war of 1812

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Gallery: Pride of Baltimore II visits Detroit

July 12, 2011 in Galleries, History | No comments

We had a great visit with the Pride of Baltimore II at the end of last week. The weather was perfect, the ear-blasting jets were flying low over the water, the Riverwalk was bright and alive — even the mayflies came out in throngs to lend their greetings.

Captain Jamie Trost kindly filled me in on all the fascinating details. Pride II is on a Great Lakes tour specifically targeting War of 1812 towns, since Maryland is hosting a huge bicentennial campaign. We are already planning a trip out! Maryland State tourism campaign: SUCCESSFUL!

If you missed it, we took some photos (but not enough photos!) that I hope will also tell you a little more about Pride II’s history and mission.

Enjoy! And ahoy!

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July 11, 1796: Evacuation Day

July 11, 2011 in History, Holidays | 1 comment

[The Battle of Fallen Timbers]

Hey, Detroit! We are lucky. You know why?

We get TWO Independence Days. (Actually, if you count Canada Day on July 1, which we celebrate with international fireworks, we get three.)

Besides the terrific  festivities we enjoy with the rest of our country on the Fourth, we can celebrate another milestone in our struggle to wrest control from the British: Evacuation Day, July 11, 1796.

Of course, Detroit belonged to the United States, in theory, after the Revolutionary War. But the British retained control of their fort at Detroit, for a host of reasons. In general, the triumph of the Treaty of Paris yielded to years of boundary disputes, diplomacy and intrigue. In the Northwest, a tribal confederacy demanded that the new federal government recognize their claims to the region. The United States didn’t have a military presence here, and George Washington was reluctant to start an Indian war. So the British stayed. And they encouraged the Indians to stay, too.

In 1790, after escalating skirmishes between Indians and settlers, George Washington sent the first offensive to present-day Ohio. Poor training and bad planning led to two massive and bloody U.S. defeats before Washington put Mad Anthony Wayne in charge. His victory at the Battle of Fallen Timbers (near present-day Toledo) ended the Northwest Indian War and rendered British excuses for keeping forts in the region null and void.

The Jay Treaty of 1794 made it official: the British had to leave their western forts, once and for all, by 1796.

And leave they did. On July 11, 1796  British “evacuated,” and the United States raised the flag over Fort Detroit. General Wayne was sick, so he left Colonel Hamtramck in charge. Though it is often reported that Hamtramck personally hoisted the Stars and Stripes, Captain Moses Porter actually did the honors; Hamtramck did not arrive in Detroit until July 13.

Did the British renegade Simon Girty really freak out and ride his horse across the river to Canada when he saw the American boats approaching? Probably not, but that is hilarious.

Most people who lived in Detroit at the time were French, so the transfer of power was received as more of a collective shoulder-shrug than a patriotic triumph. And all of these acrobatics — the defeat of the Western Confederacy, the  imperfect Jay Treaty, the British loss of influence in the Northwest — led to the War of 1812 a generation later, when the British took back our fort. And then burned down the White House.

But that is another story. And a hundred years later, with Detroit full of wealth and people and industry and American optimism, and the British long gone, the centennial of Evacuation Day was cause for celebration indeed.

Wrote the New York Times:

At the approaching celebration there will be a grand parade of all the civic and military organizations … ; patriotic speeches, with politics barred; a riotous waste of powder (for Detroit has been skipping the Fourth of July for several years in view of this event), and fireworks of all nations in the evening.

[American flag illustration from Centennial Celebration of the Evacuation of Detroit by the British, 1896]

Everyone who was anyone in Detroit came out to speechify on the grounds of the unfinished Federal Building, which stood where Fort Detroit used to be. A number of orators tied the Evacuation of Fort Detroit to the last unfinished business of the Revolutionary War. One son of the War of 1812 brought a spyglass that his grandfather swiped from a British ship during the Battle of Lake Erie.

Buildings were decked in red, white and blue bunting. Mayor Pingree invited important visitors from all over the country. They enjoyed lunch on a riverboat, where they were entertained by a mandolin orchestra. Then there was a big military parade.

