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Sharks on Belle Isle and slavery in the Michigan Territory: links for Friday, 2/3/12

February 3, 2012 in History, Videos | No comments

Source

You’re all aware that the Belle Isle Aquarium will be open tomorrow, right? And full of fish? Including a 4-foot shark?

This gem closed during the Kwame administration, but it’s been fighting for a revival ever since, with the help of an active Friends group (now part of the long-awaited Belle Isle Conservancy), a corps of dedicated volunteers and grants for repairs. (You’ll want to visit HistoricDetroit.org for a complete history.)

We hope to see a permanently-open Belle Isle Aquarium return soon. But for now, enjoy the rare (and free!) chance to visit this Saturday at Shiver on the River. Even if it’s not that shivery.

The NPR show Tell Me More came to Detroit this week, and I really recommend listening to this segment with Tiya Miles, a University of Michigan Professor and 2011 McArthur “Genius” Fellowship awardee. Miles researches slavery in the Michigan Territory (yes, it existed) and the relationships between local Indians (both slaves and slaveholders) and black slaves in the region. In less than 10 minutes you’ll learn about the impact of Detroit’s mercantile history on the slave trade, how slavery worked in Native American culture, the shifts that happened under French, British and ultimately American rule, and the way so much of our history remains un- or under-explored.

Finally, I was invited to participate in Detroit Performs, a project of Detroit Public Television and WRCJ 90.9 FM (my personal favorite station for classical music and the charming radio DJs who love it!) — if you’ve ever wanted to see what it’s like to follow me around in Elmwood and all around town on an especially awkward day, now’s your chance! Watch here.

Or right here.

Happy weekend,

THE NIGHT TRAIN

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Detroit history tour (in FLORIDA!): The Edison-Ford Winter Estates

February 1, 2012 in History, Travel | No comments

We recently went to Florida to see my parents, who — after 124 combined years of life in Michigan — called it quits on winter and moved there in November.

We were looking forward to a few days of sunshine, alligators, and paperbacks by the pool, but when we arrived at the airport in Fort Myers, we were greeted by blown-up photographs of Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, just palling around in super-size next to the Chili’s. In the atrium we found a Model T flanked by a life-sized cardboard cut-out of Henry Ford.

Momentarily it was a little horrifying. Where were we? Had we come so far, only to be followed by the challenging inheritance of our beleaguered city?

Edison and Ford in Fort Myers, 1916. The guy with the beard is naturalist John Burroughs. Source.

We came to our senses. There had to be a good reason for these guys to be hanging out at the airport together like it’s no big deal, branding Fort Myers with their portraits of industry, friendship, and snowbirding.

There was only one option: A history tour.

In 1885, Edison bought some land between an old cattle trail and the banks of the Caloosahatchee River in the yet-unincorporated town of Fort Myers.  He built a pier to have raw materials for his house delivered.

The population in Fort Myers was about 350. For 11 years there would be no electricity there. But when power, telephone service, hotels and railroads come to town during the turn of the century, an outpost supported by the cattle trade turned to the more refined business of fishing and summering.

Thomas Edison brought exotic plants to his estate: prehistoric cycads, cinnamon trees and persimmons from China, stately royal palms shipped in from Cuba which now define the landscape of Ft. Myers.

Oh, yeah. There’s also this banyan tree. When Harvey Firestone gave it to Thomas Edison in 1925, it was four feet tall. Today, it’s the largest in the continental U.S., and covers over an acre of land.

Edison conducted botanical research in Fort Myers — he was seeking an efficient, quick-growing latex crop that would solve an impending cost-of-rubber crisis — along with his regular-old experiments and inventions, which he practiced in a laboratory that is no longer there. You know why? Because it’s in DEARBORN! (Of course.) Henry Ford had it relocated in 1928.

(Ford: “Hey bud, I’m taking this building. For my museum.” Edison: “Whatever.”)

Thomas Edison

via The Henry Ford. Source.

Here’s Edison in that laboratory (inspecting the dynamo) at the grand opening of Greenfield Village.

The Edison summer house — ”Seminole Lodge” — is a place I would be happy to spend a summer, or the rest of my life. The walls are white, the air smells like old wood and the sea, and every room opens a set of French doors to the wrap-around porch.

