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… and sail to Milwaukee to come see me talk at Sugar Maple on Jan. 12, 2012!
(Who am I kidding? They’ll be there for the dance party.)
Oh my gosh, how great is this poster? My friend dwellephant made it. You should send him $5 immediately. (Or maybe you need some love letters? Valentine’s Day!)
See you (if you live near Milwaukee) at the Sugar Maple! (More details on Facebook.) We’re going to shake it Gabriel Richard in wooden shoes after a few glasses of wine he bought from Joseph Campau.
Tags: antoine cadillac, Art, gabriel richard, lewis cass
Finally! By gracious invitation of Preservation Wayne! We went on a real tour. With a tour guide. And it was rich.
Mt. Elliott Cemetery was established in 1841 on some farmland on the rural northern border of the city. I believe that makes it the oldest still-operating cemetery in Detroit. The traditionally Catholic burial ground is just over the fence from Elmwood (the oldest non-denominational cemetery in Detroit. To split hairs).
For two and half hours in chilly weather, Cemetery Director Russell Burns and former Director Peter Buchanan (both learned and valiant gentlemen) introduced us to early French and Irish settlers, founding Detroit families, architects, industrial leaders, religious leaders, one Mayor (the honorable Jerome Cavanagh), and soldiers that fought in, among other incursions, the American Revolution, the War of 1812, for and against Napoleon in the Battle of Waterloo, and the Polar Bear Expedition to Arkhangelsk, Russia after World War I.
Mt. Elliott is named for one of its founders, Judge Robert Thomas Elliott. Born in Ireland in 1795, he came to Quebec in 1819 and began a career as an architect. He came to Detroit in 1834.
Robert Elliott was one of the original purchasers and planners of Mt. Elliott Cemetery, which was to be the cemetery of Trinity Catholic Church (one of the first English-speaking Catholic congregation in the West). The sale was completed in August of 1841; Robert Elliott died a month later after a construction accident at St. Mary’s Church. He was the first internment at Mt. Elliott.
Robert Elliott’s son, Richard R. Elliott, wrote a charming biography of his father’s life for the Michigan Pioneer Society (published 1896).
It reveals that his mother/Robert Elliott’s wife, Frances Shea, survived not one! not two! but THREE! shipwrecks en route from Rock of Cashel, Ireland to Quebec. Where she met her husband — also from Rock of Cashel.
When you enter through the gatehouse, this monument of a barefoot scholar is straight ahead. It graces the grave of Daniel Campau, son of the famous Joseph Campau. Daniel was a member of Detroit’s first Board of Education, which explains the piles of books.
Also in Campaus,
Major Jacques Campau served as a First Lieutenant in the War of 1812 and was present at both William Hull’s humiliating surrender of Fort Detroit and the decisive American victory at Thames, where Tecumseh was killed.
Where’s the famous Jos. Campau? We knew he was at rest at Elmwood, but Russell explained why: Gabriel Richard had him excommunicated for a laundry list of offenses to Catholic behavior, including usury, selling whiskey to the Indians, joining the Masonic order and (gasp!) convincing his nephew to run against Father Richard for a seat in the Territorial Congress. Guess who won?
Another family you might know best from their eponymous street: the Beaubiens.
Monique’s husband Antoine was flush with cash, but he didn’t really like speaking English and was kind of a do-nothing. So Monique, a teacher and an apparently competent and generous business mind, managed the estate, donating land to charitable projects including St. Mary’s Church, St. Mary’s Hospital and the Academy of the Girls of the Sacred Heart. My favorite part of this story: After Monique died, Antoine married a young French woman and went broke.
Putting this post together is like reliving how much there is to see at Mt. Elliott across so many disparate eras of city history and, at least when it’s cold outside and the sun is sinking, in so little time. How to choose who to get acquainted with?
This is the monument of the Nester family. Thomas Nester was a lumber baron. His grandson, also Thomas Nester, was a hospital orderly during World War I who made a very personal and grisly contribution to the vaccination for trench fever.
Nearby lie the Palms, a Detroit high society family if there ever was one. Ange Palms was a Belgian quartermaster in Napoleon’s army and his son, Francis Palms, came to Detroit in 1833. (Ange and several other family members decamped to New Orleans, and the family continues its legacy there and here.) Francis amassed a fortune through real estate (mostly the brokerage of lumber land in northern Michigan and Wisconsin as well as the mineral-laden Upper Peninsula). Francises II and III are buried here as well.
