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BY-GONES OF DETROIT.                     305
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BY-GONES     OF   DETROIT.
I ky0 &.               BY HON. GEO. C. BATES.
~T,  4,[Published in the Detroit Free Press in 1877-8.1
No. I.
BACK THROUGH THE MISTS OF FORTY YEARS.
"Old times have gone; old manners changed."-Scott.
Having been for many years a cosmopolitan and a " coast" man, as all
inhabitants of that region lying west of the Missouri river style themselves, on the hypothesis that "The Pacific Coast" reaches clear over
to the big muddy.
1 long since learned that two meals each day are much more healthful and better, and that neither man nor beast can work well on a full
stomach; so I put away as far as possible all dinners at midday, and
taking a light lunch, dine only when the day's work is over. Whenever the merchants, bankers, business men and professionals adopt this,
rule, and work by it, they will find they can do much more labor from
10 a. m., to 4 p. m.; than by a break of two hours in midday, and
that the thousands of people who come in on the morning trains to
business and return in the evening will be much better accommodated
than by their present' mode of business. Courts especially that sit
from 9 a. m. to 4 p. in., with' a ten minute's recess "at 1 o'clock can
dispatch more business in one day than in three with a recess of two
hours.
Looking for a light lunch at 1 p. m. yesterday, I saw at the corner
or angle of Griswold and Fort streets the word "Restaurant" in large
letters, and in I rushed for a cup of cafP au lait and a sandwich; and as
I sat there and looked through the rain over that splendid city hall;
that exquisite monument to the bravery and blood of Michigan's sons
who died on the land and sea during the war; around over the
Russell House, with its staring array Of windows and blinds and
listened to the clattering of the street cars and merry tinkling of their
39




306

BY-GONES O-F DETROii.

bells; and saw all around in every direction the great magazines, warehouses and shops of commerce of 125,000 people, memory, bright'as
the morning's sunlight, carried me back to the by-gones of
THIS VERY SPOT FORTY YEARS AGO.
Sipping my coffee, the scene changed, and I saw in my mind's eye
on this identical location including that occupied by the city hall, the
old Baptist church and all of this high ground or knoll, a herd of
wearied cows, muddy and worn out by long travel, stretched here and
there, just brought from Ohio ýy Mr. Wight for 'his milk ranch below
town, he then being a hale, hearty, middle aged man, engaged in the
milk business, while today lie is a retired man of wealth, slowly passing away, and shut out from all the glories and beauties of this great
handiwork of God. Between that herd of cattle and the old capitol,
now that beautiful union school house, not one single building was
erected, either on Griswold street or Michigan avenue; but a long narrow plank walk over the green sward (for it was May, 1833), to the
capitol, where the "Supreme Court of the Territory of Michigan" was
then in session, was the sole isthmus that connected Detroit with that
beautiful suburb.
At the sameý time (1833) on the west side of Woodward avenue, just
below Woodbridge street, stood a low, two story, old-fashioned, wooden
building, probably over fifty years old, standing perhaps ten feet back
from the avenue, with a steep roof, dormer windows, and a huge brass
knocker on the door, on which was cut in deep letters "James Abbott."
"The latch string of the old door was always on the outside," for there
lived for many a long year one of Detroit's most active and successful
old-fashioned merchants, a man of figures and of wealth, a sturdy
descendent of an English family, born in Montreal about the year 1791,
who, in the "fur trade," in commission business and supplying the
military posts of Michigan and the Northwest, had accumulated a very
large estate, for he owned nearly half of that whole block, and who
always maintained to his death the character of the fine old' English
gentleman, "all of ye olden time,", and who amidst a long life of
business entertained with true baronial hospitality all who made his
acquaintance and sought society under his roof.
In those days the merchant princes of Detroit, and Mr. Abbott
especially, lived in small, snug, cosy houses, richly furnished with real
mahogany table spread with solid silver and the finest linen; cellars
full of pure old brandy, Jamaica rum, London port, luscious Maderia,
and sherries that would make the blood dance in one's veins; and the




-BY-GONES- OF DETROIT.30

1 307

richer they grew the more hospitable they became, the more they,entertained with- elegant dinners. After business was over splendid
suppers and dancing parties were the order almost every evening, after
-navigation was closed until the next summer came.
--No better representative home of -Detroit, fifty years ago, could be
-found than that of James Abbott, on Woodward avenue, and he
himself, his genial, jolly wife, his beautiful daughter Sarah, too soon
-to die, A unt Cad Whistler, an antique sister of Mr. Abbott, the' most
graceful dancer and waltzer then in Detroit, his then two roystering
-wild. sons, Madison' and Bill Abbott, who som~etimes in grand frolic
rode their, horses up into the old Mansion House and drank julep and
toddy with Jack Smith from the connter there. All these grouped
-in a photographic gallery would tell the story of "By-gones of
-Detroit."
But commerce had increased. The old steamers Niagara, Clay,
-Sheldon Thompson, had given way to the New York, the 'Michigan,
and such floating palaces. The docks were crowded in' summer with
vessels and Judge Abbott found that he must move away from the
busy, crowded port of Detroit to a quiet retreat in the country remote
from all business, and so he built the t~ien elegant. home in which I was
now sitting taking- my lunch. At that time, except the -homes of John
'Palmer and- James Williams, directly opposite and where the Moffat
block now stands, and a small, old,. wooden building at the rear of
-what was the Baptist church, then occnpied by Mason Palmer and
Mechanics' Hall, then a small, rickety old shanty, there were no build-ings in the neighborhood, and when his new home was completed Judge
Abbott flattered himself that he was forever outside of and beyond the
'reach of business wants, or business property; that in future year's
there he and his children and his children's children could hav'e a
-qniet country home, where in peace and quiet they could live and die.
-Of the house itself, it may be said that, when finished, it was one of
the most substantial, costly and elegant buildings in Detroit.
"Now stands it there; and none so poor, so low as do it. reverence."
But the house was finished, the grass plat prepared, and the rose
bush transplanted from the old home, and with true old-fashioned
hospitality there must be a "house warming," and so invitations,
written in Mr. Abbott's round English hand, bespeaking order, firmness,
health, and true nobility, were sent to all the elite of Detroit to come
and help dedicate that home to comfort, enjoyment, pleasure, aud
hospitality. And' they cam'e. As I looked into my coffee cup, nearly




308

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

drained, and closed my eyes to the present, memory and fancy, blessed
gifts to man, gave me back that brilliant scene and replaced it in those.
then large parlors, dining rooms, chambers, and ante-rooms, long since
gone, never, never to return.
There stood Mr. and Mrs. Abbott, two sturdy specimens of the old
English and French Canadian stock, most richly and elegantly dressed;
not in the Parisian styles, but in the true English mode; poor Sarah
Abbott, such a beauty! Miss Whistler as an aid-de-camp, waiting to
receive their guests, who came to exclaim from  their very heart of
hearts, "Peace be upon this house and all beneath it," and who were
welcomed without ostentation or ceremony, but with true old-fashioned
western hospitality. There was Gen. Hugh Brady, one of the noblest,
bravest, truest soldiers that ever trod with undaunted step the field of
battle, in full uniform, with his staff; Gen. Frank Larned, with his
suave and elegant address; Capt. Backus, the son-in-law of Gen. Brady;
ex-Gov. Thompson Mason, Gov. Woodbridge, B. F. H. Witherell,
Augustus S. Porter, Judge Goodwin and a large number of the old
lawyers of Detroit, always ready for a big fee, a frolic, a flirtation.
Major Bob Forsyth, a superb, elegant paymaster, United States army,
Pierre Desnoyers, Chas. Moran, Chancellor Farnsworth, Edmund Brush,
all in complete uniform; Charles C. Trowbridge, John A. Wells, ay.e,
all the men and women of that day, full of life, hope, joyous, generous,
fraternal, hospitable, were gathered there and then; and the feast of
viands, of music, and of joy, and of wine went merrily on. Such a
supper of elk steaks, roast venison, prairie chicken, buffalo tongues and
beavers' tails, was never excelled in Detroit; and the claret, and sherry,
and Madeira flowed like water, while Jamaica toddies, apple toddies,
egg nogg, Canadian shrub, and hot Scotch and Monongahela whisky
punches came and went, until the long and joyous feast was over; and
even now, here, as memory brings back the aroma of that old Jamaica.
toddy and Monongahela whisky, my red ribbon trembles with the
pleasant memory of long time ago.
But the lights are gone, the music has passed away and nearly all
that gay and happy crowd sleep the,last sleep in Elmwood, and here
I sit alone a stranger, with not one single familiar face today to beckon
me beside it, not one friendly hand to bid me to that table where so-i
long ago I was a welcome guest. Such is life. Thompson Mason,
Gov. Woodbridge, Gens. Brady and Lamed, and Forsyth and Kercheval,
and Moran and Witherell, and Farnsworth and Berrien, and Brush,
where are they? And of all this crowd around these tables in this
restaurant, what one single person either knows or cares that they,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

309

these gentlemen and ladies of "by-gone times" were ever here. Pinkney, the very greatest and most eloquent lawyer of the Union, said
that "Time, which changes all things, changes man more than all
other things," and it is true.
And here in the Detroit of today, with its broad streets, beautiful
river, magnificent railways, immense and growing commerce, we find
that all is changed, and that, though wealth has increased by millions,
business of all kinds outgrown the hopes of the most sanguine, that,
while there are more churches, more schools, more banks, more business
places, yet that in elegant hospitalities, true fraternity, kindness of
heart, and the practice *of Christ's most beautiful command, "Thou
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," the by-gones *were the truest and
the best. My coffee was ended, my sandwich disposed *of, and*as I
turned from the doors of the restaurant I felt as the dove did when
first coming from the ark, it found no resting place for its foot, but I
offered up a heartfelt prayer for the spirits of our departed friends,
and for all who joined in that house warming long, long time ago of
the Detroit restaurant.
No. II.
THE FIRST STATE ELECTION.
"Memory is the purveyor of reason."-Johnson.
"Why seeks hei with unwearied toil,
Th~rough death's dim walks to urge his way,
Redeem his long assdrted spoil,
And lead oblivion into day? "-Old Mortality.
Forty years ago, just about these days, as the almanacs say, or used
to say, the old democratic and whig parties of Michigan had sounded
their respective bugle calls to action, and our people, then a State not
yet admitted into the Union, were summoned for the first time to elect
their State and county officers in the November election of 1837. That
was the beginning of the political existence of this "Amcenam Peninsulam" now one of the finest, richest, purest, noblest and best states
of our grand old Union; and I was there at its birth, God bless it!
Today it counts a million and a half of inhabitants, then it had in the
entire peninsula not more than sixty thousand people. Today its
wealth may be counted by hundreds of millions, then like a new born




310

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

child it had nothing to cover its nakedness. Today its commerce
sweeps over the great lakes, whizzes over a thousand railways, and
whitens all seas, then a few old steamboats, a dozen sail vessels and
scows, and flats transported all its products.
Now its golden harvests will yield nearly twenty millions, then webrought from Ohio and New York the bread we ate. Today our cattleand flocks roam over ten thousand miles, then Ruckminster Wight and
a few pioneers furnished us With herds of cattle brought from Ohio,and droves of sheep from Ontario and Genesee in New York. Then I
could count the humble school' houses of Michigan on my fingers.
twice told, today they rise in architectural beauty in almost every
square mile of the State. Then here and there plain and unadorned*
houses dedicated to God told of our religious culture, today temples
gorgeous and beautiful in architecture, grand and sublime in style and
ornamentation, costing millions of money, point their gothic spires
from every city, town, village and hamlet upwards toward God's throneand thus proclaim to the world, that moral and Christian education
go hand in hand with commerce, science and art; while a university,.
outnumbering in its pupils those of Cambridge and Oxford and
Gottingen, where every branch of learning, of science, and of art, is
thoroughly taught by professors, savants, and scientists, the peers of
the wisest and best, gives evidence that all the sons and daughters of
the State, now in its youth and beauty, are bountifully supplied with
the means requisite to make them all educated gentlemen and ladies.
But of all this, "More anon, sir."
Now we have to stop a moment to look on a picture, crude but:
truthful, not ideal but realistic, of the first State election ever held in
Detroit or the State. The harvest then, as now, was just over, the
month of August nearly gone.
When the gallant whigs were invited to meet in State convention
at Ann Arbor, there to nominate candidates -for governor and State
officers, to be voted for on the first Tuesday of the coming November,
the democrats, in response to a call of their central committee, David
C. McKinstry, John Norvell, Lucius Lyon, Marshall I. Bacon and
Henry Newberry had taken time by the forelock, and determined to
carry the State at all hazzards; had already nominated Stevens T.
Mason for governor and Edward Mundy for lieutenant governor, and
with that most popular ticket had thrown down their gauntlet of defiance, and under such a splendid leader as young Mason bade their
enemies to combat. I need not say to the old citizens of Detroit that
young Mason, just now twenty-one years of age, was the beauideal of




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

311

the democratic party, the cynosure of all eyes, for he was as fine a
specimen of a young Kentucky blood as ever stood on earth. Handsome almost as that father whom the Swedish authoress on her visit
here pronounced "the most elegant American gentleman she had ever
met;" his manners were courtly and lordly, his hospitality boundless;
with talents polished, but not of the first rank in oratory; graceful,
captivating, and majestic; a voice uncommonly sonorous, sweet and
musical; a face as handsome, but more robust than Edwin Booth;
manner free and easy, hail fellow well met with all men. Tom Mason
was the very impersonation of the young democracy of- Jackson's time.
And there was something in the warm grip of his hand and the jolly
"How are you?" that was worth a thousand votes in every precinct
where the ballot box was open.
Bear in mind that in the fall before (-1836), Van Buren had been
elected General Jackson's successor, and that really "Old Hickory's" will
and power and influence still ruled and governed with an iron hand,
while the grand old whig party had for its chieftains brave Harry of
the west, that splendid, gallant, eloquent, and fiery son of Kentucky;
Daniel Webster, the very greatest and ablest of all American statesmen; Willie P. Mangum, of North Carolina; John N. Berrien, of
Georgia; Nat Talmadge and Wm. H. Seward, of New York; Frelinghuysen, of New Jersey, et id omne genus. Party spirit on both sides
was at a perfect white heat, where no quarter on either side was asked
or given, and we cannot appreciate the importance of the first great
canvass in the new State of Michigan.
Well, we met in the old court house in Ann Arbor, just now about to
give way to a more imposing structure, and two days were occupied in
making the journey via Plymouth Corners, where we passed our first
night, and were there joined by Ebenezer Penniman and others, for
Plymouth was the only whig town in Wayne county, and on the next
day, after patriotic resolutions, earnest and eloquent speeches by Jacob
M. Howard, Hezekiah G. Wells, James Wright Gordon, and others, the
convention nominated unanimously Charles C. Trowbridge, of Wayne,.
for governor, and Nathaniel I. Bacon, of Monroe, as lieutenant governor, two of the oldest citizens of Michigan, two men who had done
as much and contributed as much to the rise, progress and growth of
the territory as any two men ever living within its boundary. Of all
those nominees at that election Charles C. Trowbridge alone survives,
and his life and labors are so interwoven with the conception, birth,
infancy, youth, manhood, wealth, and greatness of our State that they
deserve a special mention in some future sketch. It is enough now to.




31'2

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

say that as cashier and president of the old Bank of Michigan, as
secretary to Governor Cass, so early as 1820-22, as one of the vestrymen and founders of St. Paul's Episcopal church      of Detroit, as
manager of the Detroit and IMilwaukee railway company, as an accomplished gentleman and an old-fashioned, hospitable citizen, he has been
well known all over the lake country for over half a century. On that
August day forty years ago, in that old court house at Ann Arbor, the
writer hereof made his debut as a popular speaker in his maiden effort
in behalf of Trowbridge and Bacon, and his maiden vote was cast at
the election in Detroit, in November of that year, for that ticket; and
now, after "life's fitful fever is almost over," after battling the match
with the democrats in 1840, 1844, 1848, 1852, and so on down to this
very day, he has never felt any regret for that vote and speech.
And here, in "Abbott's restaurant,", where these memories come
with blinding tears as he recalls the fact that, almost all that grand
army of democrats and whigs are sleeping in beautiful Elmwood, he
drinks in silence and alone, in clear, cold water, to " Trowbridge and
Bacon," to Clay and Webster, to Mason and Mundy, to Cass and
Norvell.
But the first election day Qf Michigan, 1837, has come at last; the
leaves have fallen but we have    an old-fashioned Michigan Indian
summer. Those, too, are now gone forever.
Sunday it rained all day, but we worked hard and fast on Monday,
when the sun came out with now and then a shower.
And the streets around the, then new city hall, now  swept away,
were deep with mud, for the clay streets of Detroit were unpaved and
locomotion was carried on in the common carts of the day, and
pedestrians were  always clad  with  high top-boots, the pantaloon
strapped under the feet and inside, the boot legs. And so the first
Tuesday after the first Monday of November came; and this was the
"day big with the fate of Cm3ar and of Rome," the day that should'
determine the political name and character of Michigan, just now born
into the family of states; the rains had ceased but the clouds hung
low, and at early morning the hosts of democrats arid whigs were
moving; and the "shrill fife and rattling drum" all over Detroit called'
the voters to their respective quarters. But one voting or polling
place then existed for all the voters of this city, and that one was the
city hall, standing half way between the Russell House and the
opposite corner, a very useful but not stylish or tasteful public. building, in which the butchers cut up and sold meats in the market room
on the first floor, while on the upper floor were the courts where the




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

313

lawyers cut up their clients during the term, and in off days it was
used sometimes as a lecture room, always council chamber for aldermen,
a then political club room, and, if I am not mistaken, sometimes on the
sly for masked balls, fancy balls and dances, and such gay amusements,
which even then were rife in the City of the Straits.
It may be that many of the old citizens of Detroit have seen a long
time ago a picture not altogether like one of Michael Angelo's, but
realistic, truthful and speaking, the outlines of which were taken on
the ground on the election day by young Burnham, of Boston, which
now hangs in the parlor of Mrs. Gen. Williams, formerly Mrs. James
W. Tilman, on Woodward avenue, whose first husband was an earnest
whig, and so long as he lived, treasured the picture of "The By-gones
of Detroit," with care and affection; a picture which ought finally to
pass into the care and custody of the Historical Society of the city,
for it tells a story as truthful and honest of that election as a photograph could do, if such a thing had been.
Let us quietly enter that parlor and see that memorial of the past
election of Michigan. 'One of the most prominent figures on the right,
in rather heav'y coloring, just in front of the city hall, is Col. David
C. McKinstry, then chairman of the democratic central committee, a
giant in size, holding in his right hand a heavy cane, while a broad
brimmed slouch hat drops over his right eye, the deep gray eyes
almost covered and concealed with heavy eye-brows. He was in full
command of the democratic forces, which were brought early on the
ground and gathered around the ballot box and inspectors of election,
who, with the talesmen and challengers of both parties, are grouped in
the vestibule or deep recess existing in front of the market, but inside
the door. It must be borne in mind that at the time none of us wore
red ribbons and McKinstry, the Tallerand of democracy, who was
always in close communion with his democratic friends, while not a
drunken man by any means, was a free and easy drinker, could carry
on election day even his full quota of inspiration. His right hand is
raised as he gives his orders -to Major Stillson, who is mounted on a
splendid charger covered and caparisoned like the circus horse with
which the clown makes his grand entree, while he himself in the
undress uniform of a brigadier general of militia, sits as Jackson did
in quiet command at New     Orleans. Stillson was an auctioneer, a
fellow of soldierly bearing, stentorian voice, unblushing effrontery, and
was the very best drill sergeant the democrats ever had in Michigan.
In his hand he carried that glorious banner which caused a thrill then
40




814

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

in every democratic heart. "Stevens T. Mason, for governor; Edward
Mundy, for lieutenant governor." And some hundred or more figures
in double file crowd the picture, representing true as life the bone and
sinew of the party, the rank 'and file of the democracy of Detroit.
Major Stillson, while listening to the orders of McKinstry, has turned
partly aside to look with pride on his young chief, Stevens T. Mason,
who (this was late in the day), with a hat once shiny and elegant, has
manifestly been in a heavy wet, whose high top-boots covered with
mud, and full dress coat, buttoned at the top with the wrong button,
give him very much the appearance of Mr. Pickwick after the celebrated
dining party with his club. Mr. Norvell, neat as if in the dress of the
senate of the United States, always self-poised and self-possessed,
stands clear down in the corner with self-satisfaction at the democratic
crowd as it rolls on and on, and counting too truly that victory which
was to make Mason governor, himself senator, -and send Trowbridge
and, his troops back to private life, while Kingsbury, from  Maine,
shrieks out: "Three cheers! Three cheers for democracy and Mason!"
In the left hand of the picture the poor whigs, doomed to defeat, are'
admirably portrayed; and now, after forty years, as I study that picture
those "by-gones" all return.
Frank Sawyer, a scholar and a good fellow, but a sort of a whig
giraffe, ordinarily very staid and sober, is manifestly now full of
"Trowbridge and reform," and he is shouting loud and long to his
whig comrades to "Hurry up! Come on, fellows, and give your votes,
the day is almost won;" while still further in the background stands
honest Jack Howard, with Websterian brow but soiled garments and
very dirty boots, as if in a gale at sea, looking his utter contempt at
Stillson, McKinstry and Mason, as if he would and could exterminate
them  all, and you can hear him, if you put your ear close to the
picture, as he hisses out these words: " Vagabonds! Hinds! Throw up
your greasy caps, but we will beat you at last." But we did not.
In the very front of the picture, clear outside the crowd, stands the
ship "Constitution." A splendid boat, in full ship's rig, named the
" Constitution," with Captain Bob Wagstaff in the chains, heaving the
lead, and Eugene Watson in the shrouds, like Commodore Farragut
with his speaking trumpet, bawling out: "Whigs, ahoy there! Give
way! Give way, lads, for the Constitution, Trowbridge and Bacon."
In the dim distance Alanson Sheley, John Owen, and a little further a
crew of sailors are seen in the grand mel6e, which ended the day,.
when the democrats rushed on to the polls and were strewn like
autumn leaves, all around by the heavy blows of Bob Wagstaff, Sheley