Lest you think our grandfather genius was all work and no play, Edison found time away from conducting experiments on the latex properties of exotic plants to spend with his family, fishing, canoeing, swimming, camping in the Everglades and hanging out on the beach.

THIS dynamo, Edison’s daughter Madeleine …

… penned some “rules of the house:”

If you don’t think Seminole Lodge is the loveliest spot you ever wore your rubbers in — don’t let on to Father.

Don’t cabbage unto yourself all the fish poles. This has been done by guests thereby incurring the grave disapproval of the entire family.

Don’t fail to retire to your room during part of each day — so that the family may squabble without embarrassment.

And don’t capsize the sailboat if you can help it.

In 1916, Henry Ford bought the estate next door. Buddies! His summer home, christened “The Mangoes,” is darker and less breezy than Seminole Lodge. (To me, it actually looks a little more like a lodge.)

via the Edison & Ford Winter Estates 

But it has one thing to recommend it: Ford had benches built under the windowsills, because he was fond of shoving aside all of the furniture and turning the living room into a dance hall. He wanted a place for the wallflowers to hang out where they wouldn’t be in the way. And I think that was very thoughtful of him.

I’m glad we visited the winter estates, if only to be reminded that the history of Detroit isn’t pinned to the map: it spans tremendous distances, from this cold corner of our friendly peninsula to the extreme southern coast of the continental U.S., and to every city that ever had a Ford factory in it. (Not to mention: St. Nicolas de la Grave, France, where Antoine Cadillac was born; Radnor, Pennsylvania, where Mad Anthony Wayne is buried; London, England, where Hazen Pingree died; Niagara Falls, where Hugh Brady fought in the bloody battle of Lundy’s Lane. We could play this game all day. Also, I need to travel more.)

And because the estates and their eccentric collection of botanical marvels are beautiful, the Caloosahatchee River is beautiful, Florida in general is beautiful, and because even though I don’t like the thought of problematic Henry Ford following me around, it was kind of nice to see a familiar face.

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Michigan celebrates 175: Worthy readings, commemorations and cake recipes

January 26, 2012 in History | 1 comment

One-hundred and seventy-five years ago, Michigan won a battle for statehood that had plunged us into war with Ohio for the disputed Toledo strip, riled up Congress and caused President Jackson to remove our Governor-elect Stevens T. Mason from office.

Here is the post I always share on this occasion, although of course you will note I wrote it in 2010. Capitol Park has since been redeveloped; Stevens T. Mason has been peacefully re-interred (after a brief scare over his missing remains).

Other items you may enjoy:

The story of how Michigan’s founding documents became part of the state archives

I love this Michigan centennial stamp — it commemorates the 1835 ratification of our constitution and the opening shots in our battle for statehood rather than the official (and less exciting) admission to the Union in 1837. Via michigan.gov:

How about a 175th anniversary chocolate cake? (Props to Vintage Mitten for posting a similar recipe on Facebook)

And this Message of the Acting Governor, Stevens T. Mason, to the Legislative Council, August 17, 1835 — in the heat of the war with Ohio, and right before Jackson had Mason removed — is worthy browsing for today.

How is the observance of Michigan to be compelled by the United States? Is it at the point of a bayonet? I can see no other course.

Happy birthday, beautiful Michigan!

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Captain Chelsea Blake tries, fails to avoid cholera

January 20, 2012 in History | No comments

I gave a talk in Milwaukee last week. It was so good! (If you were there, thanks for coming!)

As you might guess, my talks tend to deal strictly with ye olde Detroit. But at this event I wanted to make sure I was at least a little relevant to Milwaukee. My grasp on Milwaukee history is pretty tenuous (I left town before becoming insufferable), so it was tough and involved more research than I was prepared for. I think I pulled it off with a little fawning over Solomon Juneau, Milwaukee’s French-Canadian fur-trader founder (his last house still stands in Theresa, Wisconsin), and no small quantity of yammering about the years during which Wisconsin and Michigan were part of the same territory. (Milwaukee and Detroit were even tossed together in Wayne County for a few years in the 1790s.)

Luckily, I always overestimate how nerdy other people are; I can’t imagine anyone in the audience was bored by things they already knew about territorial boundaries and original Juneautown land plats of the 1820s.

