cursed him by the light of the moon and made it sink.

Sensible.

“The shadows of the summer of 1679 had deepened before the little brigantine of forty-five tons approached completion. The commander had decided to name her Griffin, in allusion to the arms of the Comte de Frontenac, whose supporters were “Griffins.”
An expert wood carver from Rouen had carved for the ship’s bows a wonderful image of the fabled monster, half lion and half eagle, with ears erect, emblematic of strength, swiftness and watchfulness. But among the more pious of the band the name was deemed an evil one, and their superstitious natures conjured up disasters to come.
… “At last all was ready for the launch — the crew were assembled and the notes of the Te Deum floated on the air. A bottle of brandy was broken over the bows of the vessel, and liberal potations distributed among the Indians. A salute was fired from the seven guns ranged along the decks, and amidst the enthusiastic shouts of “vive le Roi,” the vessel glided from her ways, and floated on the waters of the Niagara River.

The shadows of the summer of 1679 had deepened before the little brigantine of forty-five tons approached completion. The commander had decided to name her Griffin, in allusion to the arms of the Comte de Frontenac, whose supporters were “Griffins.”

An expert wood carver from Rouen had carved for the ship’s bows a wonderful image of the fabled monster, half lion and half eagle, with ears erect, emblematic of strength, swiftness and watchfulness. But among the more pious of the band the name was deemed an evil one, and their superstitious natures conjured up disasters to come.

… At last all was ready for the launch — the crew were assembled and the notes of the Te Deum floated on the air. A bottle of brandy was broken over the bows of the vessel, and liberal potations distributed among the Indians. A salute was fired from the seven guns ranged along the decks, and amidst the enthusiastic shouts of “vive le Roi,” the vessel glided from her ways, and floated on the waters of the Niagara River.

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Fridays with General Friend Palmer: A most exciting fire

January 28, 2010 in Art, Books, Culture, History | 4 comments

I have always approached weekly themed blog posts, especially those involving alliteration, with trepidation. But then I found Early Days in Detroit, the memoirs of historical Detroit old guy General Friend Palmer (1820 – 1906), and I can’t think of any better way to dig through its 1000+ pages, each of them host to at least one illuminating, endearing, hilarious or otherwise just great anecdote, than to share some of the General’s memories of 19th-century Detroit every week.

So, we’ll see if this sticks. But for this Friday, at least, welcome to Fridays with General Friend Palmer. If you hate this I’ll stop it, but I don’t think you’ll hate this.

This week: The General has a whole chapter on Detroit fires that he remembers, specifically fires that destroyed famous buildings. When a wool mill on Randolph street caught fire in the summer of 1832, Friend writes, it “lit up the whole county of Wayne and parts of Canada, apparently … Out where we lived, on Woodward at John R., the illumination was so great one could see to read by it.”

I was really taken with his account of the fire on the steamer Great Western, which went up in flames while it was docked in Detroit sometime around 1838 (his memory was bad when he wrote his book and he died before his editors could help him do rewrites):

One important fire, and so considered at the time … and that was the partial burning of the then finest and most magnificent steamer on the lakes, the Great Western, while lying at her dock, Gillett & Desnoyer’s, near foot of Shelby Street. It happened about 1838 on a summer Sunday afternoon, about 5 o’clock. I have forgotten the exact date. She had arrived that forenoon on her down trip from Chicago to Buffalo. I was present at the fire with engine company No. 4 (that far off time, it seems but yesterday). She was the pride of the lakes, and of her owner and commander, Captain Augustus Walker. She was the first steamer to have her cabins on the upper deck, passengers heretofore having had to dive down between decks if they had any idea of sleeping or eating, and most of them had.

The news that this steamer was ablaze spread like wildfire and hurried everyone to the scene; indeed, all Detroit was on hand. The engines hustling down Wayne and Shelby Streets came near running over the men and boys who had hold of the drag ropes, so wild was the excitement. No. 4 engine company came first in this encounter. It had its station on the dock between the warehouse and the burning steamer, and three of its members had the post of honor during the fire. William Green, the foreman who had the pipe, was assisted by Barney Campau and Kin Dygert. They held the fort, so to speak. They were stationed on the upper deck of the steamer abaft the wheelhouse.

The scene lives in an oil painting by Thomas Burnham, a well known local artist of that day. This painting is now the property of some citizen of this city who should, it seems to me, donate it to the Art Museum or to the present fire department. The upper cabins of the Great Western abaft the wheelhouses and the ladies cabin below were badly wrecked; otherwise the steamer did not sustain much damage. But it was a most exciting fire while it lasted as any one now living who was present at the time will I am sure bear witness.

Okay. I love a sleuth. Where’s this Thomas Burnham painting? Did “some citizen of the city” give it to the now-DIA as General Friend Palmer thought he or she should? Not sure, although an online collection search turns up another Thomas Mickell Burnham painting, First State Election in Detroit, Michigan, 1837 (timely, right?):

And the man was apparently known for his marine and maritime paintings as well, like this one, An English Cutter Gives Chase to a Smuggler, 1836:

So where’s the burning Great Western? Does it indeed belong to the fire department? Is it in some art historian’s special collection of boat paintings or a museum’s American Art gallery?