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

315;

and Bill Caverly, the mate of the Michigan, just before the polls were
closed; while the writer hereof in a seedy hat, torn pantaloons and
wearied actions may be seen as a sort of skirmisher, evidently safe
himself, driving up the democrats to the front to be knocked down
by the whigs, who stood backed up against the city hall, and from
whom   the war cry came often, from   Sheley and Owen especially:
"Give it to them, boys."
But the picture fades, the figures have nearly all sunk away into the
grave. "They heed not, they have fought their last battle." Mason
was elected triumphantly. The democrats carried everything, and thus
they held all the offices of the government, and Charles C. Trowbridge
"retired from political life.
The curtain rings slowly down and the picture fades gently away,
while in the dim distance we can read on the headstones of the graves
the names of Mason and Norvell, McKinstry and Howard, Sawyer and
Kingsbury, Wagstaff and Bacon, and nearly all the rest, gone.
No. III.
GEN. HUGH BRADY.
No. III of "By-gones" is published in Volume 2, page 573, Pioneer
Collections, and consists of a sketch of General Hugh Brady and his
military exploits in the Toledo and Patriot wars.
No. IV.
THE BRADY GUARDS.
The memories that cluster around Gen. Hugh Brady, naturally
suggest the life and times of the Brady Guards whom  the old hero
used to salute as Emperor William does his troops as " my children,"
and no body of men who ever lived in Detroit in those by-gones
deserve a better place in history than does that gallant corps.
The original organization of the Brady Guards grew out of an old




316

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

company called "The Detroit City Guards," which existed so early as
1834-was commanded by Capt. Charles L. Bull; and was drilled at
times out on the commons, where now stands the city hall, by Col.
Edward Brooks, who had been a gallant soldier under Gen. Jackson, a
Captain of Infantry for many years, and who was a true soldier, a
thorough drill-master, and  one of the most humorous and witty
auctioneers that ever knocked down his hammer.
In Judge Campbell's sketches of early days in Michigan, he has told
in his own luminous and classic language the outlines of the history of
the controversy between Ohio and Michigan, touching the southern
boundary of the State, and briefly hinted at that farcial military
uprising called "The Toledo War."
Gov. Mason, who was the hero of that grand epoch in Michigan's
history, was not only a whole-hearted, generous, roystering Virginian,
but under the discipline and influence of John Norvell, afterwards
United States senator, he became a careful, shrewd diplomat; a sort of
sagacious, far-seeing young Richelieu; and when he made up his mind
to resist by force the aggressions of Ohio, backed up by the general
government, it was all-important to enlist under his banner all the
whig element in Michigan; because even then party spirit ran very
high and personal encounters between ardent whigs and zealous democrats were becoming very frequent. Well, the leading members of
the bar, the merchants, ship owners, sailors, fur traders, and most of
the business men of Michigan were ardent whigs, and while they
admired Mason and Norvell, they were yet very hostile to the democratic party and its policy. Thus, while Charles M. Bull was a sturdy
democrat, James A. Armstrong, Jacob M. Howard, Frank Sawyer,
John Talbott, the writer hereof, and nearly all the rank and file of
the "City Guard" were very earnest whigs, and our old drill sergeant,
Edward Brooks, was a very host of whigs in himself.
The time had linally arrived when Governor Mason had determined
to call out the militia of the territory, and with an armed force to
resist the attempt of Ohio to steal away our twelve-mile strip of land
on the south, and it was all important that every Michigan heart
should be fired with zeal to protect the territory, that no division of
party should exist among its sons and that every able bodied man should
come cheerfully to the front.  Accordingly, one afternoon in early
September, 1835, the City Guards were called out by executive order
to drill, and at the personal solicitation of Col. Brooks, the whig young
men, Howard, Sawyer, Talbott, and that set went to the commons to
exercise and perfect themselves in the company evolutions. Once there,




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317

Col. Brooks put us through the school of the soldier-the manual-the
school of the company-the school of the battalion, and after marching
and counter-marching, we were quietly taken to the third story of Capt.
Bull's store, on Jefferson avenue, next adjoining the old Farmers' and
Mechanics' Bank, and then, sentinels being placed at the doors, to
prevent egress or ingress, an executive order was read commanding us
to move on the following morning, with arms and equipments, to Monroe,
and there await orders from Gen. Joseph Brown, who was organizing
troops from Lenawee, Monroe, Washtenaw and other counties, to take
military possession of the disputed strip of land and hold it by armed
force. Thus the City Guards became a body of forced volunteers, who
went bravely forth to crusade for Michigan in Michigan's Holy Land.
Well, they went, and of "their moving incidents by field and flood"
we shall learn more hereafter, when we, come to photograph that Toledo
war, but now we have in hand the old Bradys, that afterwards, in 1839,
completed-that organization as an independent military company of
Detroit, with Isaac Rowland as Captain; Edmund Kearsley, First Lieutenant; James A. Armstrong, Second Lieutenant; -    Ashley, Third
Lieutenant; John Chester, Orderly Sergeant, and with John Winder,
George E. Hand, Rev. John S. Atterbury, Henry Doty, George Doty,
Peter E. DeMill, Christian H. Buhl, Marshal J. Bacon, and over one
hundred more of such then young gentlemen, as rank and file.
Taking the name of Hugh Brady, and with a superb full-length
portrait of that old hero on their flag, no sooner was it unfurled than
their ranks were filled up with all the spirited young gentlemen of
Detroit, and their reputation and name soon became the theme of
admiration all over the Northwest. With a neat but striking uniform
of cadet grey, trimmed with black and gold, each member soon became
resolved to excel every other member in- the style and brilliancy of
his equipments, and with the old-fashioned flint lock muskets and
burnished barrels the strife was constant to excel, and in  many
instances from $30 to $50 was expended on these weapons for mahogany
stocks, extra burnishing and scouring, and as the company rapidly grew
in numbers it increased in efficiency, became better and better drilled,
and was an effective command. Capt. Isaac Rowland had been at West
Point for several years and was a most thorough and efficient officer,
while Edmund Kearsley was a native born soldier, and Gen. Alpheus
S. Williams, a soldier by nature, has since proven on a hundred battlefields what a capital soldier he was, even then, by nature; and no
better drill officer, no more painstaking man ever buckled on sword
than James A. Armstrong, while young Ashley, whom we soon buried,




318

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

was an active, zealous, and good officer. His place was filled by John
Chester, one of the most accurate, industrious, and thorough orderly.sergeants, and who combined in himself the attributes of a brave soldier,
a perfect gentleman and a true Christian. Scarcely had the old Bradys
learned the manual of the soldier, the evolutions of the squad, the
section, the company, when real work called them to sturdier duties
under the eyes of Gens. Scott and Brady, by Gens. Worth and Wool
and Col. M. M. Payne, three of the most thorough martinets that ever
drilled troops in any army, and there is not an old Brady today in
Detroit, who, if he heard the command, "Attention! Fall in, company!
Eyes right and dress!" would not instantly take the position of a
soldier, complete his alignment, dress by the right, and obey all the
words of command promptly and soldierly. The military existence of
the Bradys had been short when the incursions of the patriots arrested
the attention of the General, and he, having no regular force at his
command, made a requisition on this corps for services as United
States troops.
The question was taken up, and by the unanimous voice of officers
and men they were mustered into the service of the United States as
United States troops for three months in the fall or early winter of
1836 or 1837, and for three successive years thereafter. By a resolution
of the company it was determined to pool the pay of the men and
officers, and to expend the money in camp equipage, military excursions
and drills; and so they were soon supplied with the very finest camp
equipage in the United States. On the Fourth of July, 1837, they
visited Niagara Falls, encamped with a regiment of infantry called
Williams Light Infantry, from  Rochester, on Goat Island, and were
afterward entertained by the city of Buffalo  Captain Taylor being
then mayor-in magnificent style and at a very large expense.
Nor were the citizen soldiers permitted by any means to be carpet
knights or holiday troops or household guards. Just at the close of
navigation in 1836 General Brady was advised that the Patriots were
about to cross from Canada at Port Huron and take possession of the
military stores, arms, cannon, ammunition and munitions of war at Fort
Gratiot. There was not one solitary soldier stationed there, so he made
a requisition on Captain Rowland,. of the Bradys, for a sergeant and five
men to go up to Fort Gratiot, take all the material there and transport,
it to Detroit for safety. In response to that order Captain Rowland
detailed Colonel Andrew T. McReynolds, then a sergeant of the Brady
Guards, with privates Alpheus S. Williams, Charles M. Bull, George
C. Bates, Benjamin B. Moore, and one other, who were dispatched at




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

319

once on board the old steamer Macomb for Port Huron, where they
arrived in safety, after having been frozen in on the flats of St. Clair
for one or more nights. Pursuant to orders they took possession of
Fort Gratiot and commenced loading up cannon, arms, equipments,
small arms and a large quantity of powder in kegs, when the people
of Port Huroh rose up as one man and by hundreds insisted "that
they would resist by force the removing of these stores, as they needed
them there for protection against the Patriots themselves." Here was
a situation for our old friend Colonel McReynolds, who afterward won
glory and fame at the gates of Mexico; but having been born an
Irishman and kissed the blarney stone of Ireland, he negotiated and
treated, and parleyed, until they yielded to the five old Bradys, and
they brought away all the arms and public property, reembarked for
Detroit, were frozen in on Lake St. Clair, went ashore on the ice, and
finally brought overland to Detroit all that material of war and military supplies, for which we were highly complimented in general orders
from Generals Brady and Scott, and for which we subsequently received
-each of us-160 acres of land as a military bounty.
During these three years of United    States military service, the
Bradys were the pets and students of Major M. M. Payne, United
States Artillery, who afterwards was wounded in battle in Mexico and
died in charge of the Military Hospital at Washington, an old bachelor,
a Virginian, a martinet and as thorough a soldier as ever trod the
field of battle. It was his pleasure to turn out his command, some
hundreds of United States recruits, and the Bradys, form them into a
battalion and drill them, and occasionally to catch them  by an order
of "By right of companies rear into column, march!"-by the most
minute inspection of muskets, sabres, side-arms, cartridge boxes, etc.,
for which, if he discovered any defect; he would send a Brady to the
rear, expose him, mortify him, then, after duty was over, call him up
to his quarters, give him a real Virginia toddy, and then warn him
"to look out in future."
During that same year and the succeeding one the Bradys were
divided into detachments, one stationed all winter at the Dearborn
arsenal to guard the public buildings there-military stores of large
quantities and value-while another detachment here in Detroit did
night guard duty at the magazine on the Riopelle farm, away in the
northeastern part of the city, where afterwards barracks were erected,
and where the headquarters of the Second and Fourth United States
Artillery and the Fourth and Fifth Infantry were for many years
stationed. In fact, until regiments of the regular army could be sent




320

320          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

here the Bradys and recruits constituted the sole -military force by
which Generals Brady and Scott preserved the peace on the frontier.
When Brady- died they went with him to his grave, and then
disbanded forever. At hisý funeral every living member in Detroit
turned out, in frill black dress, white gloves, white belts and side-arms,
and constituted the mourning escort; and there, around His grave, after
the firing escort had discharged their guns, some one hundred and
sixty of the old Bradys circled around the grave and the writer hereof
having made their valedictory to their old chief, they were forever
disbanded.
Detroit has today 125,000 people within her boundaries, enterprising,
energetic, honest people, but out of them all there are none, more
worthy of memory, none more, deserving,' none more respected than the
old "Brady -Guards."
N o. V.
TERRITORIAL SUPREME COURT.
&CAs a judge he should be profoundly learned in all the learning of the law. He is to
know not merely the law which you make and the legislature makes, but that
other, ampler, that boundless jurisprudence, the common law which the successive
generations of the State have silently built up. In the next place, he must be
a man not merely upright-not merely honest and well -in ten tion ed-this of course
-but a man who will not respect persons in judgment. He shall know nothing
about parties- everything about the law. lie shall do everything for justice-,
nothing for himself; nothing for his, friend; nothing for his patron; nothing for
his sovereign. "-Choate.
What a scene for a historic painting w-as that which took place last
week away up in the British Dominions, near the Red rivet of the
north, when a commission of military and civil officers of the very
highest rank accredited by our government, the strongest on earth,
sought to treat with Sitting Bull for his return to the United States,
and to make with him, there in Canada, a treaty of peace -between
some few thousand half clad warriors of the Sioux and this mighty
people of forty-two -millions! Oh would some "gift to gie us" to
spread upon the canvas where the whole world could see it, in such
colors as would truthfully represent, not merely the silent, stoical
Indian chief, surrounded by his half dozen comrades' and braves,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.32

321

crossing backwards and forwards over the 'Medicine woman; swaying
here and there, now and then, with his blanket drooping from his left
arm, his eagle plume, sole ornament and token of his power and rank,
shaking and trembling with the wild passions that convulsed that brave
and honest old warrior, as he listened to the propositions which fell
from the lips of the plumed warrior Terry and his confreres, but also
with such shading and tinting of the canvas as should illustrate to
the world the trnths sent home by that honest Indian in reply to the
assurances given that "if he would come home once more, smoke the
calnmet of peace, surrender his arms, his ponies, his warriors and
women and children to the tender mercies of Indian traders-Indian
thieves! Indian agents! Indian Christians! that hereafter he would be
happy and his people contented, cared for, watched over and guarded
by the Great Father!"~ Oh, what a picture was that, when, with th e
eloquence of truth, the sublimity of untutored oratory, with the logic
of facts, he turned upon General Terry, and like Logan of old, bade
them go; "that they spoke with forked tongues; that their promises
were written in sand; that their offered protection was such as vultures
give to lambs, such as hyenas give to the dead; such protection as
plundered their homes, cut in twain their blankets, then stole one-half
and borrowed the other; took flour furinished by the Indian department
nominally to Sitting Bull and his people, bnt 7really sold it for the
account of agents at Denver City, Cheyenne and Salt Lake; exchanged
for buffalo robes by the bale at a glass of whisky each, furnished
contrary to the laws of the United States, which year in and year out
gave the old chief over to the tender mercies of the public tbieves and
robbers sent out to the Indian conntry clad in the garb of religion,
who -no sooner reached their missions at the Spotted Tail, Shoshone,
Cheyenne and Arrapahoe agencies than they sang psalms and saiAd
prayers in the morning and devoted the afternoon to drinking hot
Scotch Newmans, visiting the young squaws in their lodges and
counting their gains made during the previons week by plundering
and robbing their wards-their children intrusted to their care by the
Great Father."I
Let politicians, let partisans, let public thieves say what they may,
Sitting Bull told General Terry the truth as it is, and as it is known
to all familiar with our mountain mouse and our poor Indians, who
are first driven to war and then denounced because they go to war.
If there be a heaven above us, and a God of justice who sits upon
his throne there, and "that there is all nature cries aloud," then in
41




-322

322          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

that heaven, before that, God, this picture of Sitting Bull's triumph
and truthfulness is suspended; and angels and archangels of justice will
applaud the dignity, the sublimity and the' grandeur of that warrior
Sioux as rising in the majesty of truth and clad in the habiliments of
Justice, he turned, his back on the American commissioners and fiercely
said: "Away with ye! I know ye! Away with you! I am safe he3re
under the protecting ýPgis of England's honored queen. I do defy,
deny and spurn back upon ye. Your great father may be good and
mean well. You, his envoys, may mean well, but your puiblic men are
public thieves. They are our Indian agents, less honest and true than
the highwaymeu of our Black Hills, who rob you of the money which
you have just now stolen from our gold mines lying within the very
boundaries of our reservation, guaranteed to us'by the sign manual of
your great father, U. S. Grant, the chief' who saved your Union, then
sacrificed us.
But it is not of this theme that I would speak today, only the event
has suggested with great force a " by-go-ne " of Detroit of forty-four
years ago, when a cause was pending in the territorial supreme court
of Michigan, whe 'rein Michael Dousman, a pioneer of Mack-inaw, was
plaintiff, and Duncan Stewart, an elegant Virginia gentleman, then
paymaster of the United States army, was defendant. The cause of
controversy was a contract made by, the plaintiff with the defendant as
agent of Lord Selkirk to supply his settlement on the Red river of
the north with cattle, almost the very locality of Sitting Bull. That
cause was on trial and the scenes. connected with Pembina were vividly
brought to my memory as I followed Terry and his commission to the
place of meeting last week.
It was a warm, clear, beautiful morning- in May, 1833, when with a
kinsman and friend I entered the senate chamber in the old capitol,
now the Detroit high school building, and there stood face to face with
the old territorial supreme court, consisting of Solomon Sibley,
George Morell, and Ross Wilkins, the former of whom, having been
appointed by John Quincy Adams,, had occupied the seat for many
years, and the two. latter of whom in the political revolution of Andr 'ew
Jackson had secured their commissions in the year 1832, or perhaps
earlier. Those who consult Judge Campbell's history will find that he
marks particularly the period of Jackson's accession to the White House
as that which first introduced into the territory of Michigan the
doctrine of rotation in office, for up to that period under Madison,
Monroe and Adams, few or no changes were made in the territorial
federal offices. Hence General Cass held the office of governor of




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

323

Michigan through their several administrations with great satisfaction
to the people, with the highest credit and renown to himself and
honor to the government appointing him.
On entering the court room the first thing which struck the eye of a
stranger was the judgment seat, which, when the territorial council was
in session in that chamber, was occupied by the "president of the
council," an office similar to that of lieutenant governor of a state. It
was hung with a rather stunning drapery of blue and gold, was surmounted by a gilded bird-which might answer to the American eagle,
the dove that came out of the ark, or the owl that opens its big eyes
by night and closes them by day, as the fancy of the beholder might
choose-and which in times of high political excitement was apostrophized as the Amerigan eagle by Senators Drake, Kingsley, of Ann
Arbor, and such eloquent speakers, while Norman McLeod, the member
from  Mackinaw, denounced it in one of his classic and beautiful
phillipics and denunciations as that d- d old buzzard "over your
honor's head, Mr. President."
The crier of the court, old Dey, was a most dignified and stately
specimen of those officers in by-gone times, whose memory is embalmed
in a witty jeu d'esprit; the joint wdrk of Charles Clelland, Frank.Sawyer and John L. Talbott in poetry, which not long since was
published in a city paper by the "Histriographer" of Detroit, the
president of the pioneers and the accomplished author of that beautiful
poem, Teuchsa Grondie. The officers of the court were the Hon.
Daniel Goodwin, United States district attorney, Conrad Ten Eyck,
United States marshal, Hon. Benjamin F. Witherell, prosecuting attorney, and Daniel H. Thompson, sheriff of Wayne county, all true blue
Jackson men, except Judge Witherell, and' he was a whig, with a reef
in his topsail, always.
Of the then supreme court bench perhaps three men more unique in
their personal, mental and moral organization, more utterly dissimilar
in their tastes, habits, education  and  idiosyncrasies, were never
congregated on one seat of judgment; and while as a unit, and in
detail, they were all eminently " honest and capable," yet they furnished
a photograph of a judicial body composed of men, each born in a
different state, each trained in a school different from the other, and
wedded to the practice and rules of the locality where he was born
and educated, Sibley of Massachusetts, Morell of New     York, and
Wilkins of Pennsylvania, were all good lawyers; men as honest and
pure as any who ever sat on the bench; were anxious to lay deep and
broad the foundation of justice in Michigan, and to erect thereon a