At the very last minute, I had the stroke of brilliance to check the index of Early Days in Detroit for a reference to Milwaukee. I wasn’t expecting much, but I got REALLY lucky.

General Friend Palmer spends a couple of chapters reminiscing about the day when Great Lakes steamboat captains were kings, regally strolling the streets of old Detroit in nankeen trousers, beaver top-hats and silk cravats. Maybe something like this?

Oh yes.

But Captain Chelsea Blake wasn’t like this. He was rude and he loved to swear. General Palmer wrote that ”unlike most of the lake captains of those days, who were perfect gentlemen in manners and dress, he affected none of these, no courtly phrases, no ruffled shirt, no blue coat with brass buttons … his use or abuse of the king’s English was somewhat phenomenal.”

He fought in the War of 1812 at Lundy’s Lane and thereafter became a titan of Great Lakes shipping. Though he was never afraid to cuss out a superior or fight Indians, Blake was apparently terrified of dying.

”Blake … stood in mortal fear of death and from the cholera in particular. He went to Milwaukee to escape the latter, but unfortunately he did not.”

Captain Chelsea Blake died from cholera in Milwaukee in 1849.

From a flowery elegy by R. E. Roberts:

Of almost giant size and commanding presence, no son of Neptune ever united in his composition a rarer combination of the qualities which make a true seaman, a safe commander, a genuine hero. Rough as the billows whose impotent assaults on his vessel he ever laughed to scorn; with voice as hoarse as the tempest which he delighted to rule, this gallant son of the sea had withal a woman’s tenderness of heart to answer the appeals of distress. Sincere was the grief of many he had relieved, and universal regret among those who had ever sailed with him, when he fell a victim to the cholera at Milwaukee in the year 1849.

Poor Chelsea Blake!

Ho, all ye travelers West;
If ye are bound across the Lake,
And wish to take the boat that’s best,
Go on the Illinois with Blake.

A veteran, both by land and sea,
He long has braved the stormy main;
And amongst the foremost, too, was he,
In the great fight at Lundy’s Lane.

… Success attend your bonny boat,
The pride and glory of the lake;
And may ye both forever float —
The Illinois and Captain Blake.

From the Milwaukee Commercial Herald, 1843.

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Ahoy!

January 12, 2012 in History | 1 comment

Live from Milwaukee: Last night at dinner I lamented Detroit’s dearth of places to get a beer and a great piece of pie. (If you know of a good one, please share.)

Then I thought, Maybe it is OK that I no longer have a pie and beer habit. A beer habit on its own is more than enough.

This morning, though, just for old time’s sake, I had pie and a beer (New Holland Oatmeal Stout — from MICHIGAN!)

It still feels strange to be hosting an out-of-town book event, since my book is so specifically about, you know, one specific town. So I have been over-explaining myself. (“Wisconsin and Michigan! Part of the same Territory! Had some of the same Governors! Great Lakes fur trade and so on!”) When ThirdCoast Digest (I used to be their senior editor) asked me to write a short preview of my party, I turned in a 1300-word historical essay/love letter.

I’ve shared my affection for Captain Frederick Pabst before. What I forgot about — until I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered it — was that Captain Pabst, in his sea-captain days, crossed paths with another captain — Detroit shipping king and mega-millionaire industrialist Eber Brock Ward.

Captain Pabst was a real captain. In 1848, at age 12, he moved from Germany to Milwaukee. Striking out here, the family moved to Chicago, where Frederick’s mother died from cholera. Frederick Pabst had to find work. After odd jobs at hotels and restaurants, he landed (no pun intended) as a cabin boy on a Great Lakes steamer.

It was his job to collect tickets from passengers as they disembarked the ship. One day, the story goes, a passenger claiming to be a certain Captain E. B. Ward tried to leave the ship without handing over a ticket. Frederick Pabst stopped him. Captain Ward protested on the basis that he owned the ship. Pabst made him go back to his cabin and wait until his identity could be confirmed. Ward was impressed, not disgruntled. (OK, maybe he was also disgruntled. But hopefully just a little.) Pabst had composure. He showed some pluck. Some resolve.