I am not sure if Evacuation Day was ever celebrated in such a fashion again, but I doubt it. We may not even need to bring it back. But if you need one more reason to have a picnic, drink a glass of champagne, see a mandolin orchestra or set off fireworks on your street today, here it is. Happy Evacuation Day.

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Pride of Baltimore II visits Detroit tomorrow

July 6, 2011 in Events | 2 comments

Look at this beauty!

She’s the Pride of Baltimore II, and she’s coming to Detroit TOMORROW! The Pride II docks at noon on Thursday, July 7, at the new Port of Detroit on the Riverwalk. Tours are available to the public on Thursday from 2 to 7 pm and on Friday from 10 am to 8 pm.

The Pride of Baltimore II is a replica War of 1812 Baltimore Clipper. It sails the seven seas as a Goodwill Ambassador for Maryland, telling everyone it meets that the Old Line State is a nice place to visit. For a long time it was actually owned by the citizens of Maryland. It may be the most wonderful state tourism campaign of all time. (Sorry, Pure Michigan.)

Pride II also honors the memory of the original Pride of Baltimore, built in 1975, which sank in a freak Caribbean squall in 1986, taking its Captain and three crew members with it.

Just thought you might like to know, as the news has been flying under the radar around these parts. I am sure it will make headlines tomorrow, though, when a slender and graceful tall ship glides right up to Hart Plaza and surprises the whole town.

Learn more on the Pride of Baltimore II Facebook page.

Dweebiest personal fact: I have been obsessed with clipper ships since we saw the Star of India in San Diego when I was 12 years old. I wore the Star of India t-shirt I got there until I was 24. In high school, when I was maybe too old for this, I had my entire bedroom redecorated in a nautical theme, with schooner wallpaper and a big wooden bunk bed.

So, of course, we will be there. Will you?

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Memorial Day: Five Veterans to know

May 27, 2011 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History, Holidays | No comments

Decoration Day

[Daisies gathered for Decoration Day, 1899. Source.]

Last year for Memorial Day, I made a guess-that-military-figure quiz. It didn’t go so well. As an enthusiastic newcomer to Detroit and Michigan history, I constantly felt like I was trying to cram a life’s worth of half-forgotten regional history into late-night wine-fueled study sessions. So I guess I overestimated what everyone besides me “already knew” about military notables of old Michigan. Even reviewing the quiz today, I am foggy on some of these military figures. Like Jonathan Meigs, engineer of Fort Wayne. What the … who … why did I think anyone would know that? I don’t even know that anymore.

So this year, instead of a quiz, I present you with a humble scrapbook of Detroiters, Veterans, countrymen. Also, my 2011 selection is way more obscure. Fair warning.

Hugh Brady

General Hugh Brady (1768 – 1851): From the Battle of Fallen Timbers, where he served under Mad Anthony Wayne, to the War of 1812, where he was severely wounded at the Battle of Lundy Lane, to Canada’s Patriot War, to the Mexican-American War, where “although past the age for active field service” (he was nearly 80) he helped equip soldiers and ship supplies, General Brady was a towering figure in Detroit military life. The “Brady Guards” were a volunteer militia unit that served under General Brady during the Black Hawk War, and although they disbanded after General Brady’s spectacular military funeral, iterations of the Brady Guard (later Grayson’s Guard, the Detroit Light Guard and the 1225th Corps Support Battalion) existed for generations. Although General Brady was a very old dude in 1851, he died not from advanced age but from a head injury when he was thrown from a carriage he was driving after the horses got tangled in telegraph wires.

Further reading: the thrilling tale of the Brady Guard Flag, presented to the militia by Stevens T. Mason, then lost to history, then triumphantly rediscovered!

James B. Witherell

Lieutenant James B. Witherell (1828 – 1861): The eldest son of B.F.H. Witherell, a former city attorney and a cavalry lieutenant, was fighting Indians in Texas when news of the state’s secession reached his unit. The officers promptly agreed to return north to the Union. But Lieutenant Witherell, who was short-sighted, either fell from the boat or off the gangplank and drowned in the Rio Grande.