324

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

temple that should in all time, like St. Paul's in London, challenge
the attention of the world, and be an everlasting monument to its
architect. But each had been trained in the modes, forms and peculiarities of the law of his birthplace. Each regarded his own state as
the best school of practice, where the most eminent members of the
bar had been graduated, and each regarded the law reports of his
birthplace as entitled to absolute authority with him on the bench.
Hence, while a cause was easily settled at nisi prius, yet, when the
court sat in banco regis as on this day, it required a thorough discussion and an examination of all the authorities of Massachusetts, New
York, Pennsylvania and England, to satisfy this trinity and so make
them a unity. Not more unlike in their mental, moral and intellectual
structures were they than in their physique, and temperaments. Judge
Sibley was quite   short, very stout, very deaf, a most venerable,
excellent, plodding, slow and careful judge, listening very patiently,
studying very carefully and deciding after the most mature deliberation.
His long, gray hair, large, projecting eyebrows and heavy set jaws
gave him very much the air of Chief Justice Shaw, of Massachusetts,
of whom Choate compared to the native's view of their Indian God:
"He feels that he is ugly, but he knows that he is great," while in
his manner, gait, dress and address there was a quiet dignity, a calm,
deliberate action, which bespoke the judge always and everywhere. No
man would have slapped him on the shoulder any more than he would
Washington, and while he was not exacting or arbitrary, any lawyer
who had to address him   would involuntarily take his feet from the
table, his hand from his pocket, eject his quid of tobacco, and address
him as "Your Honor."
Born in Sutton, Massachusetts, October 7, 1769, he studied law,
removed to Ohio in 1795, and to Detroit in 1797, just eighty years ago,
and having been elected to the first territorial legislature of the Northwestern territory in 1799 and to Congress in 1820, was in 1824 appointed
judge by John Quincy Adams, which office he held until 1836, when
he resigned it, and died here in 1846, universally respected for his.
manifold virtues and talents, and a long life in the service of his country,.
without spot or blemish thereon. Had he lived till this day he would
have been 108 years old; and perhaps no man ever passed his life in
Michigan who went to his grave with a clearer record or his case more
perfectly prepared than Solomon Sibley, chief justice. of the supreme
court of the territory of Michigan, forty-four years ago; and the
present chief justice, whose upward march on the judicial ladder has.
been so steady, so brilliant, so wonderful; whose untiring industry,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

325

intense application and persistent study have made him already in early
life the Storey of the west, and has placed in his hands for revision
and republication the works of Joseph Storey himself, may well follow
through all his future career the good example and sterling virtues of
Chief Justice Sibley.
Of George Morell, associate justice and right supporter on that bench,
it may be said that he was a giant in size, being over six feet in
height, of massive frame, a Websterian brow, large features, whose step
and bearing always reminded one of the magnificent, dignified, oldfashioned gentlemen of by-gone times. Such men are now extinct on
the bench, in the senate, everywhere. Turn to the United States senate
of forty-five years ago. Contrast those men with the senators of today
-Hyperion to a Satyr, Benton, Clay, Wright, Berrien, Mangum, Phelps,
Webster, giants in frame and muscle as well as mind and learning.
Where do we find their peers now? On the bench, too, there were men
large in stature, large in mind, great in learning, big of heart, as
Marshall, McLean, Thompson, Taney, Baldwin and Catton.
So it was with Judge Morell, from the State of New York. Of New
England parentage, he was bred to the bar, and settled at a very early
day at Cooperstown. There, his geniality, his judicial mind and thorough
legal training commended him--to the executive of New York, who at an
early day appointed him a judge of the court of common pleas, a
tribunal which in that time had enlarged jurisdiction and a mass of
civil business, and sitting at times on an oyer and terminer court, it disposed of the highest criminal cases. For many years George Morell
held a most distinguished position among the bench and bar of the
Empire State. With a heart as big as the body that enveloped it, a
sturdy common sense that always told him what the law ought to be,
with a sense of justice and right so acute that he could always decide
what the law was; trained in all the tactics of practice as laid down by
Archold and Tidd in England and Graham, of New York, his rulings and
decisions were given almost by intuition, and were scarcely ever revised.
Fond of society and amusement, off the bench, he was hail-fellow-wellmet with all people everywhere, but on the bench, he was every inch a
judge, and as I saw him on that morning, May 13, 1833, with blue dress
coat, top boots and tassels, a buff vest with gold buttons, high shirt
collar, completely and neatly shaven, with his gray hair swept clean
back from his lofty brow, large gray eye, and on his very large nose
the golden spectacles, while he took notes of the pleadings in this
interesting case of Dousman vs. Stewart, it seemed to me then, and so




326

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

it seems now after nearly half a century has gone, that George MorelF
was a natural-born judge and a good man.
In Elmwood there sleeps no more honest man, no purer judge than
he was; and his decisions today may be found in the first volume of
the Michigan Reports, for on the admission of our State into the Union,
in 1837, he with Wm. A. Fletcher and Epaphroditus Ransom, were
elected judges of the supreme court, and he continued on the bench
as chief justice down to the January term, 1844.
On the left of Chief Justice, Sibley sat Ross Wilkins, then about
thirty-eight years of age, in the very strength and beauty of manhood,
whose whole physical, mental, moral and intellectual organization was so
striking and unique as to attract attention instantly as a most remarkable man. Born in western Pennsylvania, Butler county, I think,
about the year 1797, of the bluest and best blood in that region, sired
by a father who took an active part in the Revolution, nephew to
William Wilkins, for many years an eminent United States senator,.
from the Keystone state, brother to a distinguished officer of the
United States army, his surroundings were well calculated to assure
his ambition and give him a good start in life. Educated, and thoroughly
educated for the bar, he very early acquired local distinction and fame,
by his earnest eloquence, his magnetic oratory, and in criminal cases,
especially, he soon took a front rank among the eminent gentlemen
which at that early day composed the bar of Pittsburg and its sur--
roundings-the Biddles, the McCandlasses, the Rosses, the Forwards,
and all those then well-known counselors-at-law.
In his person, manners, address and action, at that early day, Judge
Wilkins was a most striking man. About five feet ten inches high, he
was full and round, well knit, lithe and graceful, and clad as he was
on the bench in a velveteen suit, close fitting, tightly buttoned, he
might have elsewhere been taken for a well-to-do farmer or a dashing,
Kentucky hunter.    With very   handsome features, large and melting eyes, hair long and curling gracefully, like Charles Sumner's in his
handsome day, with a mouth full of pure white teeth, his necktie a
mere black wisp or rope and a large flowing Byronic collar; he looked.
the man he was-genial, gentle, generous, impulsive and good. Many
years since in his old home at Tecumseh, hung a fine oil portrait of'
the judge, taken in his youth, and those who ever studied its outlines
and features will remember its resemblance to those of the English
bard, only it was more manly, more robust; indeed, in his early manhood Ross Wilkins' features, face and toui ensemble would remind one
of the combined peculiarities of the pictures of Poe and Byron. Like



BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

327

all such men, he was quick in his perceptions, instant in his judgment,
clear and lucid in his reasoning, concise and precise in the statement
of facts, and whether right or wrong in his conclusions he swept away
business, as a chieftain does an opposing army. What especially fastened
my attention was that while reading the papers and evidence in the
case at bar, he moved constantly and restlessly in his chair, seemed to
take the whole matter by intuition, and finally getting up and going
back of the court he lighted an immense long pipe of tobacco, and
circling round and round he smoked away, very much as Sitting Bull
did when listening to the platitudes of Gen. Terry. But the moment
the final reading was over, and the argument of counsel began, taking
his seat and fixing his eye on the speaker, he never moved; indeed,
seemed lost to everything but the cause. But no sooner was the argument ended than the pipe was relighted and the smoking resumed until
the final business was disposed of.
While in all essentials, Ross Wilkins was a most punctilious judge,
yet in non-essentials and when not actually engaged in judicial business on the bench, he exhibited-an utter disregard for all the forms,
shows, and modes of judicial dignity, and as a boon companion, a wit
and "a   fellow  of infinite jest of most excellent fancy."  And of
course everybody loved and respected Judge Wilkins. As he advanced
in life he became more calm, and less nervous and excitable; and for
over a quarter of a century as district judge of the United States for
the district of Michigan, he administered the law with eminent success
and honor. In admiralty cases he entered upon them with zest and
zeal, having a sort of passion for sailors and all the excitements
appertaining to their wild and reckless life; but it was in great criminal cases that he was most at home. With the grand inquest of the
State before him; drawn from every county of the peninsula, and a
foreman selected by himself-generally some old crony from Lenawee
like Stillman Blanchard, Sheriff Packard, or Henry Hewitt-Judge
Wilkins would take up the whole scope and drift of the criminal law, and.
with such force of language, and such earnest appeals, would he give
to them the law in charge, that no mail robber, timber thief, embezzler
of postoffices, or government defaulters, could hope to escape indictment,
trial, and certain conviction. Yet no judge ever sat upon the bench
who was more careful and cautious in giving the prisoner at the bar
every possible protection and insuring him a fair and just trial. Newberry's, McLean's, and Bissel's United States circuit court reports are
full of his most important decisions, and bear testimony to the industry
and patience which he put into a case of much consequence. Some of




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328          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

his published charges to grand and petit juries will compare favorably
with those- givein by the more eminent judges of our own and the
English bench. Indeed, Judge Wilkins had a passion for the study
and practice of the criminal law, and to him in such cases the bench
was like "All the world's a stage, where men and women are but
players. They have their exits and their entrances, and each man in
his time plays many parts."
But he is gone., after an earnest and hard working life iu the public
service"'After life's fitful fever he, sleeps well."
Such is a brief photograph of the territorial supreme court of 1833
and the first cause I ever heard argued there. Of the counsel in that
great cause, Win. Woodbridge and Alexander D. Fraser for' plaintiff,
and Harry S. Cole and Gen. Charles Lamned for defendant, all that-can
be said here is that if they could burst the cerements of the tomb,
take their green bags in hand and enter the supreme court at Lansing,
they would be the peers of any and all there, as lawyers, advocates,
jurists, and logicians; while as thorough scholars, courtly, hospitable,
genial and true gentlemen, they could give us lessons in good breeding,
and teach that fraternity and espr-il de corps which then characterized
all the brethren of our bar, lessons which seem now to have gone with
all the other by-gones of Detroit. But all that court, those judges and
the counsel and officers, save Col. Goodwin, all are gone.
"They sleep their last sleep,
They have fought their last battle,
No sound can awake them to glory again."
Pardon one word more.' There is one more, Col. John Winder, the
clerk of that court, whom Providence seemed to have created in
Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and sent, so far back as 1824, to keep the
records of the supreme court of the territory a'nd those of the circuit
court of the United States for the State of Michigan. Wielding a
facile pen, he was the most accurate, careful, and" industrious of' officers
thbat acted as clerk in the west, and so posted did he become in all
matters of practice, that when lawyer's were befogged and the court
puzzled, Judge Wilkins would turn to Col. Winder, and in an instant
the point of practice was settled. But he was wise, and over thirty
years since he bought for $1,200 some ten acres then way out of town
in the mud, built him a cozy home, then in the suburbs. Detroit
woke up, started after Winder's ten acres, covered it all over with




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

329

costly palaces, made the old clerk rich, and there today, a retired
gentleman, John Winder, with his records complete, without blot or
erasure thereon, awaits the summons to come at last before that other
tribunal above, "Where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary
are at rest."
No. VI.
JOSEPH CAMPAU AND THE EARLY FRENCH.
"And when the stream
Which overflowed the soul, had passed away
A consciousness remained that it had left,
Deposited on the silent shore
Of memory, images aud precious thoughts
That shall, not die and cannot be destroyed."
--Wordsworth.
"Bon jour! Bon jour, Monsieur Bates. Comment se va, mon ami.
Il fait beau temps, monsieur."
"Ah, good morning, Monsieur Campau, oui, oui. Il fait tres beau
temps, mon ami."
Such was the salutation given and returned about the 5th of January, 1842, on Jefferson avenue at the corner of Griswold street, where
the First National Bank now    stands, then the United States court
house, as Mr. Joseph Campau met and saluted the writer in his warm
and courtly style. The old gentleman, as was his wont, was clad in a
black full dress suit, white cravat, rolling shirt collar, clean and white
as snow, and moving along with his long white hair, large gray eyes
and steady, sturdy step, he was a man to arrest the attention and
arouse the curiosity of all travelers on the streets of Detroit. The
conversation continued as follows:
"Ah, Monsieur George, mon ami, de damn fool he come again, heh."
Not comprehending the object of the remark, or its purpose, the old
gentleman raised his left thumb and over his shoulder directed my
attention to the then old capitol, now the high school building, where
the flag was floating over the senate and house of representatives, then
just in the first days of its annual session of 1843, and as I caught
the idea he repeated with humorous emphasis, as if talking to himself.
42




330

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

"Oui, oui, -mon ami, de damn fool he come again; he make de law
de tax. Sacre, mon dieu."
Which led to a long discussion, pure French on his part and conglomerate French and English on the other side, touching the constant
increase of taxation, the enormous burden   which our new    State
government had engendered, the actual poverty of men rich in real
estate, in.which the old  gentleman  in pure and perfect French
lamented that law  makers and legislatures, with emphasis on the
ultimate, "seemed only to exist to make de tax, and on everything
worn by man from the swaddling clothes that enwrap the new born
child, to the coffin and the shroud of mature old age, were burdened
and enhanced in cost by every kind of state, city, county, school and
union taxation;" and the old man eloquent waxed warm, and his
French grew more and more beautiful as he called my attention to the
fact that, while in England only about seventeen articles of luxury,
such as wines, tobacco, spirits, silks, jewelry, carriages, paid all their
taxes, here in Michigan the bread we ate, the water we drank, the gas
we used, the clothes we wore, the houses we live in, the very graves
when we died, all, everything, were loaded down by legislative taxes,
and what was more, said old Jose Campau, with the energy of truth,
"At least one-third of all these taxes are stolen by public officers ere
they reach the exchequer of the State," and had he lived until now he
would have added: " Oui, oui, mon ami. As it was then, so it is now
only more so."
Time that changes all things and man more than all other things
has left us the taxes and tax gathering, and like the frogs and lice of
Egypt, they can be found at all times, and all places everywhere,
always at our births and at our funerals, with extended hands asking
and exacting the tax, and it. is possible that Monsieur Campau, who was
then seventy-four years old, and who lived until he was ninety-four,
would have survived even to this day if he had not been chased
through the world and into the grave by the tax gatherer.
So long ago as 1833 Mr. Campau owned some nineteen large farms
in Wayne county, and you could not turn to the right or the left in
the city of Detroit, without running over Campau lots, seeing Campau
houses, encountering Campau tenants, and if you entered the tax office
to look at the assessment roll, you would find the name of Joseph
Campau on every alternate line, while at all hours of the day one
might meet the old gentleman all over the city,-always walking,
though rich as Crcesus-in his same old style of dress; always courtly
and chivalric in his address as if he were in la belle France; always




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

331

plodding and studying and not unfrequently talking to himself, as if
still discoursing on the tax.
Joseph Campau was a marvelous French gentleman "all of the olden
time," and with such friends as Monsieur Pierre Desnoyer, Major
Antoine Dequindre, John Baptiste Beaubien, Capt. Frank Cicott,
Charles Moran and the Bartletts, and the old French people of Detroit
forty years ago, constituted a society of true, accomplished, real gentlemen and ladies, from whom in manners, conversation, sociality, true
politeness in business affairs, the newcomers of Detroit may well take
lessons today. In those days no man would think of lighting his pipe
or cigar in the presence of ladies, or in a neighbor's house, any more
than he would of taking off his shoes and stockings there; no man
would pass a lady or a friend on the street without lifting his hat and
giving the cordial, joyous salutation: " Bon jour, mon ami, bon jour,"
and no matter how hurried in business these Frenchmen, whenever
they met on the street would inquire for the family and children of
each other, and in those days to be seen riding or walking with a
lady and smoking a cigar at the same time, would have sent the
offender to the calaboose.
In true hospitality, genuine fraternity, they were a model people,
fond of all social amusements, the latcl string of every house in
Detroit was always on the outside, and in their little unpretending
dancing parties, old and youig, grandfather and grandmother, joined
with children and grandchildren made one grand round of mirth and
jollity; while at the regular suppers and stately evening parties no.
persons on earth ever entertained more heartily, with more true chivalry and gallantry. To see Joseph Campau, "Papa" Desnoyer, Major
Dequindre, majestic Barney Campau, waltzing -and frolicing with such
beautiful girls as Josephine Desnoyer, Anna Dequindre, Mary Williams,
and all that set, was enough to make a young man's head swim, for it
told of innocent mirth, refined and genteel social amusements among a
whole people where the aged never forget the joys and pleasures of
youth, and where youth always respected, revered and loved old age.
Alas, that those days and those people are "by-gones!"
In that day no public meeting was ever called, no public measure
ever debated, no political movement ever undertaken,. without the aid
and support of the French people of Detroit, and at the head of every
party ticket or on it for State, county and municipal offices, you would
read the names of some Campau, Beaubien, Cicott, Moran, or Bartlett.
Joseph Campau was born in Detroit on the 20th of February, 1769,
lived there until 1863, when he died at the age of ninety-four years..




332

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

During the last sixty-three years of that long and interesting life he
resided in the old house on Jefferson avenue between Griswold and
Shelby streets, which is as notorious today as the falls of Niagara,
and which all the young and bustling, driving business men of Detroit
might visit with pleasure and profit. There they may learn prudence
and care by examining an umbrella manufactured in Philadelphia in
1802; an anvil hammered on in his blacksmith shop in 1805; furniture
manufactured in his own cabinet shop in 1797; unpaid accounts beautifully prepared and endorsed against men who died in the last century,
every paper and record filed in the neatest possible manner and briefed
by Capt. McKniff, his old clerk, who, upwards of half a century
faithfully did work as clerk; an old working desk deeply scalloped out
by Campau's left knee, which year in and year out rubbed against it,
a large curvature in the windowsill produced by the same attrition,
photographs taken years since of his children-everything there just
as he placed it long ere nine-tenths of the people of Detroit of today
were born.
And that quiet, quaint old yellow house--half trading store, half
dwelling house-standing on the very spot occupied nearly two hundred
years ago by Cadillac, filled with documents, writings and mementoes
of seasons and circumstances and times, existing when no single being
now in Detroit was living, a house where the very ghosts and shades
and spirits of "by-gones" now meet and gossip by moonlight of an
October eve.
There in peace as in war, in the beautiful bright days of an early
spring, in the lazy sultry weather of summer, in our gorgeous, golden
old-fashioned autumn, in the short, dry, crisp cold of those winters,
did Joseph Campau watch the rise, growth and progress of Detroit,
and from his dormer windows he saw the old Walk-in-the-water of 1819
supersede the Indian canoe, the pirogue, the scow, the coasting schooner,
and then again the Henry Clay, the Niagara, the Sheldon Thompson,
the New York, and finally the Illinois, the Empire, the Mayflower,
and all those floating palaces of hundreds of tons burthen and speed
like the wind, take the place of the old steamers. There in that old
house he watched Jefferson avenue advancing upwards until it reached
Hamtramck, downward along the river until it ended at Fort Wayne, and
there he saw the old Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Methodist churches
on the corner of Woodward avenue and Larned street, take up their
line of march and reappear in St. Paul's, Christ Church, Dr. Duffield's
on State street, that magnificent temple of Dr. Pierson on Fort street,
and the Jefferson avenue Presbyterian edifice; Woodward avenue,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

333

shaking the dust out of its eyes and off its feet, and through the
heaviest clay and mud running miles away from the river-a splendid
boulevard, a street which in architectural beauty, in lawns, shrubbery,
flowers, cottages, palaces, and temples, contrasts favorably with the
Broadway of New    York, Beacon street of Boston, or Chestnut of
Philadelphia, and where more capital, more people and more trade
exist in a single business hour now than was in all the northwestern
states in his early youth, the City of the Straits, beautiful Detroit,
whose river, like the turquoise necklace of a splendid woman, intensifies
the beauty of that neck that it entwines and that bosom on which it
heaves.
When Campau-first saw Detroit it was a mere military and Indian
trading post. When he died it was the center of a grand civilization,
where learning, art, science, wealth, culture, refinement, taste, and
religion dwelt and 100,000 strangers surrounded him. Where God had
his shrines, learning her palaces, art her schools, charity her asylums,
and wealth its treasure houses and lordly mansions.
As a business man in early life Mr. Campau was enterprising, buying
and selling real estate on a large scale, importing and improving stock,
founding machine shops, cabinet shops, distilleries, and carrying on,
on a very large scale, the fur trade with the- Indians; and as a member
of the board of British trade in 1798, and of the American fur
company with John Jacob Astor in 1812, and as a public officer,
trustee of Detroit, major of the militia, and a good citizen, he always
was a leading man for nearly a century here. He was one of the
founders of the ancient city Conditor Latium, and in all the parts he
played upon the stage for almost one hundred years he lived in, for,
and with Detroit; and' an Indian trader, manufacturer, neighbor, citizen,
merchant and millionaire he lived and died an honest man. Requiescat
in pace!
Three or four or even more of his old confreres, his countrymen, his
"con citoyens des etats unis" spring from  the cabinet of memory and
materialize themselves before our audience. 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 eye, with that drooping lid, present the
portrait of a fine old Frenchman, was born in Paris in the days of the
revolution, about 1783, and educated as a silversmith. He left there
when the cry of "a la lanterne," was heard in the streets, came to this
country and settled first in Ohio, ere Cincinnati was born, then followed
the army to Detroit, and here for a long period worked for Joseph