Captain Ward knew something about that. Born in Canada in 1811, Eber Brock Ward came to Detroit with his family in 1821. The frontier port town was muddy, provincial, and had yet to recover from a devastating 1805 fire. Just a few rickety boats, mostly British-owned, plied the Great Lakes, and whenever one of them sailed into Detroit’s harbor — announcing her arrival with a booming report of the cannon — the entire town wandered to the river to watch.

You can read the whole essay here.

Detroit and Milwaukee: Meant to be!

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Canadian Club: A Detroit original (almost)

December 5, 2011 in Biographies, History | 3 comments

This is Hiram Walker. He was born in a small town in Massachusetts in 1816. When he was 22 years old, he moved to Detroit.

Hiram Walker tried his hand at several pursuits, but for nearly 20 years he couldn’t catch a break. He started a grocery store; it failed. He started a tannery; just when it seemed like it was going to work out, it burned down. He started another grocery store — where he experimented with selling his own vinegar and distilling whiskey — then he lost everything in the Panic of 1857.

So Hiram Walker said: To hell with it. And he moved his business operations to Canada.

Why Canada? To begin with, the land was cheaper. Hiram Walker had been dealing Canadian grain to brewers and distillers in southeast Michigan from his latest Detroit grocery, and he knew that there were no steam-powered grain mills on the Canadian side of the Detroit River — a niche he expected to fill.

But Hiram Walker also wanted to open a distillery, of which there were many in Detroit, and not so many in Canada. But in 1855, the Michigan Constitution had adopted an “iron-clad” version of the so-called Maine Law, prohibiting the traffic of liquor except for medicinal and scientific purposes. No one in Detroit paid much attention to the law; though it was in effect until 1875, it was roundly ineffective. (I guess it didn’t help that Detroit didn’t have a municipal police department until 1865.)

Still, with prohibition cases constantly tied up in (though often thrown out of) court, Hiram Walker may not have wanted to risk the chance that his distillery could be suspended or shut down. So it was off to the north SOUTH bank of the strait, where Hiram Walker founded Walkerville, his new global HQ, in 1858.

There he created a town from the ground up, founding schools, laying pipes for municipal water, building homes for his employees, establishing a private bank, and starting a church. (Hiram Walker fired one preacher, legend has it, after finding out about his sermons against the evils of alcohol.) Hiram was the “benevolent despot” of Walkerville, writes Ronald G. Hoskins in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. But he only lived there for about five years; in 1864, Walker returned to Detroit, where he lived the rest of his days, commuting to work every day on a direct ferry from his riverfront property to the wharf at his distillery.

Canadian Club got its name in 1890 when, says the legend, the U.S. government — in response to demands from American distillers — forced Hiram Walker to declare that his whiskey was an imported product. But its international label only increased its allure, and his whiskey sold even better. (It may have been simply smart branding on Hiram Walker’s part, and not a federal edict.) Coupled with an 1894 bond law that standardized how spirits were aged, Canadian Club gained popularity among American drinkers, and when he died in 1899, the distillery was a multi-million dollar operation.

And that is how Canadian Club, while certainly Canadian, was made possible, in part, by Detroit.

Hiram Walker is buried in Elmwood Cemetery. Walkerville still exists, too, though it is part of Windsor, and it is near the top of my list of field trips to take once I renew my passport.

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That we may be more worthy of the place we now hold in the world.

November 23, 2011 in History, Holidays | No comments

(Source)

Thanksgiving as we know it today — celebrated on the last Thursday of November — was nationally, officially proclaimed by Abraham Lincoln in 1863. But Thanksgiving had been celebrated locally, and proclaimed by individual states, long before that.* It was kind of a New England thing  — pilgrims, and all that — but over time it spread through the Northern states and territories, and wherever New Englanders were going.