So is Charles Louis Palms, who at 30 years old became the youngest bank president in America. Wrote Clarence Burton, Charles Louis was “one of the best known of the younger Detroiters, a man of marked popularity … of innate culture and of quiet and modest demeanor, he is at all times dignified yet thoroughly approachable.”
(The Palms also left a significant architectural legacy in Detroit that includes the Palms Apartments, the Palms House and the Palms Theatre, which is now the Fillmore.)
Little Chief Edward is one of Mt. Elliott’s “celebrities,” Russell told us. The grandson of Sitting Bull, Little Chief Edward was a variety show actor (notably in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show).
And what about the Brennans? Oh, the Brennans. This is one of the best stories about a rough night out I’ve ever heard, and I like to think I know a thing or two about rough nights out.
Luckily, YouTube exists, because Peter tells this story better than I ever could. Please watch it; it involves P.T. Barnum, Niagara Falls, and zoo animals.
Honestly, Russell and his colleagues have done so much research that, at this point, I’m just going to recommend you direct your curiosity to his massive PDF of notable burials, from which I have cribbed heavily for this post.
Since it lies beside Elmwood, which is so expansive, I have often thought of it as the “small” cemetery. But it contains multitudes.
So rest assured, dear friends, that we will be back to Mt. Elliott soon, whether physically (still largely contingent on whether or not I get myself a good pair of winter boots) or in the digital space.
Tags: antoine beaubien, daniel campau, gabriel richard, joseph campau, major jacques campau, monique beaubien, mt. elliott, palms detroit, robert thomas elliott, thomas nester
Gabriel Richard was born on October 15, 1767 in La Ville des Saintes, France. Thirty-one years later, Father Richard — who had emigrated to Baltimore in 1792, then came to the Northwest Territory as a missionary — found himself in the city on the straits.
“Seventeen hundred and ninety-eight was really a red letter year,” writes Harriet Marsh in A History of Detroit for Young People, “because it brought to Detroit a wonderful man, Father Gabriel Richard, who came to take charge of the parish at Ste. Anne.”
Father Richard may be one of Detroit’s all-time most adored citizens. (I have read that Detroiters threw a huge birthday party for him as late as the 1930s.) Detroit was still a backwater frontier town when Richard arrived. When he died — a victim of the cholera epidemic of 1832 — he had founded Detroit’s first schools and its first printed newspaper; he’d shipped in its first printing press and hauled in its first organ on horseback. At the first public meeting of the Northwest territorial council in 1824, Father Richard opened the session with a prayer that “the legislators may make laws for the people, and not for themselves.”
Detroit’s founding Father cut a funny figure in town: be-robed and be-spectacled with a thick French accent, a sword scar on his face, a mighty intellect and a gentle demeanor. During the Great Fire of 1805, Richard recruited a heroic relief effort:
As usual, Father Gabriel Richard came to the rescue. He walked down the road to some of the farmhouses and soon had a group of French farmers in their canoes and bateaux going along the shore and asking for food for the fire sufferers. As soon as the canoes returned, a meal was cooked, and some of the men rigged up temporary shelters, using the fallen posts of the stockade. (Marsh, A History of Detroit for Young People)
And then, of course, Father Richard penned the fire-inspired motto that still lifts the hearts of long-suffering Detroiters: Speramus meliora; resurget cinerbus. We hope for better things; It shall rise from the ashes.
Legend even has it that when Father Richard was captured during the War of 1812, Tecumseh — the tribal confederacy leader who was fighting against America with the British — ordered his forces to stop cooperating until Richard’s release was secured.
Attendance at Father Richard’s funeral exceeded the population of Detroit. General Friend Palmer was in attendance. In his memoirs he wrote:
It was said that Father Richard was so studious and patient in his search after knowledge that he actually counted the eggs in a whitefish. How many millions, history fails to tell.
It is probably OK that the mystery of the whitefish eggs is lost to history. Father Gabriel Richard’s legacy is singular nonetheless.
Father Richard is entombed in Ste. Anne’s. We wish him a happy 243rd.
Tags: gabriel richard, general friend palmer, great fire of 1805, history of detroit for young people, ste. anne's detroit, war of 1812
On January 26, 1837, nearly 150 years after the earliest known use of the name “Michigan” on a map, Michigan was officially admitted to the Union.