334

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

Campau in the manufacture of silver goods for the Indian trade. He
lived to be a very old man, accumulated a large fortune for those days,
and finally left a family large and respected to mourn his departure.
He was a genial, elegant, delightful old gentleman, and his sons and
daughters and grandsons and grandaughters are among the very "creme
de la creme" of the old French people of Detroit, Pierre Desnoyers, the
late Mrs. Harry Cole and family, Mrs. Jas. A. Van Dyke, Mrs. Henry
Barnard, Mrs. Anna Dequindre Lansing, and a multitude of grand-children and kinsmen some in the church, some at the bar, some in
banks, in manufactories, in mercantile houses, all bear in their veins
the blood and refinement, the courtesy and grace of the Desnoyers.
It was amusing, almost half a century since, to meet the old gentleman on the street, to salute him in return for his pleasant "good morning" and slyly to ask him "why he left Paris?" when, in perfect good
faith, he would cock up his blue eye and laughingly say:
"Because, monsieur, I did not wish to ornament the lanterne."
Then, too, there was Col. Antoine Dequindre, whose sister married
Joseph Campau. He was a Frenchman of the Napoleonic order, tall,
-straight, with the step of a drill sergeant and the outward and visible
sign of a military man. Even in his old age he was perfectly upright,
very square to the front, shoulders well thrown back, chest well drawn
in and like an old French guardsman, he moved and walked like a man
born for the camp. Having distinguished himself in the battle of Monguagon in 1812, before Hull's surrender, he all his life commanded the'
special admiration of his fellow Frenchmen as a brave old fellow.
For many a long year he was a merchant on Jefferson avenue,
owned half a block just west of Woodward avenue, where the Hon.
George E. Hand now has and has had his office for years and was a
man of considerable wealth; but in the uncertainties and an unsafe
partner in 1831 he met with disaster, and as early as 1841 he had lost
nearly all he had, but died as he had always lived respected and
revered by all.
But time and space fail us, and the Cicotts, Beaubiens, Bartletts,,Gen. Williams and all those courtly old French gentlemen must await
the future publication, by the   Western Biographical Publishing
Company, where they will appear.
But not only were they social and polite, good citizens, honest men,
hospitable, genial and gentlemanly, but they were all Catholics, and
lived all their lives and died in the beautiful faith of that holy church.
No matter how gay, how joyful, how social, they never forgot "the
awful circle of their holy church," and surrounded themselves with her




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

335

power and strong arm, they obeyed her mandates and sought her protection in life and in death. Of course all candid and intelligent men
will bear in mind that during the last forty years in our country, as
in all the rest of the civilized world, the developments and discoveries
of science, the explorations of the interior of the earth, the teaching
of Tyndall and Spencer, and Mill and Darwin have weakened if not
sapped the foundations of all sects and denominations, and that to
those who demand evidence and proof to convince the mind and to
satisfy the judgment, in religious, as in all other matters, it is idle to
say "ita lex scripta est;" that the teachings and preachings of men
who can give no reason, furnish no evidence for the faith that is in
them, have lost their power; that the dogma " the church suggests or
commands it" has with intelligent men or women no more force or
weight than a linnet singing; and so it is that while all the Protestant
churches of the world have waged a bitter warfare against what they
denounce as the Scarlet Woman of Rome, they themselves have from
this fire in the rear from  savants and scientists weakened and have
lost much of the vigor of their attack, and are compelled to turn their
weapon from the supposed enemy in front, to their real powerful foes
in the rear.
Yet, whatever may be the general weakening of the churches of the
world from this great onslaught, the. Catholic church today, as then,
maintains its power, extends its forces, conquers new fields, subdues
new forces, and now Pope Pins IX counts on his muster roll as many
nations, people and tongues as ever. Nor is it strange for a church
which teaches by object lessons, as she does, the suffering and agony of
Christ's crucifixion, that holds up to the heathen Chinese and Japanese,
to the North and South American Indian, the beautiful symbols and
pictures of Christ's birlh in the manger, his holy life and agonizing
death, carries therein a power to enlighten the minds and awaken the
sympathies of the untutored and unlearned, which no other church
does possess.
Call it ignorance, call it fanaticism, call it folly as you may, the
-Catholics are and always have been the only successful missionaries to
the poor Indian, the benighted South Sea Islander, or the untutored
savages of the world.
So it was in the "bykgones" of Detroit. The old Catholics were
devoted to their church, could always be found in sunshine and in
storm, in heat and in cold, constantly attentive to the forms, ceremonies and teachings of their bishops, priests and deacons; and no
matter how gay and careless at other times, when holy mother church




336

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

called, instantly they responded, " I am here, Lord." So when in
August, 1834, the cholera burst upon Detroit with a ferocity and
slaughter that it had never exhibited elsewhere, when in sixty days it
swept away ten per cent of our people-instead of seven as Judge
Campbell puts it; when it crept up and down the river, along our
docks, cutting down all ages, sexes and conditions; when it mounted
the decks and shrouds of our vessels and men fell as if struck by
lightning; when at early dawn the old French carts could be seen in
line, like the commissariat of the Grand Army, marshaled by Sexton
Noble, stretching away to the old cemetery, a fearful line of festering
corpses, when all men, no matter how brave, seemed appalled; when we
had no hospitals, no asylums, no place of refuge or safety for the sick
and the dying, Father Kundig, God bless him, improvised a hospital on
Michigan Grand avenue and summoned to his aid the fair daughters, sweet
young girls, of the Desnoyers, the Dequindres, the Campaus, the
Morans and Beaubiens, and organized them into a splendid corps of
Sisters of Mercy, angels he might well have called them, and there
by night and day, amidst death, disease, filth, and misery in its most
frightful form, that true, Christian priest and his fair daughters fought
death and drove him back, and to Protestants and Catholics administered
all specifies and antidotes while life lasted, and when death came they
gave to the poor, the hungry soul, the last beautiful rites of their
church. Then and there alone, among those Catholic French, in all
Detroit, was found an asylum for the sick and decent care and attention to the dying and the dead, and when the final record shall be
made up in heaven of old times and " by-gones " of Detroit, high upon
that scroll will be inscribed by God himself, in letters of living light,
the names of Kundig and his brave and beautiful army of Catholic
girls of our city, daughters of the Red Cross, "For verily they did
unto others as they would have others do unto them." They loved
their neighbors even as themselves; " They visited the sick, clothed the
naked, gave drink to the thirsty, and food to the hungry." God bless
them all, they shall have their reward.
No. VII.
MY FIRST DAY AMONG THE DOCKS OF DETROIT.
That was May 14, 1833, when the steamer New York on her very
first voyage from Buffalo to Detroit after a three days' trip from




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.  ~3

Cleveland, had just' turned the bend -of the river at Fort Wayne, as
Capt. Sheldon Thompson, of Buffalo, rapped loudly at the door of my
stateroom, and squirting the tobacco juice all over his fine linen bosom,
exclaimed: "Turn out, turn out, young gentleman; we are just now at
Detroit, 'the place you have been so impatient to see these last three
days. Turn up, sir', turn, up."
No sooner said than done. When bouncing on to the upper deck of
that once famous steamer from my stateroom I looked over into Sandwich, then across the beautiful strait, and following the bend of the
river, where it broadened, on the Cass front, like the Tappan Zee, on
the Hudson, I first saw my future home.
The sun had risen in all, the gorgeous beauty of a May morning, and
glinted and gilded the river, the shore, the old French farm houses on
both sides. The soft, south wind permeated everything on the land
and the water; the peach and pear trees, some then one hundred and
fifty years old, were covered with blossoms and the air was laden with
a rich perfume, for May then meant r-eal spring.
As that scene of quiet beauty; the old wind--mills, fluttering in the
wind, the French carts along the shore, the old La Fontaine and other
log houses, all newly whitewashed, neat, tidy, and surrounded by cackling
geese, chattering ducks, s~quealing pigs and lowing cattle, all of which
could be heard on our deck, presented a scene of exquisite beauty, and
a land so qnaint, so unique, so beautif ul, that at once I was in love,
with it all, and' oh, how glad was I to leave that splendid new steamer
New York, and her warm-hearted, enterprising and funny owner, Sheldon
Thompson, even then a very wealthy man of Buffalo, who came as
supercargo to direct her on her trial trip. One word of her ere we
land at Dorr & Jones' dock, at the foot of Shelby street. The changes in
the forms, models and propelling powers of the various craft on -these
great lakes mark step by step the rise, progress and growth of its
commerce, and the models of the various vessels from 1820 down to the
present time- are each pages in a great history of the Northwest. Our
steamer New York was the very first on these lakes to lay aside the spars
and rigging of steam. brigs, or vessels-as the old steamers Clay, Niagara,
Pennsylvania and Sheldon Thompson were called--a-nd to place an
upper cabin, which had hitherto been consider ed nnsafe, and, to give her
great speed, she was cut up sharp as a razor at her bow and stern, so
sharp that she would roll like a man half seas over; and below her
main deck were two engines, fore and aft, with high pressure at that;
with two sets of boilers, pointing toward bow and stern, which made
43




838

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

her like the fiery furnace wherein Shadrach, Meschach and Abednego
were tried. The Hebrews called such steamers Gehenna; the Greeks,
Hades, but in pure anglo-saxon one would denominate it a floating hell,
where you would roll and pitch in a seaway, and swelter and sweat like
the miners in the lower level of the Comstock Bonanza.
As she had been three long days on the voyage from Cleveland to
Detroit, of course we were all glad to get ashore. About half-past
seven of that heavenly morning she swung alongside the dock, and
amidst the rattling of chains, the hoarse bawling of seamen and mates,
she finally swung against the dock, and her first voyage of life was
ended.
Jumping on to the land, ours was just begun. Instantly, even at
that early hour, a sturdy, quick moving, earnest and robust gentleman
stepped alongside, and, with old-fashioned cordiality, greeted Captain
Thompson as a friend. As they stood there they were a pair to attract
attention.
The new comer was De Garmo Jones, a man about five feet ten
inches, very quick in his movements, very stout, weighing perhaps over
two hundred pounds; very muscular, with a large, round head; very
quiet in manner; of few words, but evidently a man born to command,
to succeed, to accomplish, and although in early life deprived of much
education, he had worked his way, even then, at about forty-seven, up
from a drummer boy of 1812, to become a man of extended business,
large wealth, great power and influence, and who, after being mayor of
Detroit, senator from Wayne county, alderman, etc., died prematurely
in early middle life, leaving a vast estate, very large business affairs,
and the respect and esteem of all who knew him. Sudden and quick
in quarrel, with a temper always requiring a curb bit, Mr. Jones was
a sort of western Vanderbilt, with a great big head, enlarged views,
untiring industry, who saw far ahead into the future, and had he lived
longer, would have cut deeper and deeper into the tablet of time his
career, for he was a most public spirited, enterprising, go ahead man.
Born at Erie, Pennsylvania, or coming there young, a mere boy, he
was trained by old Mr. Reed, the father of the late Hon. Charles M.
Reed, and what teaching he had came from him, who died years ago,
a millionaire, a great ship builder, ship owner, and commission
merchant of western Pennsylvania. Coming to Detroit so early as 1819,
and bringing with him as his wife one of the most dignified, beautiful,
stately and lady-like women of the olden time, he bought a farm
just below the Cass farm, and there in an old French log cabin,
beautifully modernized and most richly furnished, they always enter



BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

339

tained in a style of true western hospitality; and under those low
ceilings and burnished beams, just above one's head, on the richest
carpets, surrounded by fine paintings and engravings on real old
fashioned solid mahogany, from pure silver goblets and trays, they
dispensed viands and liquids that would have graced the homes of the
magnates of our land.
In those "by-gones" it was the fashion for all the rich of Detroit,
and even the poor, to hospitably entertain their neighbors, and to
make all strangers at home here-a fashion that seems to have gone
with many other of the good things of those days. Such was De
Garmo Jones, as he met and saluted his confrere, friend and kinsman,
a man very like him, Sheldon Thompson, who, at Black Rock, so early
as 1826, built the Clay, the Niagara, and afterwards the Sheldon
Thompson, and after a long and successful life there as commission
merchant, ship owner, mayor, I think, died at an advanced age, leaving
a very large estate, a most respected and beloved famnily, and whose
name today in Buffalo is respected and revered.
The two partners of Mr. Jones at that day were Josiah R. Dorr and
Benj. L. Webb, both young men from Vermont, who came here, and
under the patronage and by the aid of theirt strong-shouildered friend,
accumulated very early in life handsome estates, but which in the great
financial whirlwind of 1841-5 were swept away, and they both died a
long time ago, childless and penniless, substantially.
But at last Uncle Benjamin's, the dear old Steamboat Hotel, at the
corner of Woodbridge and Randolph streets, furnishes a nice breakfast,
of which more anon; and at once the work of doing Detroit along the
docks begins under the chaperonage of a friend who had lived here
since 1821, and so we countermarch and go at once to \ the most
southerly warehouse and ship yard of Oliver Newberry, where we
found the steamer Michigan on the stocks in the yard, where hundreds
of calkers and shipwrights are hammering at her sides, while Capt.
Chesley Blake is going here and there, a giant in size, a hero in
battle, with a voice like the speaking trumpet of old Boreas himself,
guiding and directing the work.
Here we met that most extraordinary of- all Detroit's early business
men, Oliver Newberry, looking on; now listening to this crew, now
that; now pulling that long hair over that strange brow, deep creased
in thought; anon taking off his hat, full of papers, accounts, drafts,
money and everything else, then replacing it, and taking all Capt.
Blake's suggestions and directions as if he were the owner and builder,
and Newberry, the subaltern. New then to life and the world, no such




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340          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

duet of men had ever yet been met; and now after an experience of
almost half a century in' all the parts and places, the mountains and
valleys of our great west, time and again, and all along its grand lines
of transit by sea and land, no t:wo such men are remembered. Siamese,
twin giants, Arcades Ambo, nautical Damon and Pythias have ever
been seen. Old Blalie was almost six feet three inches in height-a
very giant in all his being, hands like Old Bluebeard, arms like a,
gorilla, jaws like a boa constrictor, chest like a volcano just about to
heave, and such a voice! Why, in theý midst of a storm on the lakes.
when his vessel was heaving and surging, he would give his comm.ands
with such power, accompanied by such oaths and expletives, that the
very shrouds and rigging would tremble, that the lightning 'would
cease and the thunders would only mutter and murmur; and in a life
of forty years on the lakes he never scratched the paint from his.
ship or tonched bottom or shore.
Born in Maine, he was in boyhood a sailor before the mast. When,
the war of 1812 broke out he entered a Maine regular regiment, the
bloody Ninth, so called, was made sergeant and, at the fearful battle of
Lundy's Lane,, in 1813, where Scott charged, up the hill time and
again, and then retreated down before the British fire, and where,
finally placing himself at the head of that Maine regiment and mounting his white horse with a long white plume, he said: "Boys, follow
me. J have faith' that this bloody Ninth will carry and hold those
heights.  Wherever you see this white horse. and this long white
plume, you will know where I am."
And they did follow him until they saw white horse and plume and
Scott all'tumbled to the earth; whence he was carried off with Worth,
and Wool and Brady. But on. kept the bloody Ninth and old Blake,
one of its ordinary sized men, until the heights were taken and held,
and until that regiment, going into battle nearly 500 strong, had a
mere handful left and were marched off the field by Blake as their
sergeant, all its commissioned officers having been killed or wounded,
and for which Chesley Blake was made then and there first lieutenant
for gallantry on the field.
No sooner had that war ended than Blake came to the lakes, entered
the service of Oliver Newberry, and,. as master of the schooner
Jackson in 1816, and so on down to the steamer Michigan of 1833, the
Nile of 1841, the Illinois of 1845-9, always with Newberry, always
swearing to leave, yet always standing by his ship, and Uncle Oliver.
He finally died of fear. Blake could face all the storms and tempests
that ever swept the sea; he could rush in blood knee deep unto the




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

341

cannon's mouth, as at Niagara; he could wade in blood before a British
regiment; but when he encountered the cholera he quailed-he cavedand finally fleeing to Lake Superior he spent a month or more in the
very bowels of the earth there, then ventured back to Milwaukee, where
he took the cholera, convalesced and seemed about to recover. But
that night his old ship, the Nile, went ashore. News was carried to
his bedside, he arose, and with a Blake adjective, said " he would go
to her rescue," put on his pants, drew one of his cyclopian boots half
on, and with uplifted foot he died. His last words were: " Save my
ship."  Thus demonstrating in his case the truth of Eugene Sue's
horrid picture of cholera before Paris, when this fearful fiend laughed
and screeched out: " I kill only one-third, and fear ends the remaining two-thirds of all its victims."
But to return to Oliver Newberry. Born in Connecticut about the
last decade of the last century, he migrated early to Buffalo-say about
1809-10-kept a small grocery'there, dealing largely in salt and fish.
But the moment war came, like a true patriot as he was, he shut up
shop, and in some capacity joined the army of the Union. After the
burning of Buffalo, and peace, he came on foot to Cleveland, and finally
worked his passage to Detroit, where, some time in 1816, he commenced business here on the docks, dealing largely in salt brought
from Syracuse, trading in apples and fruit, which, so early as that day,
were grown here in great perfection. Having little or no education,
but a huge brain, wonderful foresight, sagacity and wisdom, and being
always the very soul of honor and honesty, he thrived and grew,
and, soon among lake men, from Buffalo to Green Bay, was known
by the sobriquet of "Admiral of the lakes."     Having begun his
business with the'old schooner Jackson he soon became a contractor to,carry supplies to Fort Brady at the Sault, to Mackinaw, Fort Dearborn
at Chicago, Fort, Howard, Green Bay, Fort Gratiot, Port Huron; and
then commenced his extraordinary career as a ship builder, and being
-a sort of Napoleon himself in his ideas, he formed a wonderful attachment to the grand emperor himself and proved it by naming his vessels
the Napoleon, the Marshal Ney, the Marshal Soult, the Austerlitz, the
Marengo, the Jena, the Nile, and so on; and each one of these ships
brought him fortune, business and fame, and his business prospered
and grew, and he commanded the entire confidence and good will of
all the old officers of our army on the lakes, and year in and out supplied all the military posts of the Northwest. He was a strange looking
old bachelor. His face was wrinkled like an orang-outang, his brain
very large, projecting forehead, deep sunk eyes, and his long hair was




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342          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

always straggling over his face like a Piute chief, and when in study
of mind he had the trait of pulling and twisting his forelocks; when
he sat in a chair it was thrown clear back against the wall, and his
feet dangled in the air like Quilp in his hammock. He was -a man of
few words, but how they did tell!
Like Napoleon,-he was a fatalist and traded on his "'luck," and his
vessels, bearing the charmed names of Napoleon's early career, were
always in luck. In early' December, 1835, news came "that the Post of
Mackinaw. was out of supplies, and that the Indian agency and troops
there would starve ere spring came unless some vessel could reach them."
Old Oliver at once ordered the Austerlitz, which had then been laid
up, to be put in commission, put a double- set of officers, Capt. Augustus,
McKinstry and Bob Wagstaff aboard of her, with John Stuart and
another -first mates, and a double crew, loaded her to the gunwales, with
all kinds of supplies, ordered her to proceed to Mackinaw, relieve the
people there and return that fall, a voyage then, deemed madness at
that late season, but the old gentleman. went to work making bets--he
was a grand sportsma-n-and actually he did bet several thousands of
dollars "that she would return by Christmas," and sure enough, down
the Detroit river, on Christmas, 1835, she came with every rag of
canvas spread, and rounded to at her dock; making by the trip a -very
large sum of money.
Betting on his luck, he went on building the steamer Michigan, then
the Nile, then the Illinois, then the Michigan again, and finally the
most beautiful brig that had ever been launched and he grew richer
and richer, and all was gold that- came to the old warehouse 6f 0.
Newberry.
But the brig went to Buffalo full laden, and after departure a consignor
came to get insurance on his part of the cargo, when Newberry, having
faith in his own luck, took a ver-bal policy on her freight. The brig
stranded, lost her cargo, and the very moment the news came he settled
and paid up the verbal policy for thousands. There were no Pembrokes
in the insurance business in those days, and with that loss his ]uck
seemed to turn, and from that time until his death he struggled with
fortune and fate, and instead of leaving millions to his nephews and
nieces, like his brother Walter, he left a small estate, part of which,
Oliver Newberry like, he gave with Nancy Martin to the Detroit
Hospital. His brother Walter by the bounty of Oliver died worth four
millions, tied it up like a miser-and just now a court has cut up the
will and given the property half to the Public Library of Chicago, and
the other half to the large number of heirs of his brother's. But while