Michigan became an early adopter of the Thanksgiving tradition when it celebrated its first official Thanksgiving on November 25, 1824, by proclamation of Governor Lewis Cass — a New Englander, under whose term boatloads of New Englanders came to the Territory. Successive governors took up the call, and by the 1840s — when other states were just begin to proclaim Thanksgivings — it was old-hat. Here is Governor John Barry’s 1844 proclamation, signed at the Capitol in Detroit and published in the Michigan Farmer:

Whereas, the time is approaching when, according to a long-established and well-approved custom observed by most of the States in the Union, the people unite in rendering Thanksgiving and praise to the great Giver of all good; and

Whereas, though sanctioned by no legal authority, it has been customary for the Chief Executive officer of the several States to recommend a particular day to be set apart for such purpose; and

Whereas, it is a duty incumbent on all to render thanks to the Most High for his divine protection;

Now, therefore I, John S. Barry, Governor of the State of Michigan, have thought proper to appoint, and by these presents do appoint, Thursday, the thirtieth day of November next, as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, and I do hereby recommend to the people of this State to set apart and observe the same accordingly, that they assemble on that day in their several places of public worship, and with united hearts render unfeigned thanks to the great Maker and preserver of all things, for the numberless blessings vouchsafed to us during the past year, that he has preserved our lives, maintained peace within our borders, stayed the pestilence, averted famine, rewarded the husbandman with abundant harvests, and preserved to us inviolate our civil and religious institutions, and, with deep humility, confessing our sins, give thanks for all his numerous mercies and humbly ask a continuance of Divine favors.

Just for contrast, and for fun, here is Hazen Pingree’s Thanksgiving proclamation from1900. I love the emphasis he places on justice, and the need for us to be generous, and to earn the blessings we enjoy from our place in the world:

In accordance with the proclamation of the President of the States, and in compliance with a venerable custom, I, Hazen S. Pingree, Governor of the State of Michigan, hereby designate and appoint Thursday, the twenty-ninth day of November, 1900, as a day of thanksgiving and praise to the God of men and nations, for the manifold blessings received during the past year.

Let us this day be thankful for the abundant yield of our fields, and for the freedom from pestilence and famine.

Let us remember the ready response which has come from sympathetic hearts, touched by the calamities of our fellow citizens, the generous contribution to those whose homes have been destroyed by tempest and flood, and the development of humanity in the of methods which alleviate the sufferings attendant upon war.

Let us as we unite in our services of thanksgiving and praise, remember with gratitude the growing sense of justice among all classes of men, and the establishment of higher ideals of social life.

While we remember these blessings with thankfulness, let gratitude inspire us to so utilize our high powers of citizenship that we may be more worthy of the place we now hold among nations of the world.

How did Detroiters celebrate Thanksgiving? Besides the usual praying, feasting, and drinking, you could shoot your own turkey at the bar.

(*Side note: It was not unusual for state or local governments to declare a day of public Thanksgiving for any number of blessings and lucky strokes. In July 1849, an outbreak of cholera seemed to have passed Detroit by, and the city closed its schools and proclaimed a day of Thanksgiving that it had so far avoided the scourge. No such luck, as it turned out; in July, people started to die.)

Happy Thanksgiving, friends and readers! I am grateful for all of you. Also grateful that Detroit no longer suffers from cholera outbreaks.

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Detroit history at the DIA

November 18, 2011 in Art, Culture, History | 1 comment

I miss history field trips. After spending most of the summer cooped up to write a book (and most of the fall re-assembling my life), I have been eager to start making excursions again — to cemeteries, parks, historic markers, battlefields, the woods.

But it seems my time has started to free up just as the weather turns icky. And that will hamper my adventure-taking plans — at least until I invest in a warmer winter coat and some snow boots.

But before I condemn myself to the library for the next four months, I want to explore another repository of Detroit history treasures: the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The DIA was founded as the Detroit Museum of Arts in 1885 by a gang of wealthy donors and art collectors — who wanted to make Detroit into the artistic hub of the Midwest — and many of their contributions remain central to the DIA’s collection. (More on the history of the DIA at HistoricDetroit.org.)

As one of the top six art collections in the U.S., the DIA is a pretty worldly place. But throughout the museum there are little peeks into the history of its city, including local artists, local artifacts, and local moments in history. Here are just a few of my favorites.

Helping Angels — from the Unitarian Church, Woodward Avenue

This luminous work of stained glass, which takes up an entire gallery wall, is so compelling; I’d seen it a dozen times before I noticed the names of famous Detroiters lettered upon it. Surprise! This beauty is from Detroit — it once adorned the First Unitarian Church of Detroit on Woodward Avenue, now abandoned (more info here). You can see from the street where the windows used to be.