I’ll put out some feelers. I haven’t really looked yet, having just learned about this painting about a half-hour ago, so if it’s somewhere obvious, tell me now.

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WHO WAS SILAS FARMER?

January 20, 2010 in Books, Local History, metro Detroit | No comments

UPDATE: Silas Farmer’s death certificate is in the Michigan state archives. He died suddenly on December 28, 1902, apparently of a heart attack. He was living in present-day midtown, at 52 Selden, and is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. Next stop, as my mom sassily pointed out to me on Twitter (MOMS ON TWITTER!!), is a real-life library.

**

I wish I knew! The man was apparently one of the most important Michigan historians in history (which seems like a strange thing to say) and wrote dozens of books including the seminal, oft-referenced 1884 tome History of Detroit and Michigan, 1890’s History of Detroit and Wayne County and Early Michigan, as well as lesser known classics like All About Cleveland; The Young Men’s Christian Associations Hymn Book; Guide to the Streets, Street Pavements, street car routes and house numbers of Detroit and The Drinker’s Dictionary (which I would really like to read).

All I know about Silas Farmer at this point is from a foreward to Silas Farmer’s book, Souvenir of The Pointe: Grosse Pointe on Lake Saint Claire, graciously reprinted from a 1974 edition of the book by the Grosse Pointe Historical Society:

Son of John Farmer, Detroit’s earliest map publisher, Silas Farmer began his career by following in his father’s footsteps.  While working on maps, he conceived the idea of writing the history of Detroit and was soon launched on a literary career.

john farmer_district surveyor

John Farmer: Map of the City of Detroit in the State of Michigan, 1835. Library of Congress.

John Farmer, born in New York in 1798, moved to Detroit in 1821 at the invitation of Governor Lewis Cass. He was an admired and eccentric character in the city, as General Friend Palmer recalls in his memoir Early Days in Detroit. Palmer remembers Farmer’s sawed-in-half schoolhouse — with a bell! — and his cartographic fire:  

I think John Farmer lived on the opposite corner of the same streets, in a frame dwelling on the rear of his lot, and I also think he carried on his map-engraving and printing in the same house. This building was once a part of the old wooden building that stood on the corner of Griswold and Larned, where is now the Campau block. When Griswold was widened, it was found that this building was in the way.

… The common council ordered it sawed in two, and John farmer bought the part that was in the street and moved it to his lot on Monroe.

Farmer was a wonderful man in his way, a most competent surveyor and a finished engraver, as the work on his maps show. Endowed with surprising energy, it always seemed to me that the steam engine within him, so to speak, must sooner or later wear him out, and it did. I knew him intimately and when I was in business sold thousands of dollars’ worth of his maps.

All Palmer writes about Silas is that he helped convince the city to rename part of Grand River East “Wilcox Street.”

Silas was born in June 1839; in 1882 he was chosen as City Historiographer of Detroit. And sometime around 1878, Silas Farmer wrote an Illustrated Guide and Souvenir of Detroit, one of a series of guides and souvenirs Farmer published under his own imprint at the end of the 19th century.

I found several endearing passages and illustrations from the 1878 edition, although there are a few updated versions available on the Internet Archive. The whole thing is basically a TOUR ITINERARY, which as you may know is my favorite thing, although on this occasion I feel no reason to actually take the tour, as I’m confident that mostly nothing of it exists anymore.

The guide begins:

The most comprehensive view of the City can be obtained by ascending the tower of the City Hall. Go as early as 9 a.m. Take a field glass with you, and from the window of the tower you will see sights and scenery that will well repay for the rather tiresome climbing of the 200 steps. The whole City, river and islands, and even Lake St. clair, will lie before you like a panorama. Each window of the tower will reveal beautis of its own.

The most comprehensive view of the City can be obtained by ascending the tower of the City Hall. Go as early as 9 a.m.

Take a field glass with you, and from the window of the tower you will see sights and scenery that will well repay for the rather tiresome climbing of the 200 steps. The whole City, river and islands, and even Lake St. clair, will lie before you like a panorama. Each window of the tower will reveal beauties of its own.

Here’s an illustration of the view from the City Hall tower — down Woodward, toward the river — in 1878:

silas farmer_woodward view

And Silas Farmer, as I do, recommends a wandering hour in Elmwood Cemetery:

silas farmer_elmwood cemetery

[From McDougall], A walk of some five blocks on Elmwood Avenue will bring you to Elmwood cemetery, where an hour or more can be spent very pleasantly among the many beautiful walks and drives and monuments.

Again taking Jeffereson Avenue to the eastward, within the distance of a block from Elmwood, you pass on the right the immense stove factory and warerooms of the Michigan Stove Company; and immediately afterwards, the Old Pontiac Tree, like some Rip Van winkle of the forest, stands before you.

Did you know that in the 1880s, Detroit was the stove-making capital of the world? Neither did I, but it seems that the fates of the Stove Company and the Pontiac Tree were intertwined, or at least of mutual interest.

As usual, half of what’s so interesting about these old pamphlets are the incredible advertisements:

silas farmer_shoe ad

silas farmer_turkish bath

Turkish baths? Why don’t we still have those?

And who was Silas Farmer? Where did he live?  Did he write a diary? Or letters? Where is Silas Farmer hiding?

Help me out, America!

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