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

343

the name of the one will live so long as the water of Erie, St. Clair,
Huron and Michigan shall wave, as an enterprising, benevolent, active
Western merchant, that of the other will be lisped gratefully by those
who regard wealth as the grand aim and object in life. Oliver Newberry from 1836 down to about 1849 was deemed worth millions, but
he died comparatively poor.
In his early business career his accounts were kept in a salt barrel,
his correspondence was scattered through the warehouse like the sybiline
leaves, and disorder reigned seemingly all through his business. It was
his wont to carry money and papers in his old straw hat, and in a trip
around the lakes in 1836, in that splendid old steamer Michigan, when
playing brag, as he did high and deep, he would take the old straw
hat off and bring forth hundreds and bet it as indifferently as most men
would dimes. But in 1832 there came to him from the Hudson, James
A. Armstrong, one of the most correct, thorough, skillful and industrious
clerks that ever opened a ledger. Like the brothers Cheeryble, he was
always at his post, always at his work, always doing good to all around
him, while the entries in his daybook, journals, ledger and letter books,
as if engraved in copper, are today marvels 4of exactness, correctness,
and without blot, erasure or interlineation.
From 1832 for many years he was to Oliver Newberry his official
right hand, his phonographer, letter-writer, his man of all work, and
the two seemed to be needful each to the other. After many years
Mr. Armstrong entered the arena of business for himself, and as commission merchant, cashier of banks, secretary of insurance companies,
had the varied successes and losses of commercial life in Detroit
during those disastrous times from 1839 down to about 1862, but in
commercial success and disaster, in sunshine and storm, he always
pursued "the noiseless tenor of his way," always bore himself with
kindness toward all, and malice toward none, and with a conscience as
clear and life unspotted as his ledger, he went to sleep in 1874, and,
"leaving on earth no blot on his name," rests now with his old commander, Oliver Newberry in yon beautiful Elmwood. There let them lie.
Other men have died richer-other men have gone to the grave with the
full tide of fortune sweeping on; but none ever slept more respected by
those who knew them best and loved them most.      But we must hurry
along the docks up the river, as our long weary day of 1833 is nearly
ended.
There are the Messrs. Gilletts, Reynolds and Shadrach in the old
red warehouse devoted to business, honest, hospitable, successful, there
also Jim and Madison Abbott, in the warehouse of James Abbott, and




344

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

at the dock lies the steamer Uncle Sam, commanded by Capt. James
McKinstry, of the United States navy, but on leave and doing civil
duty, and old horseshoer Robinson as mate, with his long hair and
squeaking voice, who used to order the wheelsman to "port thereport a leetle, I say."  A sort of Yankee fresh water sailor.
Passing on at the foot of Bates street, I saw  standing in the full
flush of youth, and hope beside, Elliott Gray, and as his then young
partner, Samuel Lewis, now a silver gray, straight, active, polite, a true
gentleman of the old school, who is rich, but not spoiled nor -penurious,
who enjoys the goods that God pirovides him, but never forgets his old
friends, and whose then young brother Alex., a mere boy about the
docks, has nearly ended his most brilliant and successful administration
of Mayor of this dear old city.
Such was my first day along the docks of Detroit and such the style
of commission men who then managed the lake commerce of a city
containing about 3,000 inhabitants-now the commercial metropolis of
Michigan, the abode of 125,000 people, and the spot where millions
upon millions of the products of this beautiful peninsula are
exchanged.
No. VIII.
THE BEGINNING OF THE MIdHIGAN CENTRAL RAILROAD.
A year has rolled away since our visit along the docks of Detroit,
and now this morning is May 12, 1834. Still, bright, beautiful and
soft; for in those times after a brief, dry, crisp winter of about sixty
days, the ice would go out of Detroit river about March 20; gardens
were made early in April, and lettuce and radishes shipped hence to
Buffalo six weeks before gardening began there. Those were good old
times when the Indian summer lasted clear up to Christmas, and as in
1838, plows were going in our prairies and oak lands all winter long,
and steamboats came and went every month in the year save February.
It is now nine o'clock in the morning, and directly in front of the
old Mansion House, then kept by Mr. Boyer, a handsome barouche is
standing, somewhat overladen with Indian blankets, lunch baskets,
champagne baskets, trunks and other travelers' baggage, to which




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

345

carriage are harnessed two. fine horses, while two extra ones are fastened
in the rear; and the driver a regular Kentucky darkey, acting as
purveyor and postilion both, gets ready for the long, long journey to
Chicago. As an assistant to the driver an Indian boy about twenty
years old, named Tomma, makes himself busy while the two young
gentlemen about to depart go into the Mansion House to take a farewell drink and shake hands with all their friends ere they commence
the perilous journey of six long days across the "Amonaam Peninsulam"
of Michigan. The one of these two travelers was a very stout, robust, redfaced, blue-eyed man, then just twenty-seven, built like a bull buffalo;
strong, thick-necked, alert, quick as lightning in all his movements,
dressed in complete semi-Indian traveling costume, as Gen. Schwartz
called it, with moccasins on his feet, the old Canadian capote on his
arm, all marking clearly the Indian trader of that day; while his com_
panion was a pale, slender curly haired young man, just of age, not weighing over one hundred and twenty pounds, neatly, rather fashionably clad
for those days, who, just admitted to the bar in Michigan after a six-hour
examination in Gen. Witherell's office on Jefferson avenue, by Judge
Goodwin, Alexander D. Fraser and Judge Witherell, was now going to
Chicago to settle and commence the practice of law there. The elder
one of the two was Major Robert A. Kinzie, who died about three
years since as paymaster in the United States army; who in 1836 was
worth millions by his entry on the north side of the Chicago river, of
the "North fractional section 10, town 4 north, of 3 west," a property
today worth fifteen millions of dollars, while Major Bob, his brother,
Major John A. Kinzie, and the entire family, all died poor, save
Mrs. David Hunter, now living in wealth and ease in Washington;
and not one foot of the Kinzie addition of 110 acres now remains to
the family, save an insignificant lot or two to Gen. Hunter. The
younger gentleman, whose curly auburn hair, light build and flashy
manner betokened youth and hope, and whose dress and address told
of one green in the ways of the west, may now be frequently seen,
with hair white as snow, robust body, weighing one hundred and
seventy, driving up and down the Union Pacific railway, making himself at home at Grand Island, Cheyenne, Laramie, Evanston, in all the
saloons, visiting all the printing offices, and writing articles for the
"mountain press," traveling by stage to the Black Hills, and giving back
to the road agents fees taken from them  in Utah, waiting on the
courts of Zion for the trial of the great case of Bates vs. the Church
of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints, or attending the funeral of
44




346

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

Brigham Young, and soothing the sorrows of the seventeen widows all
in deep mourning; or you may find him like Old Mortality, in beautiful
Elmwood, at mornlight, studying the names and bending over the
graves of the Bradys, the Larneds, the Coles, the Forsyths, the Kerchevals, of these long gone days, thus finding enjoyment in his memory
of "by-gones" and companionship with the dead who lie in this
beautiful abode; and whatever fortune or misfortune may have overtaken
him he still pushes on full of health, strength, happiness and hope,
and with energies unflagged and eyes undimmed still sees in the near
future, now as then, wealth lying in his pathway, and plenty of hard
work-man's greatest blessing-until he shall fall asleep with his old
comrades, and find his resting place among the mountains of Wyoming,
or Colorado, or, perchance, alongside James Duane Doty, in the cemetery
of Camp Douglass, at Salt Lake, the most beautiful spot on earth.
The two travelers enter the carriage, the colored driver and Indian
Tomma mount the box; and around the departing stylish coach are
grouped Lieuts. Heintzlem an, Center and Berrien in the beautiful
undress of the United States infantry, Lieuts. Poole, Brush and Sibley
in that of the artillery, while Maj. Bob Forsyth of the staff, and Mr.
Kercheval, all bade us adieu. On the balcony stands Judge Morell,
large as Washington, Ross Wilkins, Thomas Sheldon, John Norvell,
John A. Wells, George B. Martin, John Chester and a great crowd of
Detroiters to say farewell, and as we start to the west, away from
Newberry's dock swings the steamer Michigan with her splendid cabin,
two beam engines-low pressure-Old Blake, like Neptune on the
pilot house, and on she plunges like a fiery horse to the eastward.
We go for Chicago via Ypsilanti, over the old territorial road. "Night
had long closed in, had let her curtain down and pinned it with a
star," planets were shining over the deep woods that lay along our
road for the first thirty miles, when with a broken tongue, a twisted
axle tree, we reached Ypsilanti. Kinzie and his companion on the
extra horses, and the negro and Indian Tomma dragging in what
remained of Dr. Abbott's $600 barouche. The next day with great
industry  and labor, carried  us to  Knickerbocker's, where Jonesville now is. The next to Marsh, an old Indian trapper's about where
Coldwater now thrives. The next at White Pigeon where there was
quite a settlement; the next at Egbert's, near Door Prairie. The last
night to a log tavern on the lake shore, where some forty of us slept
in one room, near where Michigan City now stands, and where, looking
through the crevices between the logs, we saw a magnificent thunder
storm, with vivid lightning, on the lake. And finally, on Saturday,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

347

our sixth day, about 11 a. m., we arrived at Chicago, and on the rolling ground near Twenty-second street we were met with Indian whoop
and loud huzzas in Indian-French, by Mark Beaubien, Medor Beaubien,
Bill Forsyth and other Indian traders, and welcomed to Chicago, then
having a population of about 600 white people and 6,000 Indians. Our
ride was delightful, for the woods were all alive with the encampments
of the Pottowattomies of the lakes and the prairies, and as Kinzie, the
adopted son of old Billy Cauldwell, their chief, could speak Indian as
correctly and fluently as English, as we met the beautiful Indian
maidens, decorated with wild flowers and draped in their most bewitching
costumes, who with true pioneer hospitality invited us to visit their
encampment, we had one continuous round of feasting and merriment,
and a new page in the book of life was then opened by the simplicity,
the generous hospitality and the cordial entertainment by     these
beautiful daughters of the prairies. Last Friday the younger of these
travelers being called on business to visit the great metropolis of today,
Chicago, went on board a palace car of the Michigan Central, took his
seat in a great arm chair, upholstered richly enough for the Queen of
England-surrounded there by many young fashionable lady travelers,
dressed in modern style, hair frizzed and frowsy over the eyes, like a
skye-terrier, train long like the ladies of Queen Anne's bed chamber,
eyelids dyed deep like the femmes of the can-can in Paris, gloves
buttoned up to the very elbow joints and a dress fitted tight to the
form like a straight-jacket -very becoming in a voluptuous, large, round
and elegantly moulded woman, but death and destruction to a meagre,
thin, spare, skeleton like girl-with new  books every few  minutes,
newspapers and periodicals from all parts of the country, pears from
California, figs from  Florida, oranges from  Louisiana, grapes from
everywhere, in a coach as beautiful as any room in Buckminster Palace,
servants, conductors, porters, etc., in handsome livery, everything in
royal splendor, he whirled on to Chicago in nine hours, went to bed
in the Palmer Hotel, a palace equal in size, splendor, equipments and
furniture to the Palais Royal of France, Balmoral Castle in Scotland,
or Osborne House on the Isle of Wight; and there, surrounded by
marble pillars, gilded capitals, frescoes as beautiful as in the Vatican,
he went to sleep in a city of half a million of people; but all his old
comrades and c6mpanions were gone. The contrast between those two
trips to Chicago in 1834 and 1877 suggest to our memories the beginning, the growth and the present condition of the Michigan Central
railway, one of the grandest, most perfect and best managed routes of
travel between the Atlantic and the tranquil sea, one bright link in




348

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

the brilliant chain which binds New York to San Francisco, which
ensures us forever "one country, one constitution, one destiny."
Everybody, old and young, who has ever studied the topography of
Michigan, knows that for forty miles in every direction around Detroit
lies one heavy timbered, level, muddy plain, where the soil is alluvial
on the surface and a cold, squeasy, heavy clay beneath, through and
over which, even now, transit is almost impossible. But no one save
the early pioneers of this region can tell the horrors of travel over the
same region forty years ago. Through a forest where elm, beech,
walnut, maple, fir, and basswood sprang to the very skies, shutting out
the rays of a midday sun, a black, sticky road was cut, and when the
rush of emigration commenced in 1830, all those highways were cut up
with slough holes, dug-ways and morasses, through which it seemed
impossible to drag a stage coach or a heavy laden wagon. Yet all the
roads leading from Detroit were crowded with them, and it was no
unusual sight in those days to see in early morning half a dozen
superb covered coaches starting away, while a whole long day would be
used up in making Mount Clemens, Pontiac, Monroe, or Ypsilanti, and
members of the bar, elegantly mounted in going the circuit, would
spend twelve hours on horseback in reaching the Huron bridge at
Ypsilanti. Except the road through the Black swamp, from Toledo to
Lower Sandusky, there were no more fearful and horrid roads to be
found than all those leading out from Detroit in 1833 to 1837. Not
unfrequently emigrants were three days reaching Ypsilanti, and a
loaded team from Ann Arbor to Detroit via Plymouth Four Corners
and return would occupy nearly a week. Hence, so early as 1830, a
railroad became the subject of public attention, and in 1832, January
29, the legislative council passed an "Act to incorporate the Detroit
and St. Joseph Railroad Company," and authorized John Biddle, John
R. Williams, Charles Larned, E. P. Hastings, De Garmo Jones, James
Abbott, of Detroit, and sixteen others in the interior, to open books,
get subscriptions to its capital stock (one and a half millions), and
build a road from Detroit to St. Joseph, Berrien county, at the mouth
of the St. Jo river; and now in reading over all that list of twenty-one
corporators we find that only two are living today, viz.: Hon. Cyrus
Lovell of Ionia, and Talman Wheeler now of Chicago. "Dead, your
majesties; dead, my lords and gentlemen; dead, right reverends and
wrong reverends of every order; dead, oh, men and women born with
heavenly compassion in your hearts, and dcying thus around us every
day "-twenty out of twenty-two. Nothing, however, was done under
the charter, and in 1835, by an act of the legislature, the time was




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

349

extended two years to open the books and organize under the charter,
and in July, 1836, in the office of Bates & Talbott, under the old
Bank of Michigan, three doors east of King's corner, the books were
opened by a committee composed of Major John Biddle, General John
R. Williams, Eurotas P. Hastings, De Garmo Jones, James Abbott
and Oliver Newberry (General Larned had died of cholera in August,
1834), and Geo. C. Bates was made secretary pro tem., and John L.
Talbott treasurer, and the first four subscribers for the stock of that
road were:
Lewis Cass, by E. A. Brusb-------------------------- 25,000
John Biddle     ----------------------------------25,000
Robert Smart--------------------------25,000
Dr. Brown            ----------------25,000
Total  -------------------------------------100,000
The last two being Siamese Detroit old bachelors, living side by side,
and so united in heart and soul that whenever one took a drink of
Scotch whisky the other smacked his lips and took one also, and when
Brown snuffed, as he did frequently (they were both Scotchmen), old
Robert Smart always sneezed, and in every business matter when you
secured the aid of one you had both; indeed, they were a beautiful
duet in unity, and lived and died almost simultaneously, both glorious,
penurious, jolly old Scotchmen. "all of the olden time," and if you pass
near their resting place in Elmwood of these beautiful autumn evenings, and stop and listen you can hear their old spirits laughing and
chatting over the wonderful progress of that great railway begun by
them, and realize on the night air the odors of that glorious old
Usquebaugh which mellowed their hearts and made them love each
other as " na twa" other old crusty bachelors ever did. Well, the stock
of the Detroit & St. Joseph railroad was taken after much delay, great
and earnest solicitation by some men who subscribed nothing, and
liberal subscriptions of Trowbridge, Newberry, Jones, Conant, Major
Whiting, and that class. Major John Biddle was niade president,
Charles C. Trowbridge, Oliver Newberry, E. A. Brush, Shubael Conant,
Henry Whiting, J. Burdick, Mark Norris, and C. N. Ormsby, directors;
John M. Berrien, chief engineer; Alex. I. Center, assistant engineer;
and Alex. H. Adams, secretary and treasurer, out of which list there
are just three survivors: Charles C. Trowbridge, Alex. I. Center, of
New York, and A. H. Adams, the highly respected cashier of the old
Detroit Savings Bank. Under the auspices of the Detroit & St. Joseph
railroad company patches of grading and tieing were made between




350

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

Detroit and Dearborn in the summer of 1837, and a large body of
Irish democrats were employed, whom Jerry Moore, James F. Joy and
Geo. C. Bates undertook to persuade to vote the whig ticket for
Trowbridge, Bacon, and reform, but who utterly failed; although large
meetings were held at Wayne, and Joy and Bates spoke eloquently for
the ticket, and the two former spent Saturday night and all day Sunday in their railroad camp, parting with them Monday night before
the election in the full confidence that at least three hundred good and
true Irish whig votes would be given in the township of Nankin,
Wayne county, a confidence that was entirely lost, with the votes, in
the mud of that beautiful township.
The entire expenditures of this company were, in round numbers,
$140,000, but no part of the road was finished.
In 1837 the State of Michigan organized a board of internal improvement commissioners, and David C. McKinstry, Justin Burdick, Shubael
Conant and two others-three democrats and two whigs-were appointed,
bought out the- road and all its' franchises, and finished it to Dearborn
in February, 1837, to Ypsilanti in 1838, to Ann Arbor in 1839, to
Jackson in 1842, and to Kalamazoo in 1843. Of course the construction was in the cheapest, easiest style. Wooden road bed surmounted
by flat, thin rails, which not unfrequently rolled over the wheels,
rushed in the form of " snakes heads" through the cars, and as in one
case witnessed by the writer, impaled a woman to the top of the car,
as boys do flies with a pin. But the State became embarrassed, as it
always will in the management of private enterprises, party feeling
controlled the commissioners, and everything went to the bad, with the
internal improvement schemes and plans of Michigan. But there was
here in Detroit at that time, a far-seeing, big headed, sagacious lawyer,
a man of untiring labor, plucky as a Nemean lion, whose New England
education and constant daily toil had already placed him in the very
front rank of his profession, who looking clear away to the great west
through the shadows of half a century, saw   that that rickety, ill
managed railroad would.become the thoroughfare of a million.and a
half of Wolverines, and a burnished link in a steel chain from the
Atlantic to the Golden Gate of California, and filled with spirit and
energy and zeal he enthused Boston and New England with his own
horoscopic views of "the star of empire taking its western way," and
they being captivated with his thoughts bought out from the State of
Michigan "the Michigan Central railway, paid $2,000,000 and sent
John W. Brooks as president, and James F. Joy as solicitor, counselor,
aid-de-camp, to push on the column, build the road, not to St. Joseph,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

351 -
but to Chicago; and to construct it in the most perfect, substantial
manner, to equip it with engines that should outstrip the winds, and like
the discovery of Archimedes, having a "place whereon to stand, should
move the world;" to place on its road bed rails, to give it the most
airy, comfortable and splendid cars; to furnish weary travelers with
night palaces as gorgeous and comfortable as the bridal rooms of
Monte Christo, to put its servants in a superb livery and to make
them attentive, respectful and kind to all passengers, and behold! you
newcomers to Michigan, you have them all in absolute perfection.
"Si quceris monurmenitum ingenii," circumspice "the Michigan Central
Railway," and "render unto its master builders the things that are
theirs." But not only did this young Yankee lawyer press on with fiery
-energy the Michigan Central railway to its natural terminus, Chicago;
but being there he looked away across the Mississippi, saw the plains of
Illinois burdened with corn at five cents per bushel. Saw as in a vision
the beautiful valley of the Platte, 800 miles of garden; and soon he
organized, equipped, and continued the Michigan Central by and through
the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Roads to Burlington in Iowa and
Quincy, in Illinois; paused to take breath, crossed these rivers with
two beautiful iron bridges, linked up the Hannibal and St. Joseph Road,
and finally brought up at Baxter Springs, in the Indian country, on the
one hand; then ferried over the Missouri at Plattsmouth, and ended
substantially "the Michigan Central Railroad" at Fort Kearney, in
Nebraska, a distance of seven hundred miles west of Chicago.
The last day of October it chanced that the train crossed the splendid iron bridge from Burlington coming east just at sunrise, and
breakfast was served in the hotel car. Jo. Miller, the son of old Morris
Miller the colored gentleman who for years served in the "By-Gones of
Detroit" as caterer and cook, was head waiter, and his assistants all
-colored boys of Detroit; and there as the sun shot up and down the
Father of Waters; and a breakfast was served on that beautiful iron
bridge, whose tracery like a spider's web swung high above the waters,
giving to all the viands and fruits and coffees and teas of all climes,
in a breakfast room as ornate and beautiful as those of the cafes of
Paris, my memory went back to the by-gones in the beginning of that
railroad in the office of Bates & Talbott in 1836; and my heart swelled
with gratitude to the head that had conceived, the energy and ability,
the untiring pluck, which has eventuated in that superb Michigan
Central Railroad from Detroit to Baxter Springs on the one hand, and
Fort Kearney, in Nebraska, on the other.
These same Boston Yankees, inspired and goaded on by that driving




352'