Isaac Shelby

Isaac Shelby (1750 – 1826): Not a Detroiter, but Isaac Shelby — namesake of Detroit’s Fort Shelby — was one of the greats. A Revolutionary War Vet, he was Kentucky’s first Governor. He retired in 1796. But! With the War of 1812 looming, his loving public urged him to run for Governor again, which he did, and handily won. And THEN! After Kentucky soldiers met gruesome defeats at River Raisin (present-day Monroe, MI) and the siege at Fort Meigs, Governor Isaac Shelby — who was 62 years old — personally rode with a corp of 3500 volunteers to come to General William Henry Harrison’s aide. When the Fort at Detroit was re-possessed by Americans in September 1813, it was re-named in the Governor’s honor.

General Charles Larned (d. 1834): General Larned was the keeper of a document signed by 80 Detroiters, a declaration that they planned to seize and depose General Hull, who planned to surrender Fort Detroit without a fight. Hull, when he learned of the plot, sent them off to meet a convoy of supplies in Ohio, and the fort was surrendered in their absence. Or so goes a story that I don’t completely believe. After the War of 1812, General Larned served as Attorney General of Michigan. He died during Detroit’s second cholera outbreak, leaving “a family, city and state in mourning,” said C.C. Trowbridge in a memorial address.

Anna Etheridge

Anna Etheridge (1839 – 1913): Born in Detroit and living there when the Civil War began, Annie enlisted as a nurse in the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Regiment. On a horse, with a pair of pistols in holsters, she rode to the front lines to remove wounded men from the battle field and distribute water, bread and coffee. At the second Battle of Bull Run, General Kearny noted her valor and told her he would be promoting her to regimental sargeant, but he died in battle two days later and she never received her appointment. She did, however, receive the Kearny Cross for her extreme bravery, one of only two women to be so decorated.

So strong was the confidence of the soldiers in her courage and fidelity to her voluntarily assumed duties, that whenever a battle was to be fought, it was regarded as absolutely certain that “Gentle Annie,” so the soldiers named her, would be at hand to render assistance to any in need. General Birney never performed an act more heartily approved by his entire command, than when in the presence of his troops, he presented her with the Kearny cross.

From Women’s Work in the Civil War, 1867. (So is the imagined portrait, above, of Annie Etheridge.)

Enjoy your Memorial Day!

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Where is Lieutenant John Brooks, Jr.?

November 18, 2010 in Best of THE NIGHT TRAIN, History | No comments

Too long on lonely isle neglected,
Marked by no stone, thy dust has slept,
By humble turf alone protected,
O’er which rude Time each year has swept.

… But now with kindred heroes lying,
Thou shalt repose on martial ground,
Thy country’s banner o’er thee flying,
Her castles and her camps around.*

Marine Lieutenant John Brooks, Jr. was, everyone agreed, the most beautiful man in Oliver Hazard Perry’s fleet. A Harvard graduate and son of Revolutionary War General and Governor of Massachusetts John Brooks, the dashing young officer probably wasn’t expecting to be sent to the back country. But in 1812, Lieutenant Brooks was arrested and found guilty by court martial for cheating at cards — behavior hardly befitting an elite Marine. So it was off to Lake Erie, where the U.S. was reluctantly preparing a Naval defense for its vulnerable inland lakes.

Now is not the time to submit a briefing of the War of 1812 for readers who don’t know much about it. (I certainly didn’t before I started writing this blog.) It was kind of a fussy, frustrating war that something to do with the British fighting to win back the colonies, Americans fighting for the honor of their young country, the Indians fighting to earn some territorial sovereignty, and everyone fighting to claim control of the Northwest Territory.

And that last part is why the Battle of Lake Erie was such a big deal. The decisive victory gave Americans control of Lake Erie, the British were forced to abandon Fort Malden (that’s just a jump across the river from Grosse Ile and you can visit!) and the Americans were able to win back Detroit.

You remember the Battle of Lake Erie: that’s the one where Perry wrote to William Henry Harrison: We have met the enemy and they are ours. Perry’s victory was in part amazing because he left his destroyed flagship, the Lawrence, and rowed a small boat under heavy fire to his undamaged Niagara, where he continued to fight the exhausted British fleet. (He brought a blue flag that had flown on the Lawrence that read Don’t Give Up the Ship.)

