Friend Palmer was born May 7, 1820 in Canandaigua, New York. He came to Detroit with his family on the steamer Henry Clay when he was seven years old.

Could he ever have guessed that nearly 200 years after his birth he’d be the #1 collaborator / contributor to some lady’s dweeby early history blog?

I wish he were still alive so I could throw him a party even better than this one he attended at the Exchange Hotel in 1850:

It was a brilliant affair, and was attended by the elite of the city, military and all, the latter in full uniform. A short time before issuing the invitations he told the boys he intended giving a dancing party, and charged them all to be on hand as it was going to be a stunner. Well, it came off in good time, and it was a sure enough stunner. I have attended many functions of this kind in my time, and think this affair “took the cake.” The supper room, located in the upper part of the house, was open from the beginning of the party until its close.  Whisky in the gentlemen’s dressing room, and champagne in the supper room; the latter flowed like water. It is a wonder the whole male portion did not get tipsy, but they did not, except two or three. Most of the rest though, it must be confessed, became quite hilarious. Dancing to the music of Gilliam’s String Band was kept up until a late hour. Lyon said on the start that he was going to give the boys all the wine they could get away with, and a general good time. He did it. This “blow out” of his was the talk of the town for quite a while after it occurred.

Ah, the lost glory of the military ball, with influential officers drinking all of the champagne, bringing side arms, and tearing around obnoxiously in spurs:

The officers wore their side arms and spurs, as was the custom at the time. I seem now to hear, as I heard then, the rattling of their accoutrements and the jingling of their spurs, as they whirled through the mazes of the giddy dance. The custom of wearing the spurs on festive occasions was annoying to the ladies, as they made sad havoc with their dresses.

Some of my favorite Friend Palmer posts:

General Friend Palmer and the Lost Dauphin

General Friend Palmer and fireballs in the street 

General Friend Palmer and the Court Crier Isaac Day

General Friend Palmer and his scrapbooks

General Friend Palmer and the Old Log Cabin

I had the great pleasure of speaking in Dearborn this week as part of a public lecture series hosted by the Dearbon Historical Society. We met at the McFadden-Ross House, which is beautiful — and used to be the powder magazine for the old Dearborn Arsenal. It dates to 1839, which by local standards is OLD.

In Dearborn, even more than in Detroit, the story of the city is tied up with one man and his era: Henry Ford, and the motors with which he moved the city. But Dearborn, like Detroit, is of course a lot older than that. Farmers started settling in what is now Dearborn in the 1780s, and since the old Chicago Road (now Michigan Avenue) ran right through the area, it became a stopping-point for settlers headed west, especially during the post-Erie Canal, pre-railroad-era of Yankee migration through the territory.

I checked in with — who else? — General Friend Palmer and Early Days in Detroit to see if I could find a charming story about early days in Dearborn.

I was not disappointed.

The Ten Eyck Tavern

(Via the Historical Marker Database)

Conrad Ten Eyck built a tavern along the old Chicago Road in 1826. In that time, it was about a day’s journey from Detroit. (When General Palmer was writing, the trolley had shortened the trip to a speedy 40 minutes.)

The tavern was a wild success. We meet our jovial bar-keep at sunset, as a train of roughed-up wagons bang over the corduroy road and come piling into the bar.

Emerging at nightfall as the sun cast its setting rays upon the broad facade of the substantial old tavern, and greeted by the genial beams of its famous proprietor, “Old Coon” Ten Eyck, as he was affectionately called, the weary pilgrims began to feel something of the glow of that fellow feeling which makes us wondrous kind.

“Sally, have some more wolf-steak put on,” Old Coon would call out in a cheery voice as each new load of hungry pilgrims would drive up.

Conrad Ten Eyck, Palmer goes on to explain, had a little inside joke with his wife about wolf-steaks that, while esoteric, seems to be one way people used to explain the mystery of the Michigan “wolverine”:

Once a particularly pretty and jolly girl emigrant, coming out of the tavern dining room with the taste of the juicy Ten Eyck lamb chops still in her mouth, asked, “And have I really eaten wolf steak?”

“Surely, my pretty miss,” replied Old Coon.

“Then I suppose I am a wolverine,” exclaimed the fair traveler.

“That you are,” said Mr. Ten Eyck, “And will be from this on !”

And then, Palmer relates, all the men in the tavern were like, “Hey, we’re wolverines too!” Because they wanted to impress the girl. Isn’t that how history ALWAYS WORKS?

