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The Fourth of July in Early Detroit: FIREBALLS!

July 1, 2010 in History | 1 comment

It’s a very special Fourth of July with Friend Palmer for you to kick off your holiday. The General writes about John Owen, a clerk at a general store, and Owen’s friend Captain Edwards, and their hilaaaarious Independence Day antics:

The then city marshal Adna Merritt [was] a nervous, excitable little body who used to get himself all tangled up trying to stop these two from starting and throwing fire balls, balls of cotton wicking soaked in turpentine and re-enforced with twine. It was quite common then on Fourth of July nights and on other nights as well, during the summer season, for the boys to ignite and throw these balls up and down Jefferson Avenue. Merritt tried to put a stop to it but Owen and Captain Edwards were dead against his doing so and supplied all the fire balls necessary from Dr. Chapin’s store. Did you ever see fire balls thrown or did you ever throw them yourself? ‘Tis great fun, and attended with some danger to the hands, and some to property, although I never knew of any harm to come from them. After a short season both Owen and Edwards joined the Methodist church, having gotten religion. No more fire balls from that quarter after that.

On that note, have a safe and happy holiday.

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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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Thomas W. Palmer, and his Park

March 10, 2010 in History | 4 comments

“Built in 1885 as a Summer house or Cottage by Thomas W. Palmer (1830-1913), prominent Lumberman, United States Senator, Minister to Spain, and President of the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition Commssion.
The land was purchased from the United States Government in 1833 by his Grandfather, Judge James Witherell.

In 1895 Palmer gave 120 acres of adjacent land to the City of Detroit as a park. Two years later the Log Cabin itself was added to the gift. In 1897 the area was officially designated

as Palmer Park.I do

Palmer Pakr Som

Something I hope you all realize about this blog is that I’m playing it by ear. As a former editor, I know better than to go without an editorial plan, but despite a few half-hearted attempts, I don’t have one. I have no formal scholarly training in history at all, let alone Detroit history. I can barely operate our digital camera.

On good days, I like to think that imparts a sense of adventure around here, and on especially self-inflated days, I think that the thrill of discovery is what my blog is really about. On dark days, I feel like a hack of the highest order, and in frustrated moments, I realize I’m a few steps too far behind some pretty obvious details.

Today, for instance, I made the connection between General Friend Palmer, whose memoirs we explore here on a semi-regular basis, and the more famous Detroit Palmer, Thomas W. Palmer, whose sprawling property at present-day 7 Mile and Woodward encompassed Palmer Woods, Palmer Park and the Detroit Golf Club.

They were cousins. OF COURSE. Thomas W. Palmer gave the eulogy at the General’s funeral, the text of which is printed in Early Days in Detroit. Yet I knew so little about Thomas W. until today.

thomas w palmer

He was born in 1830, in a brick house at Jefferson and Griswold. After a year at the University of Michigan, which he gave up because of a problem with his eyes, Palmer left to travel the world with some of his friends from school, paying his way by “the Daguerrean arts.”

Long story short, when he came back to Detroit he got into lumbering, farming and real estate, and then into politics, serving as a state Senator from 1879-1880 and in the US Senate from 1883-1889, where he became an advocate for women’s suffrage. After his term in the Senate, President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Minister to Spain.

His cousin the General shares this story about T.W.’s return to Europe after the traipses of his youth:

After forty one years had passed, Senator Palmer returned to Spain, to Cadiz. Not as a college graduate just released from his Alma Mater and on a voyage of pleasure or adventure, but as the accredited minister of this great republic to the court of Spain.

… One afternoon, in walking around the ramparts, we came across a somewhat dilapidated Spaniard who was seated on the outer wall fishing in the bay.

Senator Palmer accosted him in Spanish and said, “Well, my friend, I see you are fishing here yet after all these years,”

“Yes, Señor, but how many years?”

“Forty years,” responded the senator.

“Oh,” said the chap with the rod, “that was my father.” And they two had, by constant use all the years, at that point worn quite an indenture in the stone coping of the wall.

Thomas W. Palmer inherited the land that is now Palmer Park from his Grandfather, a Supreme Court Judge of the Michigan territory. In 1885, Palmer commissioned a rustic log cabin on the land to use as a summer home.

palmer park log cabin

In 1895, Palmer donated the land to the city of Detroit for use as a park, on the condition that none of the virgin forest be destroyed (it was sometimes claimed that there was a greater variety of indigenous trees and shrubs in Palmer Park than in Europe. Any arborists out there want to take that on?)

In 1897, he donated the cabin, too. The park was dedicated to him the following year.

palmer park log cabin plaque

On the lawn near the cabin is a massive bell, old-world and emerald with patina. Cast in Spain in 1793, then taken to Mexico, it was a gift to the Senator from some of his political friends:

palmer park bell from spain

At one point, Palmer’s cabin was home to other mementos of his service in Spain, including a plow and ox yoke from the convent La Rabida, whose prior convinced Queen Isabella to send Christopher Columbus on his expedition to the Americas. And General Friend writes adoringly of some of Lizzie Palmer’s “old-time” furniture, as well as some curious leather fire buckets he admired.

Palmer Park is also home to the Merrill Fountain, which was commissioned by Lizzie and unveiled at Campus Martius, in front of the old Detroit Opera House, in 1901. If you zoom in really close on this image of Woodward Avenue in 1917 (via Shorpy), you can see where it used to be:

merrill fountain

The turtle is beheaded, but I love the cattails and the bearded fish:

palmer park merrill fountain

palmer park merrill fountain 2

The fountain is no longer in working order. It was moved to Palmer Park in 1926.

For more on Thomas W. Palmer, I enjoyed skimming this biography, by Agnes M. Burton.

But for more, extraordinarily more, on Palmer Park, please check out this beautiful Souvenir, published by the Silas Farmer Company in 1908.

souvenir

“Asked what his motive was in donating Palmer Park to the people of Detroit,” writes the author, “His answer was: ‘The good of everybody.’”

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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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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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