Fatefully, Lieutenant Brooks was assigned to the Lawrence — which the British annihilated. Almost every one of the ship’s 136 men were injured or killed, and all of its guns destroyed.

Lieutenant Brooks was talking to another officer when he was struck by a cannonball and slammed across the boat. The impact shattered his hip and “mangled him in a most frightful manner,” but he stayed alive for an hour, bleeding to death and imploring someone to shoot him or bring him a pistol. No one did.

Many of the 30 sailors killed aboard the Lawrence were buried at sea, but three officers from the American fleet —including Lieutenant Brooks — and three British officers were buried the next day on South Bass Island, near Put-in-Bay.

But.

In 1817, a movement was started to bring Lieutenant Brooks to Detroit. He wasn’t from Detroit, and perhaps had never been in Detroit. Maybe Detroiters felt he deserved a burial more honorable, ceremonious and public than the one he had been given. Maybe someone influential in Detroit cared for him or his family. I don’t know.

I do know that the movement succeeded. At the end of October, 1817, Lieutenant Brooks was exhumed and brought to Detroit. A funeral procession marched through the streets to Fort Shelby. Reverend Sylvester Larned performed the service and *a Captain of the Fifth Infantry wrote the poem I excerpted at the beginning of this post. General Macomb and Governor Cass attended.

Lieutenant Brooks didn’t stay at rest at Fort Shelby for long: in 1826, the Fort, which Congress had just given to the City of Detroit, was demolished. Military burials at the Fort were moved to a new city cemetery bounded by Michigan, Lafayette, First Street and Wayne. The remains from that cemetery were later moved to the Clinton Street Cemetery, and the remains from that cemetery were removed to Woodmere and Mt. Elliott in 1869.

So where is Lieutenant John Brooks? Is he still beneath Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial at Put-in-Bay? A Park Ranger there suggested to me that the unit sent to retrieve his body may not have been very particular about which one they chose.

[source]

I can’t find him in cemetery records at Woodmere; he wasn’t Catholic and wouldn’t be at Mt. Elliott; could he be beneath a building downtown, at the War of 1812 memorial site on Washington Blvd., or somewhere else?

Writing at the turn of the century, both Silas Farmer and Clarence Burton reported the records were lost — and with them, the remains of Lieutenant John Brooks, Jr.

And this is why, dear readers, I have been crazed, distracted, waking up in the middle of the night. All week. Where is Lieutenant John Brooks? How do we find out? I have to know.

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Happy Birthday, Gabriel Richard

October 15, 2010 in History, Uncategorized | 2 comments

gabriel richard

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.

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Michigan Military Figures: THE ANSWERS EDITION

June 2, 2010 in Uncategorized | No comments

After days! of suspense! Here are the answers to our special Memorial Day Michigan military figures trivia game. We might do this again sometime. We might not. It was a little silly, but we had fun.

#1

The one & only … General Mad Anthony Wayne.

#2

Colonel Jean-Francois Hamtramck. When Mad Anthony was struck with gout and returned to Pennsylvania (where he died), Hamtramck raised the flag over Fort Lernoult on July 11, 1796. He remained in Detroit until his death in 1803. He’s buried at Mt. Elliott.

#3

Alpheus Starkey Williams, a Union General in the Civil War and the subject of a huge, striking equestrian statue on Belle Isle. Williams served as a Democratic U.S. Congressman from Michigan from 1875 until his death in the U.S. Capitol building in 1878. He’s buried at Elmwood. Curious? There’s tons more to know and love about Alpheus Starkey Williams here.

#4

General George Custer.

“We all know Custer died at Little Big Horn. What this book supposes is … maybe he didn’t?”

#5

General (and Governor of the Michigan Territory) William Hull. Hull’s infamy was a result of his flabbergasting surrender of Detroit to the British during the War of 1812. Even the British were surprised. Wrote President Madison’s comptroller Richard Rush: “The nation has been deceived by a gasconading booby.” Hull was tried by court martial and sentenced to death for his blunder. Madison pardoned him. His successor, Territorial Governor Lewis Cass, likely wanted to see him shot.