For a long time I had this confused, baseless idea that territories just sort of naturally, peacefully shook out into states, in rapid succession, during the first 50 years of the 19th century. I don’t know how that got into my head, but it’s wrong! And in Michigan, the story of the fight for statehood is amazing. Consider this:
In 1831, Stevens T. Mason — whose father John had been sent to the Michigan territory, then to Mexico, by President Andrew Jackson — succeeded his father as Secretary of the Territory at just 19 years old. When Lewis Cass left Michigan to serve as Jackson’s Secretary of War, Mason acted as Governor, even after Jackson appointed a new Governor, George Porter, who spent a lot of time away.
In 1832, a devastating spate of cholera broke out in Detroit, killed Father Gabriel Richard, and panicked everyone. The same year, Mason began a territorial census. Before its completion in 1834, another cholera epidemic wracked the city, killing nearly a seventh of Detroit’s population, including Governor Porter. Stevens T. Mason became Acting Governor — at age 22.
In September 1834, the finished census confirmed that the territory had a population of more than 87,000 — way over the minimum requirement for statehood. The Territorial Legislature asked Congress for permission to form a state legislature, but Ohio disputed the territorial borders, and Congress rejected the petition.
Thus began one of my favorite episodes in arcane Michigan history: The Toledo War.
Ohio passed legislation in 1835 asserting claims to the disputed Toledo strip and forming county governments within its borders. Mason responded with the Pains and Penalties Act, which made it a crime for Ohioans to govern within the strip. Both states called their militias to the border.
No life-threatening casualties were incurred during the conflict and parties disagreed on whether any shots were ever fired. The “war” was mostly scuffles between roving posses, citizen arrests and mutual harrassment. But President Jackson was really scared that Ohio and Michigan were on the brink of full-out war. So he had Mason, a famous hot-head, removed from office and replaced.
Luckily for statehood, nobody liked the new Governor, John “Little Jack” Horner, who released war prisoners almost immediately, angering citizens who were already irked by Mason’s removal. Just a month after Horner took office, in October 1835, Michigan voters approved the state constitution and elected Mason governor.
Congress wouldn’t admit Michigan to the Union until it ceded Toledo to Ohio, and throughout 1836, Michigan rejected the President’s consolation — the Upper Peninsula. But the state was almost bankrupt, Governor Mason kept pushing, and finally, in December 1836, a convention in Ann Arbor approved the compromise. Statehood at last!
Good story, right?
Further reading:
Michigan Legislature’s Chronology of Michigan History
The Toledo War. Don Faber, University of Michigan Press, 2009
Stevens T. Mason is buried in Capitol Square Park in Detroit, currently undergoing redevelopment. He died in New York in 1843. In 1905, a commission, appointed by Governor Fred Warner, successfully oversaw the relocation of Mason’s remains:
“The Boy Governor Comes Home,” Bob Garrett. State of Michigan Archives, January 2010.
Tags: cholera, fred warner, gabriel richard, george porter, little jack horner, michigan, president andrew jackson, statehood, stevens t mason, toledo war
Construction continues on the new site, which should be up and running by the end of the week, although your friends aboard the Night Train aren’t making any promises.
One of the luxuries of writing about history, though, is that isn’t subject to the hyper-fast timeline that directs our daily lives. Taking a few days off the blog grind to learn code and play with my stylesheets puts a dent in my traffic stats, but I’m not worried about missing something on Twitter that won’t be relevant by the end of the day.
That isn’t to say that history doesn’t change. We revise it all the time; we change the stories we tell, how we tell them, the way the think about the characters involved. We build new monuments and memorials and tear down old ones. We fight about it. In Detroit, these fights are fever-pitch: the abandoned structures and empty lots that crowd the city are both monuments to a better past (one many Detroiters can personally remember) and painful memento mori of decline.
But there’s older, thicker history in the city that most of us forget after grade school. I like this mustier, more legendary stuff: the fur trade, the settlements, the berobed Jesuits and oak plank roads and war generals. I find it comforting. The past is tenacious, and we are strung to it.
So, scholarly asides aside: it was thus that we approached the tour itinerary provided in the 1933 edition of History of Detroit for Young People by Harriet and Florence Marsh. The original itinerary is bolded with our comments and photos below. Remember, watch for street car crossings and always have an older person with you.