Palmer admits that the story may not be true — even if Old Coon Ten Eyck did have a little joke about wolf steaks, who knows if  his prank was responsible for the not-so flattering nickname?

“I do not know for a certainty,” wrote General Palmer, “but Clarence Burton does.”

It’s still Black History Month, and I had plans to introduce you to five of my favorite Black Detroiters from the city’s pre-automotive history. But I got wrapped up in just one story, and since I’m of the mind that everyone would do better to celebrate Black History year-round with as much verve as they do in February, I’ll commit right here and now to sharing those stories with you very soon.

For now, though, I want to introduce you to William Webb.

William Webb was born into slavery in Georgia in 1836. In Mississippi, in the years leading up to the Civil War, Webb became involved with a group of slaves secretly organizing for freedom, and at their meetings he called for the creation of an interstate network that could create an irresistible revolutionary movement:

“I told him all the way that could be done with justice would be to establish a king in every State, and let every king make his laws in his own State, and let his place be the headquarters. I thought it best for each king to appoint a man to travel twelve miles, and then hand the news to another man, and so on, till the news reached from Louisiana to Mississippi, and then if we were to rebel, we would rebel in all the States at one time, so the white people would not have a chance.”

That’s from The History of William Webb, Composed by Himself, published in Detroit in 1873 to raise money for education to teach William Webb — 52 years old, and still illiterate — to read and write. (His wife penned the book.)

When war broke out, Webb served as a spy in the Union Army. Captured by slaveholders, he escaped and enlisted in the Army, where he saw victory at the Battle of Fort Henry. Then he snuck onto a prisoner boat headed for Indianapolis: “For I had heard General Wallace talking about it being a free country.”

” … We landed in Indianapolis, Indiana, where the prisoners were going to, and every thing was prepared for us to take breakfast. We arrived there about seven o’clock in the morning. We all took breakfast and then prepared to march to camp Moulton. All the prisoners marched out, and the colored men along with them, but I remained in the depot. Then I walked out and said to myself, “thank God, I am free.” I heard a voice in my ear, say, not free yet; when you depart from sin, then you are free indeed.”

That fall, Webb came to Michigan, where he found work chopping wood for the winter five miles west of Detroit, near what is now Woodmere Cemetery. There, he witnessed people fleeing from the Riot of 1863:

“While I was out there a riot occurred in the city, and a great many colored people were fleeing out in the country where I was, and some came to the house where I was stopping to get shelter, both men and women. They said there was a great many bad feeling white people in the neighborhood, and they did not know whether they were safe themselves. … I came into the city next day to see what damage they had done. The colored people were very scarce in the places I had been used to see them, and I found that some had run over into Canada, and some of them had run into the woods. A great many gentlemen said it was a great pity they had such a cruel riot, and I asked them if there was no law to prevent such a mob, and they said there was no laws for a mob. I said, I think it is a very queer country that has no law to protect people.”

A queer country indeed, and Detroit knew it. As a result of the riot, the city organized its first police force.

I started reading this narrative because I wanted to know more about William Webb, the man who hosted the famous meeting between Frederick Douglass and John Brown in Detroit in 1859. This is a different William Webb — a William Webb still enslaved in 1859, praying and trusting to God that he would be delivered, and fearing no man. He did not have a home in which to host strategy sessions; when he came to Detroit, he lived in boarding houses.

This William Webb was arrested twice — once in Indiana, where it was a crime for a white man to hire a Southern black, and again in Detroit, after he refused to enlist in the army:

“They were very angry at me, and told me I had better be down freeing my people. I said to them, yes, I had been planning that, two or three years before the war broke out, and I thought I had given them a great deal of light. He was very angry when I told him that, and said that every colored man ought to take up arms and go into the field. I said to him, yes, I thought so too, if there was any chance of the rebels whipping the Union soldiers. … He asked me if I would enlist as a soldier. I said I did not think I would. I told him my mind taught me better, that I thought at some future day I might be of some great benefit. He asked me what benefit I expected to be. I told him I did not know, but I had great hope and trust in the future.”

Webb continued to chop wood, work in the fields, and paint fences, including for the Mayor (if I have my dates right, this would be Mayor William Duncan) who sounds like a real creep:

“I whitewashed for the mayor of the city that spring. We got into a little dispute about the work, and I talked to him with the best manners I could. He ran up to me and told me to hush, that he did not allow n***ers to talk to him.”

Ugh. Awful.