#6

General Montgomery C. Meigs was Quartermaster General of the U.S. Army during the Civil War. An early assignment for Meigs? He supervised plans and construction for Detroit’s Fort Wayne. Meigs’s later, more famous projects include the Washington Aqueduct and Arlington National Cemetery.

#7

Sarah Emma Edmonds was a Canadian teenage runaway who, disguised as a man, joined the 2nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry. She served as a nurse, a mail carrier and, most alluringly, an intelligence officer across enemy lines. Learn more about her amazing story here.

#8

Ulysses S. Grant was a Lieutenant at Fort Wayne from 1849 – 1851. He lived in a house near Livernois and Fort. Today, Grant’s house is on the State Fairgrounds. More at detroit1701.org.

#9

Defamed General Justus McKinstry, son of Michigan’s amusement king Colonel David McKinstry.

#10

Russell A. Alger, whose former home in Gross Pointe is now the Grosse Pointe War Memorial and whose commemorative fountain in Grand Circus Park was designed by Daniel Chester French. Alger enlisted as a private solider in the Union Army and left the war a brevetted Major General. Later he became Governor of Michigan.

#11

It’s GENERAL FRIEND PALMER! While I was preparing for this post, I learned that the General was the Quartermaster General of Michigan during the Civil War.

#12

General Alexander Macomb, whose family once owned a sizable chunk of land on Belle Isle. After heroism during the War of 1812, Macomb  served as the commanding general of the U.S. Army from 1828 to 1841. His statue is on Washington Boulevard, across the street from the Book Cadillac hotel.

That’s it! Hope you learned something. I did!

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Oliver Hazard Perry/Oliver Perry Hazard

February 11, 2010 in Uncategorized | 6 comments

oliver hazard perry

A few months ago I was intrigued to find a headstone in Farmington’s Quaker Cemetery for Oliver Perry Hazard, March 17, 1836 — September 16, 1923. It gave me a brain glitch. For a few moments I could not remember why I knew that name nor why it seemed somehow wrong.

Luckily, I have an iPhone these days, so I just looked it up when I got back to my car.

Of course, I was thinking about Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero of the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812. Not the same guy buried in the Quaker Cemetery in Farmington, Michigan, but how did a guy with the name “Oliver Perry Hazard” end up buried in the Quaker Cemetry in Farmington, Michigan? That couldn’t just be a coincidence.

Here’s his obituary:

Oliver Perry Hazard passed away at his home, 3439 Cass Avenue, Detroit, Sunday, September 16, 1923. Mr. Hazard was a direct descendent of the renowned Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, passing the name on to his grandson, Oliver P.H. Crane of Los Angeles. He was born near Penn Yan, New York … and when very young, came west ith his parents, who settled in Novi, Michigan.

… At one time during his last years he gave to the late Fred M. Warner and Nathan H. power many interesting incidents of the early history of Farmington. This historical data was taken down in shorthand, by a stenographer.

… Mr. Hazard was a man of strong convictions, ever ready to champion what he believed to be right regardless of the attitude that others might take. He had hosts of friends and was a man among men. A devoted husband and a kind father, his domestic life was ideal.

So, that settles that. The obit also does not mention that Oliver Perry Hazard’s wife was Lucy Botsford, and at one point in his diverse business career, he took over the General store at the Botsford Inn (a place that well deserves a post all its own).

I read the historical notes compiled by Nathan H. Power and Governor Warner (it’s pretty great that the Governor was really excited about history, by the way), but it’s not sourced very well, so there’s no indication of what Oliver Hazard remembered in particular about Farmington. The record (written in 1921) did note that Mr. Hazard, the very first secretary of the Farmington Masonic Lodge, “at 86 retains his health and mental vigor to a remarkable degree.”

Today I also learned about Oliver Hazard Perry (the war hero)’s life-long feud with Jesse Duncan Elliott, and idly mused about whether we might be related.

I’d like to post more obituaries more often. Old ones like this always seems so sincere, like even if you didn’t know him, you could appreciate what he was like and why he was important.

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