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

Detroit lawyer-now   a grey-haired but energetic man-have brought
here and spent over $100,000,000 in the west since his connection with
this road, and a population of half a million of hard-handed, bravehearted, industrious laboring men-engineers, firemen, stokers, tracklayers, etc.--now live along this mighty line, in neat, cosy houses built
with the money expended 'through that one instrumentality; and their
wives and families are fed and clad and educated with the streams of
money that have flowed through that one single channel from 1846
down to the completion of this grand work in 1876.
True it is that we have had short crops; true a great financial panic
has swept over the land; true, that these roads like all others, New York
and Erie, New York Central and Pennsylvania Central, have not made
dividends these last three years; true, they were compelled to cut down
wages to their employ6s, and curtail expenses, as all other persons do,
but what of that? Fifteen millions of people are worth more than they
would have been without them. Fifteen millions of people ride over
them; market on them; live on them and through them, and even now
the increased traffic is filling their treasuries, and increased wages and
work are making the grand army of employ6s happy.
Your Railroad Commissioner reports that in 1876 the Michigan Central Railroad (old line) had expended $35,000,000; that its cash receipts
last year was $5,500,000, and its expenses were $3,500,000, of which the
taxes paid to Michigan were, in round numbers, $176,000; and the
muster roll of workmen, independent of the palace car servants, must
amount to 15,000 people; while in 1816 the gross earnings were only
$209,300, and total expenses $86,167. "Look on this picture, then on
that," and see if the mind of, man can measure the blessings to the
Northwest of the Michigan Central Railroad, and the debt of gratitude
due to its herculean architect, builder and founder.
But one thing in connection with this great railroad is so novel, so
extraordinary, so unprecedented as to challenge astonishment to this
whole nation.  Until within the last decade the aphorism  has been
undoubted that in our boasted land of liberty the "sons of rich and leading men were rarely worth the powder required to kill them," and facts
justify the conclusion. In all this land, save in the Adams and Everett
and Winthrop and Astor families, few are the rich, educated and exalted
fathers that have ever left sons to succeed them, and the Clays,
Websters, the Curtis', the Berriens, the Wrights, the Douglass' have, with
their own lives ended their family pride and history, and fame forever.
Even among the "by-gones" of Detroit we find scant records of the
sons of our richest, best educated and most aristocratic friends who




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

353

have ever succeeded to the stations occupied by their fathers. All our
institutions seem to lead our young gentlemen, sons of rich and exalted
parents, right straight down to the gutter and the grave. The moment
a young man realizes here that his father is rich, he too often makes
up his mind that he is' to live a life of pleasure, ease and idleness.
So he learns to dress well, part his hair in the middle, as donkeys
always do, to play billiards, ten-pins, keno, cribbage, and to chatter like
a monkey to silly girls, who, after finishing their education, cannot
tell the location of a planet in the Heavens or even the latitude and
longitude of their homes. He drives fast horses, he makes the trip to
Europe, sees the can-can, drinks Hockheimer and Rudesheimer-returns
and can tell you nothing of art, science, learning, history or business;
and then he becomes an offensive sot, or falls into the toils of some
extravagant. woman, whose expenditures outgo her husband's income,
and he supplies the place of the one and pays the bills of the other.
Such is an ordinary, rich young gentleman. But thanks be to Heaven!
the Michigan Central Railway has developed an exception so notable
that it must not be overlooked. We must secure and pin this one
specimen lest we never find another.
Nearly thirty-five years ago the late charge to France-an elegant and
accomplished gentlemen-" with a wife lovely beyond her sex and
graced with every charm," returned to Detroit, bringing as infants a
twin brother and sister-the former of whom was so fragile, that nothing
but Dr. Pitchers heroic treatment ever saved him. He was the grandsoil of Michigan's most wealthy and exalted statesman-the pet of all
the family. He grew up, was thoroughly educated, traveled and came
to manhood, marrying in Cincinnati the daughter of a railway magnate.
But he had sense, he had brains, and today, instead of seeing him
flaunting along the highway smoking cigars in the presence of ladies,
driving fast horses, you will, if you go to the Michigan Central Railway depot find him at work like a giant as its general manager, fixing
rates of wages for thousands of men, dispatching trains here, there and
everywhere, now dictating to a phonographer, anon consulting with the
solicitor, up early, going home at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, at
Chicago today, tomorrow in New York, always at work, plainly clad,
polite to everybody, but in his whole life and conduct and business
furnishing the model of a true American gentleman, an educated
American business man, a man born to wealth and station, who is worth
preserving, and whose statue ought to be erected of Scotch granite oh
the Central depot, cyclopean size, in order that all the young men who
45




354

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

pass through it should see what a man the grandson of Lewis Cass has
made himself.
No. IX.
EARLY HOTELS OF DETROIT.
Time hath moved its finger along the dial-plate, and now, today, it is
midsummer of 1835, and the streets of Detroit are all alive with covered
wagons by the hundred, laden with women and children, articles of
household furniture packed all around; cows and sheep following and,
led in the rear, and away to the interior they make a long line to'
Oakland, Washtenaw, St. Clair and Monroe, while each morning the
stage coaches are packed full below, and piled high with passengers
removing into the Territory. Each day a new steamer arrives, sunk
clear to its gunwales with freight, its decks literally black with human
beings-men, women and children-between decks, on decks, on the
wheel-houses, all over them and every article of furniture that human
ingenuity can contrive, or human want demand, may be seen all around
them. The new counties, Lenawee, Hillsdale, lonia, Kalamazoo and
Berrien are filling up day by day with new log houses, saw-mills, gristmills, stores, shops and machine shops. And Michigan is now the
grand objective point; the " Ultima Thule" of all New England, New
York, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and from the docks of Detroit clear over
to Lake Michigan, crowds of people, transported in every possible form,
"move o."
But today is a gala day in Detroit, and we shall soon learn why the
old adage, "Tell me where you live and I will 'tell you who you are"'
a man is known by the company he keeps," has, with a slight change,
a direct application to cities "as well as men," and paraphrased thus:
" Show me your hotels and I will tell you what your city is," is
philosophically true. Casting your eye then to the photograpic view of
the Hotel Woodworth, then kept by Uncle Ben Woodworth, the brother
of him who wrote:"The old oaken bucket,
The iron-bound bucket,
The moss-covered bucket,
That hangs in the well."
We shall see a specimen of the hotels, the inus, the taverns of Detroit,
at this early day, where hundreds of new comers, strange faces, were




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

355

seen every night, disappearing in the morning, and succeeded by new
arrivals during the coming day and night; one living tide, swaying and
rising higher and higher with each successive day, month and year.
On the northwest corner of Woodbridge and Randolph streets, just
below and on the other side from where the old American, now the'
Biddle House, stands, was its site; and there we stand today to recall
that dear old Stranger's home, and all the hallowed and sacred memories
that still linger and play around it, and that rise up like ghosts at the
photographic view, which goes away back to half a century ago.
When and how early that old mansion was erected there is no record
of; but that' it was the home of comfort and hospitalities, the headquarters of the early pioneers, so far back as 1821, when all the young
gentlemen who were even at that early day "going West," we do know.
Built in patches it had grown in size until its veranda facing the
east was over 100 feet long, and the,main building and its additions
reached clear back on Woodbridge street, nearly twice that depth, and
every part' and parcel was not only utilized but always full. Dashing
up Randolph street you will observe a new  Concord coach and four
beautiful grays just now starting for Ypsilanti, loaded up as an overloaded ship, below decks, on decks, on the boot, on the driver's seat,
with passengers, young, bright, fresh looking men. While just swinging
around into Randolph from Woodbridge street is another bright red
coach with superb bay horses, equally laden, on the doors of which you
read " Woodworth & Co.," bound for Pontiac, each of which will have
a hard pull to make their journey, even now in this beautiful weather
of July, 1835.
Come a little closer to the front and there you see that same old
omnibus, having on its white panels and over its door in great gilt
letters, "Woodworth's Steamboat Hotel," and standing, aiding passengers to alight, is a stout, red-haired, blue-eyed, very polite young man,
about twenty-eight years of age, whose green frock coat is buttoned
very tightly around his person, his dazzling striped pantaloons fitting
very closely, while a black string and broad rolling shirt-collar gave
the Byronic appearance to Sam Woodworth, the son of its proprietor-the
major domo, the man of all work, who accompanied the omnibus to all
the steamers, whose politeness, affability and knowledge of all men and
things, made him a very different hotel clerk from the diamond-studded,
impudent upstarts so common of modern days. Every one, man or
woman, who ever entered "Uncle Ben's," as the Woodworth House was
called for short, will remember Sam's suavity of manner, his graceful,
smiling politeness, smacking a little of Sam Weller's, but still a kind



356

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

hearted, truly polite and quite well-educated son of a brave old father,
who, after serving in the capacity of general manager of Woodworth's
Hotel for years, became possessed of the vaulting ambition to step up
the ladder and become the master of a steamboat, to stand like old
Commodore Blake on the pilot-house, pull this bell, then that, and
shout in loud tones, "Avast there!" "Port, sir!" "Port, sir!" and who
having purchased a very small steamer, called the Spy, or some such
non-nautical name, commenced his regular trips to Truax's and Newport, down the river and back, all in a single day, touching at Windsor,
Sandwich, Springwells, Ecorse and all the intermediate points, "wind
and weather permitting," until one day when lying at the Windsor
dock, the tea-kettle engine of poor Sam exploded, and the last ever
seen of him was when he was observed with outstretched arms and
wide-spread limbs going up higher than a kite, where many of the old
sailors on the steamers of.those days followed him.
The steamer was split up into matches and what was left of poor
Sam  was followed to the old cemetery-Sexton Noble and his pipe
managing the hearse-by all the old habitues of that inn, and no man
ever deserved more justly the tears that were shed over his remains
than he did.
But come, let us enter this hospitable old home and first pay our
respects to Uncle Ben, a broad shouldered, gray-eyed man, then nearly
sixty years of age, with very firm lips, mild in his outward seemings,
but when enraged a perfect old volcano, whose increasing pallor and
deepening of the wrinkles on his face told of the higher barometer of
passion within; a great handed, strong, old-fashioned Yankee, whose
heart was open as the day, and whose industry and cordiality made his
home the headquarters of all the steamboat men; the pioneers of the
Straits, and who may be still living today, a fading, weakening old
by-gone. Having shaken hands with Uncle Ben we pass into the
barber shop, and behold, here is Wm. Clay, the learned tonsorial artist;
the cultivated, educated barber from England, a man sui generis, who
would cut your hair in the very latest fashion, and chop logic with you
ad interim; who would give you a superb shave, and simultaneously
discourse on the Greek roots; who would furnish an elegant "-shampoo,"'
and all the while interest you by quotations from Socrates, Longinus,
Thomas Aquinas; who would give you the catalogue of his private
library-where the very finest edition of the Greek, Latin and English
classics could be found; a man who would make you a wig, and at the
same time weave you a web of philosophy, of metaphysics and religion,
that you would carry to your grave; a learned, scholarly, thoroughly




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

357

educated barber, who only went to rest these last few months, and who
was indeed a marvel of the by-gones of Detroit.
"When shall we look upon his like again"-a scholarly barber; a
logical wig-maker; a classical hair-dresser; a most learned shampooer,
a tonsorial artist, and an expounder of Greek philosophy, all combined;
a marvelous conjunction of the vulgar art of living, with the aesthetics
of the academy, the homely drudgery of every day life, united with the
beautiful teachings of Plato, Socrates and Cicero, on the banks of the
Ilyssus.
But let us look the Woodworth Hotel over, it will take but a moment.
Observe that it is only two stories over the basement; it is plain in its
construction and model. On entering from the street you find the stage
office, the bar--where in those days one could get a glass of pure Monongahela whisky, old Jamaica rum, brandy imported from Quebec, that
had no adulteration in it-by-gones-now giving place only to liquid
hell fire, adulterated stuff composed of vitriol, red pepper, fusil oil and
corn whisky, fit only to make murderers, suicides and maniacs. Then
came a large sitting-room, accidentally'3inscribed as setting-room; then a
large dining-room, all neatly, simply furnished, but all most comfortable; where in the next flight of stairs was the ladies' parlor, a very
large room which we used to occupy for whig meetings, several large
double rooms, where you would find not infrequently at least eight
members of the legislative council, all living and sleeping there.
The carpets were not velvet nor Royal Wilton, but three ply, softened
by heavy linings of hay which gave rather frowsy odors to the room.
The furniture was very substantial, not mahogany; the forks were of
steel, not silver, and the knives had bone instead of ivory handles; but
every room and bed in that hotel was year in and year out full.
In February of each year, after the session of the supreme court
of the territory, around that table were wont to congregate the members
of the   bar; and the annual bar dinner was given       when Judge
Woodbridge, that witty old gentleman, at the head of the table, was
flanked by Chief Justice Sibley and Justice Morell, and at the foot sat
Harry S. Cole, with Ross Wilkins on his right, and midway between
the two was Gen. Charles Lamed, one of the most elegant, dashing and
princely of all that bar, having on either hand George McDougall, the
father of the bar, and Charles Cleland, its poet, editor, toastmaster,
while on the other side sat Augustus S. Porter, pulling his nose in
nervous enjoyment of the wine and wit, when every member was condemned to give a toast, tell a story, make a speech, sing a song or drink
a glass of salt and water, and when Cleland's last toast was always to




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BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

old McDougall, a legal Jack Falstaff, redivivus, the quandam father of
the bar, then light-house keeper at Fort Gratiot, and which was always
drunk standing, somewhat' in these words'.
BRETHtERN OF THE BAR-"We drink now to the Nestor of our Bar, George McDougall, who in early life shed the light and brilliancy of his genius over our profession
in beautiful Michigan, but who now in his old age illuminates the dark waters of
Lake Huron with his magic lantern, and so guides the tempest tossed mariners
safely through storms and dangers of the lake down to the silvery streams of St.
Clair."
At which three cheers and a tiger were given, heel taps all around,
and then after a valedictory from Judge Hand, the bar went back into
chancery.
But let us hurry on to the new Grand Hotel, the then' Palmer
House of Detroit, the old Mansion House, where all the elile of
Detroit, the military, naval and civil officers of our government did
then most congregate. In these "by-gones" the Detroit river in turning
around so as to swing Sandwich Point, made a huge detour just at the
foot of Cass street, and sweeping away inland made a second Tappan
Zee. Its banks at that curve were the Cass farm, the Jones, Woodbridge, Baker and Thompson farms, very high and bold, and Gen.
Cass' orchard came almost to the edge ()f the bluff. High up on the
bank just below Cass street stood this dashing old home, the Mansion
House, built many years before our visit of today, July, 1835. It was
made of stone some three stories high, with a veranda along its entire
front and huge pillars reaching clear away to the roof, and then
extended back some two hundred feet deep. From that veranda you
could look right down over old Uncle Oliver Newberry's warehouse,
across the Detroit iron works, and have an exquisite view of the river,
the dwellings and gardens at Windsor and Sandwich, down around the
point, Springwells, and the smoke of the coming up steamer could
always be seen far away round Sandwich Point. That old porch was
very cool and delightful; and there today you see grouped on the veranda, young Gov. Tom Mason, so handsome and genial, prim John
Norvell, Lieutenants Alex. Centre, John M. Berrien, Heintselman, all
drawn up with rheumatism, Lieut. Poole, Capt. Russell, Major Forsyth,
of the army, Judge Morell, Judge Wilkins, Thomas Sheldon, Justin
Burdick and numerous other long-time habitues of this old inn, for
today was a gala day in Detroit.
They all adjourn to the bar to drink a mint julep. This is hot
weather, and we enter and look through the office into the high and
spacious parlor and the dining room, -and where all looks lofty com



BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

359

pared with the Woodworth Hotel, which we have just left. Mr. Boyer,
the proprietor, whose wife died here of cholera last summer-1834-is
a heavy, ponderous, sluggy Pennsylvanian, brought here by Gov. Geo.
B. Porter, who also died of cholera last summer, and the house feels
sensibly the loss of Mrs. Boyer, the landlady, who was the more active,
energetic and useful one of the proprietors, while Churchill, then its
clerk, bar-keeper and man of all work combined, had none of poor Sam
Woodworth's cheeriness or courtliness. The records of that old Mansion
House, if they could be exhumed and read now, would furnish a sketch
of Detroit, its old citizens and guests that would astonish, interest and
amuse. Perhaps old mortality will still grub them up, chip away the
moss and clear off the dust that time has scattered over them.
On that veranda at midnight, after the wedding of G. Mott Williams
and the beautiful Miss Mary Strong, stood all our crowd, and saw with
amazement and fear the first meteoric shower ever witnessed, which old
George McDougall, Charley Cleland and Eb Canning all declared was
the feu de joie from Heaven, at the wedding of Detroit's most beautiful
belle. Poor Mott-a good fellow, an honest man, long since gone upward
where the heavenly shower originated; and his widow still remains, beautiful in her white hair-a cheery, genial "by-gone" lady, a mother, grandmother and noble woman. On that veranda in 1837 Daniel Webster
was welcomed to Detroit, and in Gen. Cass' orchard-afterwards
graded down by Abraham Smolk, dumped into the river, making some
seventeen acres of new river front-made one of those godlike speeches
which no other man ever had, ever can or ever will make.
In the kitchen, directly under the long, dining-room in those "bygones," dancing or waltzing parties were sometimes improvised, as
after the meteoric shower in which the blue pants and white stripes of
the United States infantry, the scarlet and gold of the artillery, the
learned lawyers and dashing M. D's. might all. be seen mingled in the
giddy mazes of the waltz with the German and French girls, who at
other times waited on the tables, performed the duties of femme de
chambre; and where, at rare times, even judges of the supreme court,
attorney general and United States court officers were very joyous
when the partners of the rosy cheeked, blue eyed and beautiful German waltzer of the kitchen department.
At that dining table during a whole season sat Silas Wright, New
York's greatest Senator, vis a vis to Judge Morell, wife and daughter;
Capt. J. B. F. Russell, of the United States artillery, with his gorgeous wife, a blue blooded Peyton, of Virginia; a splendid beauty-they,
too, are "by-gones "-who had in her train always, everywhere, repre



360

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

sentatives of all classes of gay Lotharios; who turned the head even of
poor old George McDougall, and afterwards George Smith, the Scotch
banker of Chicago, and who today frightens all her old admirers by
demanding widow's dower of their homesteads of Chicago. At that
same table Stephen A. Douglas was not an infrequent guest, then in
the very beginning of that career n6t less brilliant than the meteoric
showers; and there have I seen in brilliant army costume, side by side,
Gens. Scott, Worth, Wool, McComb, Whiting, Larned, and an army of
subalterns. And now and then when Jack Smith and Bill Abbott had
taken too many juleps would they ride their Canadian ponies up the
steps, directly into the bar room, and then "en cheval," drink yet another
mint julep, made of fresh mint and pure Monongahela whisky, just
touched on its brim  with peach brandy and honey. But now here
today the glory of this dear old Mansion House departeth,
"4Oh now, forever, farewell;
Farewell the tranquil mind-farewell content."
Now  the Michigan Exchange is opened and all the crowd are now
about to go there and aid in its christening. So, in fall all the gentry,:and in double files, led by Gov. Stevens T. Mason and John Norvell
we march to the corner of Shelby street and Jefferson avenue, where,
at the door, the entire party are welcomed by Shubael Conant, the
owner and builder of that then magnificent palace, and by Austin Wales
and his brother, E. B. Wales, then its proud and youthful landlords.
Prodigious indeed, is this new grand hotel, one hupdred feet front on
the avenue, the same in depth on Shelby street, four stories in height,
of pressed brick front with stone trimmings. It begins a new era in
Detroit. Old times are passing away, and commerce and fashion are
westward bound today.
Of the building itself I need not speak. Like the monument of
Bunker Hill "there it stands, and the first rays of the morning sun
greet it, and the last hours of the expiring day linger and play around
its base."
The dining room in that day was up stairs over the corner store, at
the conjunction of Shelby street and Jefferson avenue, where Webb,
Douglass & Company, of Albany, the junior partner of whom was John
Chester, for many a long year had the first wholesale and retail crockery establishment. Directly from the street you entered the office, and
on the right was a large, well lighted, airy, elegant bar, with a mahogany rail, rested on plated silver arms or braces in front, and where on
this opening day, everybody, young and old, grand and humble, drank




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

361

pure liquors to their heart's content, for then we had no Red Ribbons, "'tis true, 'tis pity, and pity 'tis 'tis true."
Everybody shakes hands with Shubael Conant, then a teetotaler of the
strictest kind, like old Solomon, who had found "wine and strong drink
to be a mocker." Everybody congratulated Wales & Co., and everybody
drank with everybody, and " all went merrie as a marriage bell."
Late dinner was served, and around that first table were gathered
John A. Wells, Geo. B. Martin, Walter Newberry, Rufus Brown, John
Chester, George E. Hand, Col. Daniel Goodwin, Ambrose Townsend,
John L. Talbott, Bill Alvord, Morgan L. Martin, while at its head sat
Judge Conant, a Vermont giant-who occupied that same seat until he
was upwards of eighty years of age-and a great number of invited
guests, including all who came over from the Mansion House.
The register of that first day of the Michigan Exchange, as Irish
John used to shriek it out, will furnish over one hundred and fifty
names of the Detroit guests, and out of all that number not a dozen
remain to this day to read these. "By-Gones,". or to recall the pleasures
of youth and hope there gathered round the first table ever spread in
that now universally known hostelry. Underneath that old roof lived
Fletcher Webster, the favorite son of Daniel Webster, and wife,
Anthony Ten Eyck and lady, Marshal I. Bacon and wife, 'John A.
Welles and wife, Robert McClelland and wife and nearly all the quandam guests of the Mansion House, while Judge Conant, Uncle Gurdon
Williams, Salt William, Stammering Alph, Young Gurdon, Poor Bill
Alvord, John L. Talbott, and multitudes of others, either actually lived
in the house or left it Only to die somewhere else.
Forty-two years have come and gone since that opening day of the
Michigan Exchange-an epoch in Detroit, July, 1835, and of the
multitudes then in our streets only here and there can you see a gray
haired man, plodding wearily on, waiting for the carriage that will be
be his escort to Elmwood-but even to this day with its old-fashioned
front, its simplicity and plainness of outward seeming, whosoever shall
enter there will find every comfort and care that heart can desire or
money command. Like the old homes of Detroit its latch string is
always on the outside, and the weary and dust stained traveler will
ever find a cordial and hearty welcome.
46