These are just a handful of stories from The History of William Webb. (In another story, he has a prophetic dream about his future wife!) Not a great Black leader, or an inventor, or the first Black so-and-so to do such-thing. But worth remembering, I think, as a normal, faithful guy, who conquered hardship, found freedom through work and through God, and who wanted to learn and use his mind to do great things.

I don’t know anything about William Webb that isn’t in his History — I don’t know when he died, if his daughter lived to see adulthood (she was just a baby when this book was published, and first two other children died in infancy), or where he’s buried. And I don’t know if sales of his books allowed him to learn to read.

But I really, really hope so.

Other wonderful stories from Black History Month in Detroit

Black History 101 Mobile Museum — This is amazing! I can’t wait to catch this around town, so I liked them on Facebook to keep apprised of their whereabouts (and you can too).

The trailblazing Detroit Plaindealer — One of the first Afro-American newspapers in the country, founded in Detroit in 1883

Biking Detroit’s Underground Railroad History — Todd Scott of the indispensable m-bike.org talks with Adventure Cycling about the Detroit’s historic and bike-able Underground Railroad attractions, plus more details about the entire 500-mile no-kidding cross-country route.

Love empowered slave couples to flee to freedom — The power of love! An inspiring suite of love / freedom stories from Betty DeRamus.

And finally, some old Detroit-related jazz

Scott and I just re-watched Ken Burns’ Jazz (are you surprised that we’re a big Ken Burns household?) and our home has been filled with the jaunty jibber-jab of old jazz and swing records pretty much 24/7.

I did some research a five-minute YouTube search to find some old Detroit jazz bands from this era. Here’s one! This song starts out kinda wah-wah-y and slow but gets pretty great. Wait for it!

And Jelly Roll Morton’s real name?

Ferdinand. Joseph. La Mothe. FOR REAL!

Part 2: The Battle of Atlanta

In 1884, John A. Logan, heralded Civil War General, won the nomination for Vice President on the Republican ticket (with Presidential nominee James Blaine). To promote their campaign, Logan commissioned a cyclorama that would vaunt his heroism in the Battle of Atlanta.

I guess he underestimated how long it would take to paint a cyclorama.

Via Wisconsin Historical Society. See more incredible photos of cyclorama painting in Milwaukee here.   

In 1883, the Cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg debuted in Chicago. Cycloramas, panoramic in nature but more immersive and over-the-top, were designed to be installed in purpose-built rotundas. You’d walk in, sometimes from winding, narrow tunnels or a staircase beneath the floor, and emerge on a viewing platform. There you were: on a smoke-enshrouded battlefield, amidst dirt and prairie grass and crouching soldiers and corpses. It seemed intensely real.

It was, of course, an elaborate illusion. From Yoni Applebaum’s essay in The Atlantic:

What most astonished observers, though, was the diorama, which began near the edge of the platform and ended at the painting, 45 feet away. Hundreds of cartloads of earth were covered in sod and studded with vegetation, then topped with the detritus of the battlefield. Shoes, canteens, fences, walls, corpses: near the canvas, these props were cunningly arranged to blend seamlessly into the painting. Two wooden poles, painted on the canvas, met a third leaned against it to form a tripod. A dirt road ran out into the diorama.

Also in 1883, a German named William Wehner founded the American Panorama Company in Milwaukee (a city near to my heart, you know). Wehner knew he could find experienced painters in Germany, where panoramas of the Franco-Prussian war were popular. He went to Europe, or worked with agents based in Europe, to recruit some 15 artists to join his crew. In Milwaukee, the artists worked in an octagonal studio at Fifth and Wells — and drank at a bar across the street.

Panorama painters in Milwaukee, 1887 Via Wisconsin Historical Society.

I don’t know who decided, or how, that the Battle of Atlanta would debut in Detroit, but so it was decided. We didn’t have a cyclorama building at the time, but for the Battle of Atlanta, we would build one.

William Wehner traveled here in 1886 to see how things were going. A reporter for the Detroit Tribune caught up with him at the Brunswick bar on December 13, where Wehner — you have to wonder if he was a salty person generally, or just in his cups — complained that the Detroit cyclorama building wasn’t ready yet, then talked trash about another famous cyclorama.

“You had a cyclorama in Detroit some time ago,” said Mr. Wehner, “and I saw it. I am afraid the people of this city will form an opinion of the new exhibit from the old, but that is not fair … People who have seen Battle of Gettysburg only have no idea what a really good cyclorama is. It was certainly the very worst exhibition that I have ever seen.”