Charles Merrill, whose name appears in the medallion at the top, was a lumber baron who came to Detroit in 1848. He was a founding member of Detroit’s Unitarian Society. His daughter, Lizzie Merrill Palmer, named a fountain after him, which is now in Palmer Park.

John Judson Bagley, bearded wonder, tobacco magnate and Governor of Michigan 1873-1877, was raised Episcopalian; I do not know when he joined the Unitarian Church but several writers of the day indicate that Gov. Bagley was ”not confined to that denomination … Wherever good men and women met and worshiped the living God there was church,” as George Hopkins said in a memorial address.

The windows were designed by New York stained glass artist John La Farge in 1890.

First State Election in Detroit, Michigan, 1837

I rarely visit the DIA without stopping for a visit with this painting. I have discussed it on the blog before and dedicated a whole chapter to it in my book, in which I call it Detroit’s Washington Crossing the Delaware, except everyone in it is drunk.

Many contemporary writers vouch that this painting is a faithful depiction of that rowdy election day in 1837 when Democrat Stevens T. Mason defended his governorship against Whig challenger C.C. Trowbridge. But during my research, I read a persuasive analysis that the painting may have in fact been an artifact of Whig propaganda, showing a clammy, crooked-faced boy Governor (normally so handsome!) buying votes from drunken rabble while a parade of Democrat fops rides into the Capitol square, led by a silly gilded pony.

I buy it. And I still love this painting. Maybe even moreso, now.

Julius Rolshoven

My first acquaintance with Julius Rolshoven was through tales of his nude ”Brunette Venus,” which hung at Detroit society bar Churchill’s until Prohibition. Then it moved to the Detroit Athletic Club; as Malcolm Bingay wrote in Detroit is My Own Hometown:

Now the lovely lady,who seems always just to be awakening from a deep and peaceful sleep, with an odd kink in her knee, looks down again through the blue haze of a smoke-charged room where men alone forgather — except on such gala occasions as New Year’s night — as they did in the long ago at Charlie Churchill’s, a mystic tie between the Detroit that was and the Detroit that is, between the roaring decades of our youth and the forties of our maturity.

(I love that, by the way. Mystic ties.)

Rolshoven was born a Detroiter, but left the city when he was 18 to study art in Europe. Later he settled in Taos, New Mexico, and joined the Taos Society of Artists.

This painting of his at the DIA strikes me as a hilariously far cry from the scandalous brown-haired naked lady that made him so notorious in social circles. Also, does anyone know if the brunette Venus is still at the D.A.C.?

John Mix Stanley

[John Mix Stanley, Indian Telegraph, 1860. More here.]

Consider this goal for 2012 hereby set: I have to know more about John Mix Stanley. First of all, what kind of a name is Mix? The kind of name I love, that’s what. Then there’s the fact that Mr. Stanley’s life includes so much dramatic American history: chief artist for the Pacific railroad survey, portrait painter of Hawaiian King Kamehameha III, and dreamer-upper of  a never-completed illustrated atlas of the American Indian. For an extra dimension of tragedy/mystery/loss, most of his work was destroyed in a massive 1865 fire at the Smithsonian.

Born in Canandaigua in 1814, Stanley first came to Detroit in 1834 and started painting here (though he evidently had no formal art education) the following year. He spent most of the next 30 years on expeditions and exhibiting, but returned to Detroit permanently in 1864, and died here in 1872. The DIA has a number of his works in their collection.

Gari Melchers

Perhaps the most famous painter ever to come from Detroit, naturalist Gari Melchers is responsible for these murals at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. (among many other works). Gari Melchers was the son of cigar-store Indian sculptor Julius Melchers.

Take your pick from any of his paintings at the DIA! This is not one of them, but it is a Gari Melchers portrait of Teddy Roosevelt. NICE!

(Source)

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An injection of the past into the present to inform the future

November 4, 2011 in History, Meditations | 3 comments

You may be interested in this event at the MOCAD this weekend (Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., plus a Saturday matinee at 4 p.m.). Lost Landscapes of Detroit has been here before; this year’s show is new, with even more home movies, newsreels, industrial films, and other film ephemera.