362

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

No. X.
THE DETROIT BOAT CLUB AND THE REGATTA.
"Not faster yonder rowers' might
Flings round their oars the spray;
Not faster-yonder rippling bright
That tracks the shallop's course in light
Melts in the straits away,
Than men from memory erase
The benefits of former days;
Then strangqrs-go-good speed the while,
Nor think again of the lonely isle."
-'OLady of the Lake."
Time with his old scythe cutting a wide swathe-like poor Joe of
"Tom-all Alone's "-"moves on" and now it is Februpry 18, 1839, and
Detroit has put on since our last many city airs; is becoming every
day more and more a mart of commerce, of trade, of manufactures, and
business. The National hotel has been built by Chase & Ballard, and
outshines in its lofty front, pretentious style and dazzling new paint
the Michigan Exchange, and opened under the auspices of Harring of
New York, is quite the swell house of the city; and it has continued
to grow and improve, until today it has become the fashionable
Russell House, with its multitudinous windows and their variegated
shades and lofty outlook on the corner of Woodward avenue and
Michigan Grand River avenue. The old Governor Hull house, owned
by that very prince of gentlemen, John Biddle, has been opened as the
American hotel by old Mr. Griswold and sons, one of whom, George
R. Griswold, was a leading democrat, who afterward became a purser in
the navy, where he died; and after that house had been twice burned,
it finally arose Phoenix-like, in the present Biddle House, which, under
the caprices and whims of its lesseb, is shut and closed, a great injury
to business in that quarter, and a strange freak it would seem  of a
long headed business man.
And with all these rapid changes in business in commerce along the
wharf, in that little strip of railroad finished to Ypsilanti, whose
terminus here was just opposite the National, where Lafayette avenue
joins and terminates in Michigan avenue, on the site of the north
wing of your noble city hall-came the fancies, the whims and amusements of a metropolitan western town, and so this day, February 19,
1839, the Detroit river looking more blue and beautiful than ever in




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.           3~

363

contrast with the white snow upon its banks, suggests to -the young
men of the city a boat club' and E. A. Brush, James A. Armstrong,
John Chester, J. H.' Farnsworth, Andrew T. M~cReynolds, AlIfred Brush,
Alpheus S. Williams andAlx      H. Sibley meet and organize the
Detroit Boat Club, and of course E.- A. Brush was elected president
(he always was on such occasions), and James A. Armstrong was made
secretary, and this added to his other duties as secretary of the old
Brady Guards, secretary of the Detroit Dramatic Club-of which more
anon-secretary of the Detroit Young Men's Society, gave him employment in all his leisure time, and all his books and records were kept
as if engraved on copper plate-and there a formal carefully prepared
constitution was adopted, and the members then present signed the
same; but of those first ten subscribers five are gone on their last long
voyage, while the remaining five as they move on, remind one of the
old men-of-war's men, in Trinity Hospital or in the dock yards of
London, who 'are anx ons to put on all the airs and assume the -vigor
and outward and visible signs of real young Jack tars.
But at the next meeting of the boat club, a new and even more
dashing element appeared in the signatures of John Winder, Isaac S.
Rowland, Anthony Ten Eyck, Asher S., Kellogg, Rufus Brown, Wesley
Truesdail, J. Nicholson Elber~t, Alexander Jauden, Col. Deacon, Samuel
Lewis, D. C. Holbrook, Geo. C. Bates, and Capt. Win. T. Pease, whose
character and position at that time gave -new features to this young*
bantling. Col. Isaac S. Rowland was soon to be the brother-in-law of
Governor Thompson Mason,- and was now a man of grand station as
Captain of the Brady Guards. Anthony Ten Eyck was a distinguished
democrat and lawyer, and was made United- States Commissioner and
counsel at the Sandwich Islands by President Polk. Poor Saxe Kellogg,
with his hollow cough, his long hair and long, lanky limbs, was the
partner in the great commission house of Mead, Kellogg & Co. Dr.
Rufus"Brown was a large, cultivated and successful merchant.  Wesley
Truesdail, in the full flush galore and high tide of success as cashier
of the bank of St. Clair, with its business office here, while Elbert and
Jaudon, brother of ýthe cashier of the United States bank of Philadelphia,
and Deacon, son of old Commodore Deacon, of the United States navy,
were young blue bloods, fancy business men from Philadelphia, who had
just founded a city on the sands ten miles south of Grand Haven, Port
Sheldon, built an enormous long wharf and hotel there, consumed
$200,000 and champagne enough to make deep water over the bar of the
Grand river, bought a superb brig and imported from' Philadelphia an
elegant. sail-boat and eight-oared row-boat, for pleasure; but the winds




364

3BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

came and beat upon the sands, and the waters of Lake Michigan and
the wild waves of speculation washed away their city, and these young
gentlemen came to Detroit, where Elbert, a most estimable gentleman,
died. Years after Jaudon lived on his brother's reputation and his
own wits and keenness, while Col. Deacon, after a visit to Paris,
became a pseudo count, married in Boston the wealthiest belle of the
"Hub," Miss Parker, traveled in Europe, and finally died instantly by
bursting a blood-vessel, and Capt. Wm. T. Pease, the handsomest,
jolliest and the most elegant of all the captains on the lakes, trod in
nautical pride and glory for many a long year the quarter decks of the
steamers Michigan, Illinois and Niagara; and when the railways finally
drove them from the lakes, for many a long season on propellers of
vast size and capacity from Chicago to Buffalo, until about seven years
since, he went into dry dock in the custom house at Buffalo, where
sickening and pining on the land for the lakes, he died three years
since. God bless him. No more genial, courtly and elegant sailor
ever trimmed a yard, squared a sail or tripped an anchor than Capt.
Bill Pease; and no matter whether plunging in Cimmerian darkness into
a nor'easter with the old Michigan, plowing the waves of Lake Michigan in November gales on the propeller Fulton, or presiding at her
cabin table with hundreds of guests, or acting as coxswain of the
Detroit Boat Club, he was always everywhere, and at all times a
superb careful sailor, and a true American tar and gentleman combined.
Such were the men who thirty-eight years ago united as the Detroit
Boat Club, and bought in New York for $225 an eight oared barge, 38
feet long, which was originally intended to go to England as an American
race boat, and which today, after her long maritime service, swings at her
davits in the splendid club house at the foot of Joseph Campau avenue.
But, of course, the first thing to give eclat and dash to this new sporting club, was a striking, stunning; sailor-like uniform, and on April 10,
1839, the following was adopted: 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, white socks, black
silk neck handkerchief knot, shirts, a blue ground with white figure
and broad square collar, coat of Kentucky jean; and if these new young
aquatics could have seen in this natty and sailor like uniform, these
by-gone boatmen Armstrong, Chester, Jaudon, Elbert, Count Deacon,
with Capt. Pease as coxswain, E. A. Brush and Rufus Brown as bow
oarsmen; and that. heavy boat shooting up the Detroit river filled with
beautiful lady guests on a moonlight night at the rate of ten miles
per hour and observed the uniformity, steadiness and length of their




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

365

stroke, they would have realized that in these latter day contests the
old "Detroit Boat Club" may well repose upon it honors and laurels
now in the long gone by-gones ere the new young oarsman of today
were born.
"Tall trees from little acorns grow,
Large streams from little fountains flow."
And no better illustration of this or the rising grandeur and glory of
Detroit can be found than is furnished by this brief record of the
beginning of the Detroit Boat Club, a generation ago.
In May, 1843, Wesley Truesdail bought from Alexander Jaudon the
club boat, so called, of the Port Sheldon Company. And this was the
last and only of the assets of that grand western speculation that had
spent $200,000, and exhausted 500 baskets of champagne in the vain
effort to rear and build a city where a few Dutchmen have come long
since, founded Holland and made a grand success. This new boat
carried six oars and was a model of beauty and speed for those days.
A perfect water nymph-a sylph. And she, too, now after an existence
of thirty-seven years, swings at her moorings in the club house, superseded by the lighter, gayer, and more fashionable shallops and shells
of modern days, just as our beautiful belles of that period have given
away to these dashy, smart, and fresh young girls, and have become
mothers and grandmothers.
In the by-gones on Hog Island-now known by the more elegant
and euphonious name of Belle Isle, in honor of the then Miss Isabella
Cass, now the Baroness Von Limburg, of Holland, for whom one hundred
and twenty mail contractors at Baltimore in 1843 swore by the Eternal
"they would vote for as President of the United States"-the club universally passed its Fourth of July, and then on the 3d a detachment was sent
to clear away grounds, pitch marquees and tents borrowed from the army
and there they entertained among their guests Misses Isabella Cass,
Emma Schwartz, the Misses Griswold, sisters of Purser Geo. R. Griswold
of the navy, and all the elite of Detroit society; and there Maj. Robert A.
Forsyth and Henry S. Ledyard were always assigned to the duty of
brewing a big bowl of sailor punch, half-and-half, a duty that was performed to the satisfaction of everybody; and toasts were drunk to the
memory of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and so
on down to Gen. Harrison, in successive goblets, filled to the very
brim, and just tipped and touched on the edge with pineapple, rum
and arrack.
There, on July 4, 1841, the guests of the day were Gen. George M.
Brooke and his handsome adjutant, George Deas, who married Miss




366

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

Garland; subsequently went with his brother-in-law, Gen. Longstreet,
into the Confederate army, and, after the rebellion, broke down and
died of a broken heart. Gen. Brooke, Colonel of the Fourth Infantry,
was that gallant old Virginian hero who, in 1813, at the sortie of Fort
Erie, opposite Buffalo, when the American batteries were shooting wild
because they could not find the locality of the British troops, volunteqred and took a large glass lantern lighted under his military cloak,
crept on his belly inside the British lines, quietly clambered up-a beech
tree, tied the lantern to a limb and instantly dropped to the ground
and ran, while a hundred cannon blazed away at him ineffectually, and
he came safe back to camp. He was brave as Ney, gallant as Murat,
and a most elegant old Virginia gentlemen.  Today Belle Isle is the
abode where in summer the young men of society congregate, where
good dinner, music and dancing, flirting, picnicking and sporting and all
the refinements of society, all the elegancies of fashion, all the enjoyments of cultured life may be found; but of these club men only here
and there remains an antiquated specimen. Its president and elegant
secretary, the coxswain and bow oarsman and all the Philadelphia
attaches have long since mingled with their mother earthl-" Dust to
dust, ashes to ashes." But let us see now what has come from this
small beginning and few grains of seed sown on the Detroit river in
the by-gones of 1839.
A LAPSE OF THIRTY FIVE YEARS.
In early' summer it happened that chance medley brought here one
of the original members of that old club; and falling into the hospitable hands of one of its present members, a son of Virginia, born akin
to the great Hunter stock of the mother of presidents, an invitation
was hospitably given and cordially accepted to go to the new quarters,
at the foot of Joseph Campau avenue, and had heý found there the
palace of Aladdin and the genii that inhabited it his surprise could not
have been greater. A beautiful house in the Italian cottage style, is
built clear in and over the waters of the Strait; and as the river murmurs and gurgles and ripples along its base, one would imagine himself
on the Grand Canal in Venice, and there in the basement sheltered
from storms and winds, hung the two old boats, and some half dozen
new ones of all sizes, models, shapes and names; while in the inner
dock swung at anchor a beautiful yacht, reposing on the river like a
swan, a perfect nautical water witch, whose tapering masts, sharp bow,
rounded stern and huge canvas, reminded one of the pirates of the
West Indies, and whose furniture and entire rig bespoke nautical skill,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

367

aquatic taste and wealth to maintain it. Ascending to the reception
rooms on the second floor a scene was presented that again carried one
to Venice or the Golden Gate, for looking in every direction save one,
you saw the deep, deep blue of the Straits, whose surface was dotted
all over with shallops, shells, barges, tugs, sloops, brigs, propellers,
wherries, ferries, and old-fashioned steamers, and on going still higher,
away across was Sandwich, and running your eye up and down the
Straits, you saw that Detroit since 1839, the birthday of this club, had
spread like a matron growing old and broad, until from  Hamtramck
clear down to Fort Wayne, more than five miles, was one continuous
dock where propellers, steamers and vessels of all descriptions lay alongside them discharging and receiving their cargo and in this amateur
sailor's home were carpets, elegant furniture, engravings, pictures, prizes,
models, fancy oars, and a superbly furnished ladies reception room,
where fairy fingers had draped and arranged the flags and curtains and
signals of all the boat clubs of the land, and where doubtless many a
brave, young sailor boy has told his love, sailor like, to every successive
pretty girl whom he met there, for land sailors are like water sailors
who find a new sweetheart in every port or place they go to.
Since the organization of that first club its muster roll has grown
by hundreds, embracing many business men and men of wealth, and
its property has increased by many thousands of dollars. While
inspired by its example and stimulated by its success, no less than
ten different boat clubs are in the directory of Detroit today. And all
over Michigan other young men have followed their example and have
organized clubs of their own, until a small navy could be improvised
in a week on these lakes, of brave, dashing, gallant young sailor boys.
Nor is this all, on the 5th of August last, Detroit was the scene of
the grandest regatta, the largest congregation of boat clubs ever seen
on this continent. Young athletes, splendid fellows in their stylish
club costumes, with shells and barges, gathered here from every part
of our country-from the Saskatchewan in Pembina, the Big Muddy,
the lakes of Minnesota, the rivers of Kansas, the Atlantic cities; from
Cleveland, Toledo, Erie, from Saginaw Bay, from La Pleasance Bay at
Monroe, from the Hudson, the Susquehanna, the Delaware, the Kennebec, the Penobscot and the Connecticut, from Baltimore and Norfolk,
all in one grand struggle for the splendid prizes of Detroit manufacture.
The skies were dark, the clouds hung heavy nearly all the regatta
week. Rain fell daily, but what cared they, young bloods, full of life,
strength, pluck, vigor and hope, for rain? Sailor boys expect it-live
on the water-struggle on the water-battle on the water-as brave




368

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

soldiers do on the land-and win or lose those beautiful classic prized by
the water. So day by day when the call sounded, rain or shine, these
young naval heroes bared their bodies to the fight, and as in the
Olympian and Isthmian games, where Alexander told his father he too
"Would contend if kings were to be his competitors," they pulled and
rowed, they struggled and strove, in the presence of thousands of
witnesses as if their lives, their country, their liberties, their honors,
were at stake, and the conquerors received the cheers, the plaudits and
the huzzas of myriads,of men, and the smiles, and braves and bouquets
from a grand amphitheatre of beautiful young women, that would have
rewarded Napoleon at Austerlitz, Grant at Richmond, Sheridan at
Shenandoah, Sherman at Chattanooga, Hooker at Lookout Mountain,
and would, with their witcheries and beauty, their youth and
sweetness, have stayed and tamed even Sitting Bull and his Sioux
warriors in their terrific strife on the Tongue river with the heroic
Custer and his gallant "six hundred."
This pencil, which brings back the "by-gones of Detroit" forty
years ago, remembers no such scene in the past, and it trembles even
now with the wild excitement of that spirited struggle-and those
shouts and cheers, that joyous, heaven-ringing applause. How the
Detroit river, as blue as the straits at the Golden Horn; as gorgeous
and beautiful as the Golden Gate in the tranquil sea-did respond and
laugh in hearty conjunction with those bright, beaming, rosy-cheeked
girls; and how these old gray hairs did curl and tremble, with the fuitile
wish that they were young again, now, as in the by-gones-and the vain
thought that our antiquated Detroit Boat Club might once more pull
an oar before such a congregation, and win a prize; to be petted and
rewarded by the cheers and smiles, the plaudits and praises of such a
vast crowd of brave men and sweet women.
The only reward that these young conquerors obtained was a prize
to be kept as the crown of olive was after the Olympian games, and
the return home of those aquatic heroes was like unto that of the
Boys 'in Blue on their return from the battle fields of the Republic,
and in painting, in poetry, in The Daily Free Press, of Detroit, and
the press of our nation, their deeds and conquests, their achievements
and victories are embalmed in the hearts and memories of our whole
people. " True it is, and pity 'tis 'tis true," that our old Detroit Boat
Club carried off no prize in that grand regatta, received no cheers and
won no crown of olive; had no smiles from youth and beauty, but like
a dear venerable mother and grandmother of the "by-gones," it was
proud to remember that but for its early efforts no club would have




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

369

been organized, no regatta have come off; no prizes have been won; no
applause have been heard, and that it now pledges with renewed zeal,
new coaching and training to beat the whole sporting world at the
next grand regatta in Detroit.
No. XI of the " By-Gones" will embrace life photographs of the
by-gone merchants of Detroit and their young successors, men of 1832
to 1836.
No. XI.
THE BY-GONE MERCHANTS.
SOME FORTY YEARS AGO.
Old time moves its hand backward on the dial plate to 1833; the
morning of the 14th of May, when youth sat at the helm, hope spread
her sails and passion steered the way of the young adventurer to the
then "Far West "-from   Canandaigua, "Old Ontario," to Michigan;
and up and down the broad avenues Jefferson and Woodward, and
along Larned, Woodbridge, Congress and Griswold streets, the young
emigrant with eager eye, studies the shops, the stores, the trading
houses, the saloons, the eating houses, the market places and the
markets of Detroit, and peers in here and stops there to study the
faces and manners, the stocks in trade, the articles of barter and
exchange which the merchant princes of that day-the old traders and
manufacturers-offered in the market.
And memory, today, will renew and restore some of these most
interesting and intelligent merchant princes, who before this May,
1833, have by daily toil, by strict honesty, and the utmost economy,
accumulated what, even in these fast days, would be considered large
fortunes, and which, seeking investment in the old French farms of
Detroit, left such large estates as the Campaus, Morans, Desnoyers,
Beaubiens, Williamses, Conants, Coopers, Cooks, Jones, and all that
set.
THE LONG, LONG WEARY WAY.
Bear in mind, please, you young merchants, that in those "by-gones"
a trip to Montreal or New York, to purchase a stock of goods, con47




370.

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

sumed, from the hour of setting out to the arrival of the stores, from
three to six months; that the purchaser must leave here in February,
cross Canada in the old French "carryall," and after some two or three
weeks reach the marts of commerce, either in Montreal or New York,
whence all the supplies came; that then in the spring, after the ice had
gone from the Hudson river, these goods must travel on the Erie
canal (after 1826) and reach Black Rock some time in June, when
they would be shipped on the old steamers like the Ontario, the Clay,
Sheldon, Niagara, Thompson, and Pioneer, and would not, even with
their speed, reach Detroit before midsummer; while anterior to 1826,
when the Erie canal was first opened, they were wagoned from Albany
to Buffalo by ten or twelve horse teams attached to huge covered
wagons with tires as broad as the brim of a. Quaker hat, traveling in
grand caravans of a hundred in line, and which consumed from one
month to six weeks in their transit to Buffalo. Of course stocks of
goods in those early days were laid in for a whole year, and were
bought so late as in, 1836 from Pearl street merchants, at three, six,
nine, twelve, eighteen and twenty-four months' credit, which was very
rarely even abused or betrayed by these old merchants, whose shades
are here gathered around this pencil, chatting, smiling, and laughing over
a memory that mirrors them, all their persons, characters, habits,
dress, and address-as if today were that same bright, beautiful May
day forty-four years ago.
In those by-gones respect to age and veneration thereof, was taught
to all the young and it was beautiful to see youth and beauty clustering around the grandfathers: and grandmothers of those. old Detroiters,
and joining in all the hilarity, the frolics and the dances, where beaux
of eighty and ninety years danced the minuets and contra-dances and
Yirginia reel with blooming, beautiful young girls of sixteen to eighteen.
So we begin with our visit today, as in duty bound, in the order of
age, and pay our respects as we pass along, not in order of success
and wealth, but in that of time, who furnished us his calendar. On
the corner of Bates street and Jefferson avenue we call and find
PETER DESNOYERS,
the same of whom    we have hitherto spoken, with cheeks like the
moss rose of summer, eyes sea blue, and that genial, sunny 'smile, and
here he is. Coming in you can find all kinds of French and Indian
goods, Mackinaw blankets in grand perfection, rifles, guns and pistols of
all sorts; calicoes, beautiful, dashing, but all decidedly Frenchy; beads
of all kinds for young girls, matrons, grandmothers, and Indians;.