Anticipation for the cyclorama, the paper wrote, was at a frenzy — ”The people of Detroit have no idea what it will be like until they see it.” Famous attendees expected to attend the debut included General W.T. Clark, Theodore Davis, and General Logan himself, “who will be present to fight the battle over again.”

Two weeks after this article was published,  General Logan died. (When his widow saw the completed painting in Atlanta years later, it is rumored, she fainted at the sight of his likeness.)

Wehner had hoped the Cyclorama would be open by Christmas, but owing to the delay in completing the cyclorama building (at Bates and Larned — seen above) and the labor-intensive installation of the 42-foot high, 358-foot long painting  the Battle of Atlanta didn’t debut in Detroit until February 1887. When the Battle of Atlanta continued its tour, it was replaced with Custer’s Last Stand. As far as I can tell, those were the only two paintings ever installed at Detroit’s cyclorama building, which was torn down in 1891.

In Milwaukee, the panorama painters created that city’s first vibrant art community; after the panorama craze quelled, those that stayed opened their own studios, became teachers, established schools, and found work decorating the Pabst mansion and painting dioramas for the Milwaukee Public Museum. In Detroit, it seems, as with most other American cities, panoramas were a brief and fantastical flash in the pan, and most of the panoramas exhibited here have long since been lost or destroyed.

You can still see the Battle of Atlanta, though — in Atlanta, naturally — where it remains the largest oil painting in the world.

Further reading:

The Atlanta Cyclorama

Cyclorama — the New Georgia Encyclopedia

What happened to the Panorama Painters? 

Milwaukee County Historical Society — Friedrich W. Heine Diaries

Via Library of Congress

Me being me, after I read them I spent some time (a., freaking out over the now-lost cyclorama of Custer’s Last Stand, which replaced the Battle of Gettsyburg at the Boston Cyclorama in 1888, and (b., scrambling to find out if any cycloramic spectacles were created, or exhibited, in Detroit.

Of course they were! So much so, in fact, that I’m tackling the legacy of the cyclorama in Detroit in two parts.

Part 1: The panorama

Before the rise of the cyclorama in the 1880s, its twin sibling, the panorama, was the rage. Starting around 1850, Detroiters could pop into Old City Hall or the Firemen’s Hall and, for 25 cents or so, see the latest “greatest painting ever made” — sweeping views of overland route to California, the funeral of Napoleon, Bible scenes, the life of George Washington. Sometimes they were set up on big rollers and scrolled slowly by a seated audience while a narrator explained the passing scenery. One panorama of New York City, painted by Otis Bullard, was 3,000 feet long, rendering 6 miles of the great city with “a view of more than 700 horses and carriages and upward of 10,000 of its people.”

A moving panorama of Dr. Kane’s Arctic Expedition exhibited in Detroit in 1859. Here, an 1857 advertisement for the painting. Source.  

Thomas Mickell Burnham, whose painting of the First State Election in Michigan is one of my stubborn favorites, was a moving panorama painter. So was John Mix Stanley, a most-of-the-time Detroiter who, in 1862, painted a “Polemorama” of scenes from the Civil War:

Commencing Monday Evening, Jan. 12:
Stanley & Conant’s
POLEMORAMA!
Or, Gigantic Illustrations of the War!

And DIO-PANORAMIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE IMPENDING REBELLION, (the largest Panorama ever contemplated.) Sketched, painted and completed by the eminent Government Artists, Stanley, Conant, walker, Hillyard, Lamb, Healy, McCormick, Bagley. The Polemorama is visiting a few of the prinicpal cities, prior to being placed on the mammoth revolving pedestal in the north wing of the Smithsonian Institute, Washington D.C.

The remarkable Naval Engagement between the MONITOR and MERRIMAC is faithfully illustrated by Moving Models, Undulating Water, &c., &c.

Exhibitions on Wednesday and Saturday Afternoons, and each Evening this week.

Buffalo Daily Courier, via fultonhistory.com

In 1854, a French painter, Mathuren Andrieu, came to Detroit to exhibit his Panorama of the Great West, which included views of Chicago, St. Louis, and Springfield, IL. Those who wished to see Detroit added to the panorama were advised to stop into the nearest bar or hotel and purchase petition tickets. Within the week, Mr. Andrieu announced that, due to popular demand, he would be temporarily closing his exhibition in order to paint Detroit. Call the Biddle House, the paper advertised, for the chance to have your business prominently included. (Raffles and sponsorships like this were built into Mr. Andrieu’s business plan, it seems — the following year he traveled to Cleveland, and subsequently added Cleveland to the painting. Kind of brilliant!)