But I want to share something Rick Prelinger says in this article, because it is really important:

“This isn’t about nostalgia, another chance to mourn the loss of the old Hudson’s building,” he says. “Everyone has their eye on Detroit; they see the possibilities. This is an injection of the past into Detroit’s present to help inform its future.”

He means it about these films, of course, where the experience of a lost icon like Hudson’s is poignant, personal and very direct. But I think it applies to the pursuit of local history writ large, from the first frontier fires to the steam ships, the street cars, and the influential people we cast in bronze and plunked down in the middle of city parks.

Sometimes I worry that early Detroit history isn’t relevant to anyone’s real life anymore, especially in a city with so many hip goings-on going on. But while tales of pony carts, public art pranks and wild pear trees may not resonate with as much consequence as stories from, say, the labor movement in the twentieth century, it is still pretty magical, and powerful, to feel connected to the dramatic sweep of this old city.

I try to be cautious about drawing lessons for today from fables of yore, but you can find plenty of useful parallels if that’s what you’re in it for. Like the microfunding of the Hazen Pingree memorial in Grand Circus Park, the fake-eviction tactics staged by the Whig party during the campaign of 1837, and the flourishing of bicycle culture of the 1880s that paved the way (no pun intended) for better roads — and, ultimately, cars to drive on them.

But I find something simpler than that in the study of old Detroit. The thrill of a small, achievable mystery, like the whereabouts of a painting. The joy, and the warmth of affection, of revealing a real person beneath an exalted hero, like the story of Stevens T. Mason drinking 14 toasts at a dinner in his honor and leaping up on the table. Laughing at a still-funny joke Jim Scott told to a newspaper reporter in 1885.

Listen to Rick Prelinger explain this better than I can on yesterday’s episode of the Craig Fahle Show, available here.

And come watch some old movies and think about your place in this city. You are part of its history. Its history is part of you.

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Dogs in early Detroit

October 28, 2011 in History | 5 comments

In early Detroit, owning a dog cost you a 50-cent tax. Per dog. Why? Because there were so many damn dogs. Wrote Silas Farmer:

There can be no doubt that dog tax was then necessary, for in 1805, with only five hundred and twenty-five heads of families, there were two hundred and nineteen dogs in the town of Detroit. …

Dogs were deemed essential as a protection against the Indians in the past time, and some families evidently believed in “protection.” During the War of 1812, after the arrival of Harrison’s troops, a Frenchman came to the officer of the day, and complained, ”The soldiers last night killed most all of my dogs.” — ”How many did they kill?” — ”Nine.” — ”How many have you left?” — ”Only eight.”

In other dog-related lore of early Detroit, did you know settlers used to travel the territory by dog-train? So did the mail! How ELSE would you deliver the mail in the wintertime?

(Source)

Friend Palmer, a reliably disjointed prose stylist, describes these ”dog-trains” in a passage I had to read three times, because it immediately follows tales of Lewis Cass’s Detroit River party barge of canoes. And I thought that Lewis Cass had a canoe JUST FOR HIS DOGS TO RIDE IN. Oh well:

… The ”Dog-Train” … (was) a most important feature. The dog train was made of a light frame of wood, and covered round with a dressed deer skin. The part in which the feet went was lined with furs, and was covered in like the fore part of a shoe. The bottom was a plank, about half an inch thick, some six inches longer than the train, and an inch or two wider. In this train a lady was very comfortable and could take a child in her arms while her husband or friend, standing on the part of the bottom that projected behind, gave the word to the well-trained dogs, who, it was said, were capable of trotting with such a load forty miles in a day.

In other news, I adopted a dog.

She’s from Toledo, but let’s not hold that against her, OK? It should have been part of Michigan, anyway.

I wish I knew more about dogs in the old days. For as much as I have read about French-Canadian ponies in the past nine months, I have found only passing mentions of dogs. In the early 1700s, a dog belonging to the military commandant bit some people in the leg. The fire department had a Newfoundland named “Old Joe” at some point. Silas Farmer included a drawing of him, taken from what as evidently a bad painting (As an aside Silas wrote: “The painter alone is responsible for the perspective.”)

Were any notable figures from Detroit history noted dog-owners? Did Detroit dogs perform any heroic deeds or provide noble services?

I guess that is for me to find out.

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