I. THE CAMPUS MARTIUS
a. Find cannon from [Oliver Hazard] Perry’s victory.
No luck here. Does anyone know where this is? The Detroit Historical Society or the Dossin Great Lakes Museum, maybe? We saw some cannons on Washington Blvd., but they belonged to General Macomb, as it turned out.
b. Statues of Cadillac, N.E.corner; Father Marquette, N.W. corner; Father Richard, S.E. corner; La Salle, S.W. corner.
These are now on the campus of Wayne State University, in a park on Anthony Wayne Street. Father Richard’s aspect is especially haunting, and the Marshes speak lovingly of him, although they do mention that he was a plain, bespectacled man with a scar on his face from a sword wound. Not evident on the statue.
c. Council chamber. Look at picture presented to Detroit by French Government, “Louis XIV delivering to Chevalier de Cadillac the ordinance and grant for the foundation of the City of Detroit.”
Detroit City Hall was razed in 1961. I found this painting during a routine Google Book search, where it appeared on the cover of “Historical Collections” published by the Michigan Historical Society. The painting is credited as part of the “Art Musem of Detroit, 1902″ — is it in the DIA now?
2. The Soldiers and Sailors Monument faces the City Hall on the east side of Woodward Avenue. This was designed by Randolph Rogers and unveiled in 1872.
d
Standing triumphant.
3. Old Andrew’s Hotel, facing the Campus Martius, stood on the site of what now is the Schubert Detroit Opera House.
My dad speaks with a glint in his eye of Detroit’s movie house days, and he remembers the Schubert adoringly. The Schubert was demolished in 1964.
4. The fountain erected to the memory of Governor John J. Bagley stands on the north end of the campus.
This odd, pyramidal marble structure still stands, although it’s pretty dry as fountains go. It’s got lions in the center. Rawr.
II. CADILLAC SQUARE
1. Detroit Historical Musem is on the 23rd floor of Barlum Tower, rooms 2302-18.
2. The Wayne County Building is on the east side of the square.
The Wayne County Building may be the finest standing example of Roman Baroque architecture in North America, says Wikipedia (I have to trust the crowds on this one as I know nothing about architecture and the claim is unsourced), and it’s one of my favorite buildings in the city. We tried to get in to nose around, but the security guard, though evidently delighted to see another human being in the building, regrettably informed us that it was closed, and advised us to call his boss, who has “a big heart for people like you.” (Tourists? History dorks? White kids running around downtown with cameras?)
Mad Anthony has rapidly become an obsession and my boyfriend has obligingly been ordering out-of-print biographies of him through interlibrary loan. The Erie, PA-based Erie Brewing Company makes a delicious American Pale Ale in Mad Anthony’s name and we recommend it.
3. Cadillac Chair of Justice
Buildings of Detroit eloquently describes the fate of the Chair of Justice: “By the late 1930s, the limestone had started to fall apart, and the chair had turned into a favorite resting spot for vagrants and drunks. On Nov. 1, 1941, workers showed up with sledgehammers and it was removed in pieces.”
VI. Points West of Woodward Ave.
We skipped around on this tour, mapless, downtown and on foot as we were.
a. Statue of General Alexander Macomb, born in Detroit and at one time Commander-in-Chief of the Army. It stands on Washington Boulevard at Michigan Avenue, opposite the Book-Cadillac.
Impressive! The glorious Macomb still stands handsomely on Washington Boulevard opposite the still-standing (and gloriously restored and open for business!) Book-Cadillac Hotel. Fun fact: Macomb’s statue is made out of melted down cannons.
Also on Washington Boulevard is a statue of Casimir Pulaski.
b. Mariner’s Church, northwest corner of Woodward Avenue and Woodbridge Street.
Old Mariner’s moved to Woodward and Jefferson in 1955.
h. Fort Shelby, originally Fort Lernoult, was located on what is now W. Fort Street from Griswold to Wayne streets. The Post Office is on this site.
Not a Post Office anymore.
More to come!
(UPDATE: We found a few of the missing things referenced in this post.)
Tags: alexander macomb, bagley fountain, cadillac square, campus martius, casimir pulaski, chair of justice, detroit city hall, detroit historical museum, gabriel richard, history of detroit for young people, mariner's church, schubert opera house, soldiers and sailors monument, wayne county building
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