“Many of our best-known citizens may be seen on the avenue,” wrote the Free Press of Andrieu’s Panorama of Detroit. ”The artist is daily adding some well-known figure.” Famous denizens portrayed in the painting included Bishop LeFevre and former Mayor (then Collector of the Port) John Harmon. To complete the entertainment, Andrieu traveled with a minstrel band, but Mr. Andrieu may have been amusing on his own — in Cleveland, a reporter wrote that Andrieu “delighted the audience … by singing the Marseilles [sic] as only a Frenchman can.”

In part 2: A Milwaukee connection, the long-gone Detroit Cyclorama building, and the creator of the Battle of Atlanta Cyclorama talkin’ trash at a bar.

Stay tuned!

Detroit is a maritime city, even though that eponymous motor and the interstates it compelled us to build have eclipsed this truth somewhat. Cadillac paddled here, Lewis Cass liked to read selections from his scholarly library in his canoe, and when the Erie Canal opened, Yankee settlers arrived in Detroit by — well, the boatload.

And our Boat Club is the oldest in the country.

Source

“When Monsieur de la Mothe Cadillac founded his post on the Detroit River some two hundred years ago he wrote to his superior that he had found the Gateway to the West. Now one can sit on the veranda of the Detroit Boat Club House and watch an endless stream of commerce passing through the channel, and he knows Cadillac was right. That is one of the charms of the place.”

— Leonidas Hubbard Jr, “Paddling your Own Canoe,” Outing (1904)

On February 18, 1839, some society types who enjoyed the sport of boating started a club, a place where they could store some boats and a change of clothes. (Founding members included a smattering of Brushes, Campaus, Farnsworths and Ten Eycks. Also Alpheus Starkey Williams.) The club had a slip at the foot of Randolph Street and one boat — the Georgiana.

“When the house was built more men wanted to join, and then men became canoeists just to get the privileges of the organization.”

— Leonard Hubbard Jr.

Source

It’s not the same building now, obviously; a familiar  fate of its time, the slip on Randolph Street burned in 1848, destroying all boats but the Wolverine. In 1889, the Boat Club moved to Belle Isle — to a building that burned in 1893, then to another building that burned in 1901. The present structure, a crumbling concrete beauty at the foot of the Belle Isle Bridge, dates to 1902. It is fireproof.

“In those early days the club was largely a social organization and barge parties were extremely popular. One of the features at this time was a stunning uniform adopted by the members. It consisted of a chip sailor hat covered with white linen and broad black band; sailor pantaloons of white duck with black belts around the waist; shoes with low sewed heels, and white socks; black silk handkerchief knot; blue shirts with white figure and broad square collar; coat of Kentucky jean. Garbed in this natty uniform the young sailors were wont to take the barges up the river on balmy, moonlight nights, the foremost young ladies of Detroit’s society by their sides, sending the craft steadily and swiftly along under the impulse of their strong, regular stroke.”

— General Friend Palmer, Early Days in Detroit

The fate of the Detroit Boat Club building is uncertain. The Boat Club itself has moved on; the building (owned by the city) is still occupied by crew teams and Friends of Detroit Rowing, but it needs a ton of love and money.

“In the early ’80s the taste for rowing subsided, and indoor gymnastics, baseball, and field sports took its place. The Detroit Athletic Club, which was organized in 1880, was the leader in the new direction. … The Detroit YMCA and Mutual Boat Clubs are now the only rowing clubs in Detroit. Walkerville, Ont., opposite Detroit, and Wyandotte and Ecorse, below Detroit … have also clubs, and these six are the only organized rowing clubs on the Detroit River, where twenty years ago there were about fifteen.”

-  Robert B. Ross, George B. Catlin, Landmarks of Detroit,  1898

“And sometimes you are sick because you cannot leave the canal and, maybe, the parasol, and instead of the cushions throw into your craft a tarpaulin and bag of grub and turn northward over Cadillac’s route. And you dream of islands and camp fires and the smell of hemlock and the ripple of waves at night; but through it all you know that this is a whole lot better than the city gymnasium or the park; you were complaining out of that strange trait of human nature which makes us all want more and more of any good things which Providence sends us.”

— Leonidas Hubbard

Source

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

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.”)

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.

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!

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.