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

371

rosaries of every kind, price and shade; moccasins beautifully ornamented, boots, shoes, sugar from Mackinaw; hardware of every shape,
and a general stock, such as in those "by-gone" days were always
here. But "Grandpapa" Desnoyers is now very gray, stoops a little
and laughs a great deal, is rich, and so this shop demands little of his
time, and was soon swept away by the grand rush of young business
men from the east to the west.
Crossing the avenue to where now stands the Williams block we find
BARNEY CAMPAU & CO.,
the partner being Gen. John R. Williams, both straight as arrows,
both very tall, and very talkative; both perfect gentlemen of the
olden time, who always saluted their friends with an earnest, bon jour,
bon jour, mon ami, all ladies by lifting the hat from the head, and
paying the same honors to the bishop, priests, judges, and officers of
the army; both capital business men, who for half a century bought
their business supplies from Montreal and Quebec, and sold them here
to les habitans, the bons citoyens of France, and the pioneers from the
States. Barney Campau was a hard working old Frenchman, while,
GEN. JOHN R. WILLIAMS,
was a most precise, dashing, elegant old gentleman, who, in perfect
dress, an elegant gold headed cane or in the full dress of a brigadier
general of the militia, attracted the attention of all the boys and the
raptures of all the young ladies fifty years ago. That he was held in
high esteem by all the citizens is evidenced by the fact that he was six
times elected mayor of Detroit. He also commanded the contingent of
troops from eastern Michigan in the Black Hawk War. They both
worked very hard, lived very well and hospitably to a period of life past
eighty and then died, leaving unto their families rich legacies, and
their undivided estates today would  compare well with the young
millionaires of 1832-36, of whom by and by.
But here comes along the street
SHUBAEL CONANT,
of the firm of Mack & Conant, a Vermonter, now well on to fortyeight, fully six feet high, a massive, well-built old gentleman. His
hair is very white, his cheeks, too, very red.
His large, gray eye tells of energy and courage, while his mouth, full
of superb teeth, expresses firmness, persistence and success. His arms




372

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

are long, hands very large. His feet are large, and whenever he puts
down his foot there it stays. A long time ago he came from Windsor,
Vermont, and backed up by Thomas Emerson, a veritable curiosity, a
banker, a fur dealer, merchant and everything else.
Conant & Mack have dealt largely and successfully in furs, have made
money, and Mack has gone to Pontiao, Oakland county, while Conant
is nursing his vast real estate, preparing to build the Michigan
Exchange; going out to the ten thousand acre tract to shoot deer and
wild turkeys; attending all the prayer meetings in Parson Well's -old
Presbyterian Church, for like Solomon of old, he has, after a long life
full of the good things of life, now found in old age, that all is "vanity
and vexation of spirit." Conant sat at the head of the table of the
Michigan Exchange until he was nearly ninety years of age, and not
unfrequently, at eighty years of age, striding his old gray mare, rifle
in hand, and, on very cold winter days, beating up the whole ten thousand
acre tract for deer and wild turkey. But finally the trumpet sounded
and dividing his large estate among the children of his brother, for
he was a sturdy old bachelor, and left no children, he answered roll
call, and leaving on earth no blot on his name, he went to join his old
Detroit comrades in their happy hunting ground, where all is peace
and rest.
Some years before him, his old patron,
THOMAS EMERSON,
the unique, of Windsor, Vermont, preceded     him.   His personal
appearance and address was the duplicate of old Mr. Pickwick, blue coat,
brass buttons and gold headed cane, while he himself, was the most
testy, phthisicky, nervous, excitable old gentleman, that ever lived, and
when his "red ribbon" was off, as was very often the case, the wealthy
old banker would dance and rave like a madman at any losses or
delays in business. He had a customer here,
THOMAS PALMER,
of the firm of J. & T. Palmer, the exact opposite, "Uncle Tom," as
everybody called Mr. Palmer, was a huge Vermonter quite six feet
in height, weighing over two hundred pounds, with a very red face, watery
eye, over which hung a pair of steel mounted spectacles, through which
he scarcely ever looked. His movements were slow and sluggish; his
conversation was pleasant, but very quiet, and he took everything very
easy and quiet; especially business, trade and payment of debts. He




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

373

was a most honest and upright man, dealing in everything but money,
which he seemed really to contemn. Furs, rat skins, coon skins, skunk
skins, beaver, otter, fox and wolf skins, shingles, lumber lands, lots and
mortgages; whitefish, salt, apples, and peaches, everything that walks
on the earth or swims in the lakes, "Uncle Tom" Palmer would buy
or sell, provided the boot, as he called it, was paid in dicker, and he
waxed and grew fat and old, and when he died, left a large estate to
his heirs. But while the inventory of his estate showed property of
all and every kind, there was but a small amount of cash.     He
dickered on to the very last, and, if he left a last will and testament,
he disposed of everything which man can use, save only money.
"UNCLE TOM'S BOND."
Well, among the estates of Thomas Emerson, banker, etc., in Windsor, Vermont, in 1834, which was dated way back to the oldest
by-gones, on which there were many indorsements of payments made
as below:
Received on this bond January, 1820, in coon skins ------$100 00
Received on this bond January, 1821, in shingles -------50 00
Received of Thomas Palmer May, 1831, in fish-----------100 00
Received of Thomas Palmer May, 1832, in lath and boards 75 00
And so on, but the last two years there were no payments.
Now in July, 1834, there swept over Vermont, Windsor especially, a
wave of religion, and Thomas Emerson was one of the "brands snatched
from the burning." Immediately he became one of the most earnest
of all in that town, and turning his back on the gold and the silver of
his bank, he prayed earnestly, most zealously and most sincerely.
It will be remembered that, that same year cholera broke out with
absolute malignity here, cut up our people root and branch, and thirty
days decimated the population. On the 16th of August, 1834, thirtyseven persons died from this dreaded disease and everybody was horror
struck. That evening it happened that Harry Cole and another by-gone
met in Dr. Rice's office just in the rear of the now First National
Bank, to inquire what the news was; when Dr. Rice very emphatically
responded that everybody was dying and would die, that in 1832 he
had bled all his patients and cured them all "but this year" said he,
" every patient I have bled has died, and all my patients are dead."
Everything was very blue and silence prevailed until Cole drew from
his pocket the following extraordinary letter addressed to him by the
now pious and good Thomas Emerson:




374

374          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

WINDSOR, VERMONT, August 12, 1834.
Henry E. Cole, E2sq., Attorney at Law.
My DEAR HAiL-I am rejoiced to say to you, that the Lord hath been among
us here in Windsor; that a day of Pentecost is here,. and that there has been
an outpouring of the Holyý Ghost, and that I have been snatched as a brand
from the burning. "I am now laying up all my treasures in Heaven where neither
moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through and steal."
Oh, Hal! how I wish you and our old friend, Tom Palmer, might see the
error of your, ways. By the by, Mr. Palmer has not paid his interest on that bond
for nearly two years; now I learn that "the pestilence is stalking at noon-day"
among you, and we know not how soon you' may go. Mr. Palmei ought to settle that bond. You, and he too, ought to prepare for death, and he ought
certainly to settle that bond at once. Oh, Hal, if God would open your eyes;
and Mr. Palmer, surely he will pay the interest on that bond now. I pray
nightly and daily for you and Mr. Palmer; and trust he will pay the interest
on this bond.
That the Lord will guard and keep you, dear Hal, and my friend Palmer', is
our constant prayer; but do make him pay the interest on the bond. I will
take furs, shingles, lumber, apples, fish, or anything he has. God bless and preserve you both, but please do not let Mr. Palmer forget to pay the interest on
the bond.
Your devoted friend,
THOMýAS EMERSON.
With twenty-five cents postage prepaid, -this unique missive came,
after a week's voyage to Detroit. Harry Cole' and Thomas Palmer both
survived the cholera, and Emerson's bond was all paid and canceled
long before Mr. Palmer took his ticket of leave.
But we are still on Jefferson avenue and at the corner of Griswold
street, where Ives' bank now stands, Dean & Hurlbut, Jerry Dean and
CHAUNCEY HURLBUT,
are in the saddle and harness business, the latter of whom, a sturdy,
strong old by-gone, who, having become rich and a director in the
Second National Bank with all' its young and wealthy managers, tramps
on as forty-five years since, with a steady, quiet, old-fashioned pace,
with a kind word, a cordial shake of the hand and a warm greeting to*
all his friends.
Although   one of Detroit's oldest merchants, he is the       young est
Roman of them     all and is even now     the active man    as president
of  the   Water   Commissioners,    in  completing   Detroit's  last and
greatest works.    Chauncey   was once    a great fireman, wielded    the
trumpet and manned the brake with vigor; but the -new machines have
ended that long ago; and now a man of reputation, of wealth, of clean
hands and pure heart, he bides his time and works ýwhile he waits for




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

375

the wagon. His partner Jerry Dean, slipped his cable long ago, and
is now floating o'er unknown seas and fathomless oceans.
On the avenue, diagonally opposite that corner, is
DAVID COOPER,
that nice, precious old gentleman, whom accident brought across the
writer's path in April, 1876, about two months before his death. Those
same spectacles, which were there in 1833, were there on his nose, that
same wiry form; neat, prim, precise; dress, always black, always very neat;
the same earnest manner, the same quiet dignity, the. same strong,
Puritanic religionism marked him in that last day as forty-three years
before. He had grown very rich and accumulated bonds and riches up
to the millions; still that same plain old brick house on Michigan
Grand avenue was still his home, as it had been for half a century; its
modest furniture, orderly arrangement, and perfect neatness telling the
peculiarities of. its master. The quiet lady-like wife; the only son a
clergyman, well educated, studious, bard working, close, and economical,
like his father; the other brother, George Cooper, gone by an accident,
just after he came to manhood; all was like a change of scene at a
theater, as David Cooper stood in front of the beautiful monument to
the valor and. blood of our boys in blue, directly opposite that splendid
city hall, and discoursed on Detroit as it was that spring morning 1833.
He was ripe and ready, for during all his life, while he was close,
careful, economical-some would call him penurious-justice and truth
were his handmaidens, integrity and honesty were his jewels. For seventy
years David Cooper was a Detroit merchant, yet he never failed in
business, oppressed a debtor, or defrauded a mortal of one single penny.
A devoted religionist, he shaped his whole life in accordance with his
views and teachings, and exacted of others, so far as he could a conformity therewith. While he was not a gentle, yet he was a truly good
man, and if there is a heaven above us "and that there is all nature
cries aloud," then David Cooper is registered there in mercantile practice as "A No. 1."
But we cross Jefferson avenue again and here we salute and shake
hands with
TUNIS S. WENDELL,
an  old  Knickerbocker   from  Albany, very pale of face, looking
always wearied and sickly, a most careful, correct business man; but
timid, always scolding at fate, always afraid of banks, yet always speculating in their assets and bills, a man of weak constitution, vei'y




376

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

devoted to his business, but somehow, like "poor Joe" he could not
move on, and so, although a man of means, owning his own brick
house opposite the Exchange, and occupying, as his store, a brick building where the First National Bank now stands, he died after loosing
almost everything he had in the crash of the " Wildcat banks" of 1841,
and 1842, and of 1843. One of his sons went away from here and has
been lost sight of for many years; the other Capt. Charles E. Wendell,
one of Michigan's bravest sons, died gallantly on the field of battle
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."
But we have swung around the circle and are now at
J. L. KING'S
clothing store, corner of Woodward and Jefferson avenues, where on the
first day of life in our new home, in the basement, we took nice
coffee and pickled sheep's tongues with Capt. Charles M. Bull and
Frank Desnoyers; and today, in looking up a business man, we saw
apparently the same wild turkeys-, quails, partridges, and saddles of
venison which hung there forty-three years ago. But Mr. King, after
having clothed all the sailors, white and black, on the docks, all the
French from Ecorse, River Rouge, Sandwich Point- and Monguagon,
all the frogsters of Hamtramck and Springwells; after having encountered all the financial panics and bank failures from 1837 to 1877,
changed his place of business some time since, and still lives on earth
to sell clothing as of yore.
Half a block up the avenue was
FREDERICK H. STEVENS,
then a successful hardware merchant, then president of the Michigan
State Bank, who built the first very elegant brick dwelling on Jefferson
avenue, where Mrs. James A. Van Dye now lives, furnished it with
princely splendor, gave a grand house-warming in 1837; but afterwards
was swept away by the financial flood of 1844-5, and died in comparatively straitened circumstances. Next to him in the same block was
DARIUS LAMSON,
a strong, square, very hard-working, prudent, and very economical dry
goods merchant, who beginning there in 1818, kept on in the "noiseless
tenor of his way," always hard at work all the week, always in the
Presbyterian church on Sunday; whose unpretending home on the avenue
was always the seat of real hospitality without any of the flame and flash




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.37

377,of modern entertainment, but that hospitality that always had a plate
for a friend, an ho-nest shake of the hand for a neighbor,, and a
-cordial "God bless you" for those who met under his roof. He, too,
left a handsome esta~te for his heirs, some of whom with their children
make up a number of the families of Detroit today.
LEVI COOK.
One more call and our day's' visits are over. In a small wooden,
one story building, where Masonic hall now stands on Jefferson avenue,
between Griswold and Shelby streets, was the store of Levi Cook, a
perfect, childless old giant, some six feet three inches high, with a
bald head and with a wig always awry.- He was three times mayor of
Detroit; the Grand Master of the Masonic lodge; the Grand High Priest
of the chapter, a man who believed and practiced Masonry as it then
was, as a bond of fraternity, unity, and brotherhood of man; a roaring
whig, a good story teller, a very careful, prudent trader, who made money,
kept his money and his lots, and left a handsome estate to nephews,
nieces, cousins and kin, and then went to the Masonic heaven, " That
*house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."
And just at this moment plods slowly along, witl4 trembling steps,
sunken eyes and shriveled face,
JOHN ROBERTS,,long before 1833, engaged in hard work in Detroit, in the soap and
candle- business. The sun shines bright this morning, and he looks
around dazed and amazed like old Rip Van Winkle, after his return.from, the mountains, at the large banking houses, this new~ city hall,
and he seems lost in all this bustle and noise of today. He coughs
heavily, his eyes weep, and his voice trembles as he says: " I am -now
eighty years old, I am almost the sole survivor of those old, old merchants who were here long before your time. The others are all gone
and I must soon follow." A true Christian and an honest man, he is
ready and willing. "Let the drum- beat, his knapsack is swung."
We must pause here and reserve the generation of 1832-6,. the
McGraws, Buhls, Baldwins, Eatons, Sheleys, Farrands, Carpenters, and
all the other youngsters for our next, when like Othello, we "shallspeak of them as they are and ixiothing extenuate or set down aught
in malice."
But in taking leave of our old by-gone friends, let us not forget to
48




378

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

remark that not one of these men ever made a fraudulent failure, or
ever went into bankruptcy. They were humble men; but, thanks tG
God, they were all gentlemen.
No. XII.
BY-GONE MERCHANTS.
Once more time advances, and this is now May, 1836, and since our
last three of the most important and interesting years in the history
of Detroit and Michigan have intervened; and both have advanced
nearly a century in that seemingly -short space of time. First and
foremost, the convention of 1835, to form a constitution for the State,
has sat and the constitution been adopted. The election of State
officers, members of the legislature, and county officers, under the new
State government, has been accomplished, and the entire machinery of
the State has been put in motion, although not yet admitted into the
Union, and all these newly elected officers are only waiting for the
event to become possessed of all the honors and emoluments of their
varied positions, while Senators Norvell and Lucius Lyon, and Representative Isaac E. Crary are dancing attendance on congress, asking
in vain that Michigan shall be permitted to take her seat as the
youngest, fairest and brightest of all the daughters of the Union.
Another important event is just now being felt all over the great
west, and in Detroit especially, for the removal of the deposits from
the United States Bank in 1833, and their division and distribution
among the state banks by the order of President Andrew    Jackson,
and according to the creed and views of the great whig party, contrary
to the constitution and laws of the United States, but Gen. Jackson,
"by the Eternal!   has resolved to do it, and as he was the soul and
heart and head of the democratic party, they, to a man, not only
defended and justified it, but rejoiced over it.
The vast accumulation of deposits hitherto in one conservative
national bank, was distributed by Roger B. Taney, then secretary of
the treasury, among the pet state banks, all of which were owned and
managed by democratic bankers, and they were encouraged and advised
to furnish facilities to their customers and clients; and the result was
that paper money became almost as cheap as wild flowers on the




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.            3

379

prairies, and speculation of all kinds grew rife, especially in lands,
city lots, town plats, as since then in 1870-73, and prices of all kinds
advanced, even in wild lands, until prices that spring were as high in
Detroit as they are today, and property on Jefferson avenue and the
Cass farm was bought. and sold by the foot front as high as now.
The property opposite the Michigan Exchange was built by Messrs.
Trowbridge, Farnsworth and Col. Whiting, and rents there and under
the Michigan Exchange itself, were much higher than on this very
day. Myriads of capitalists rushed from the East, bringing money
which they put into wild lands all over the State, in fabulous sums,
and Horace H. Comstock, Justin Burdick, and even Arthur Bronson,
the closest, most penurious rich man in New York, bought lands by
the thousands of acres; and even in old-fashioned, quiet Detroit, all the
light headed and enthusiastic young men became crazed by the fortunes
made by the purchase and sale of unimproved real estate here in one
twenty-four hours. The walls of the Michigan Exchange, the National
hotel, the American hotel, Uncle Ben's, and all the other hotels of
Detroit, were papered over with plats, maps and diagrams of new
cities, from Lewis Goddard's city of Brest, clear over to Port Sheldon
on the shores of Lake Michigan; and Col. Edward Brooks as auctioneer,
and Major Stillson his great rival, sold each day towns, cities and lands
in which,like the "eye-water" of Col. Sellers, there were "millions
in it." And Stillson himself laid out a town on Lake Huron, called
White Rock, mapped it beautifully, and sold at auction a whole
village where a seventy-four gun ship could ride at anchor over the
chimneys of the hypothetical houses.
Men bought real estate and did go it blind as the sporting men
play poker. This real estate mania is exhibited in this most extraordinary
statement of the value of land sold at the land offices in Detroit alone:
In, 1833, $214,389.77; amount sold in 1836, $1,845,207.16; making only
in three years this difference, $1,630,817.39. While the other land
offices at Monroe and Kalamazoo were equal in their increase, and
Thomas C. Sheldon, receiver of public lands at the latter place, and
Dan Waters at Monroe, used to bring their money to Detroit to
deposit in the Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank of Michigan in great
bags, as they do wool now, sometimes counting up to nearly half a
million of dollars. Everything seemingly was on the mountain wave
of success, as in 1870-3, and one had only to obtain the refusal of a
piece of land on Jefferson avenue and to find a purchaser, who was
always at hand, to become rich in a single summer.
So wild and wayward did these purchasers become that between May,




380

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

1834 and May, 1836, even the writer, a young, curly haired enthusiast,
had made and had in the bank $17,000 on the purchase and sale of
lots in Detroit, when in no single case had the deeds been made to
him. But he had secured the refusal at a certain price, then sold it
at an advance and pocketed the difference. Of course all silly fellows'
heads were turned and the old "by-gone" felt that he was a second
Nicholas Biddle, and that in a short time his estates in Detroit would
equal the Astors of New York. So he used to fancy that he would
build and endow a university, found a hospital, or perform some other
equally benevolent feat.
Nearly everybody became wild and extravagant on the strength of
fancied wealth; at the hotels champagne took the place of water, and
bottles popped and cracked like pistols in California.  Horace H.
Comstock and other real estate rizillionaires drove $10,000 spans of
horses, and small brick buildings on Fort street were sold at higher
prices than the same property would bring today. While the sale by
Gen. Cass in July of this year, 1836, of his farm lots on ten years'
credit, brought prices as high as they would have done on the last fourth
of July. As an evidence of the prevailing madness, let it be stated
that in July, 1836, a company composed of Walter L. Newberry,
Morgan L. Martin, George B. Martin, John A. Wells, Win. H.
Townsend and George C. Bates, was formed to buy the iReeder farm
at Springwells, for $150,000, to lay out a city there, as a rival of Detroit,
make a grand shipyard there, and to make fortunes for all these young
nobs, but that same old Reeder title, still in the courts, prevented a
consummation of that grand financial scheme.
But while the streets were full, and the hotels full, and the land
offices were full of such financial sellers, the young merchants of
Detroit of that day, with here and there an exception, were level-headed
and being possessed of sterling principles, sound judgments, discriminating minds, they foresaw the future bankruptcy and explosion, of all
this speculative folly, and so they avoided it, as a tidy man would pitch
his tent and quietly settle down to their legitimate business; working
hard, living economically, eschewing all extravagance and prodigality,
turning neither to the right or the left, always paying as they moved
on, until Detroit today presents to the world a band of successful merchants and wealthy business men which has no equal either in Buffalo,
Cleveland, Toledo, Chicago, Milwaukee or any other city in the United
States. Is this exaggeration or is it reality? Is it fancy or is it fact?
Mark you now we confine ourselves to the young business men of 1832-6,
now gray haired, staid old millionaires of sixty-two to seventy years,




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

381

men who have, one and all achieved success, not merely in the acquisition of wealth, but also in everything else that they have ever undertaken to accomplish. We need not stop, today, to demonstrate the
practical philosophy of the remark that "nothing succeeds so well as
success," and that in this boasted land of liberty, where all are on a foot
of equality in the beginning, while estates are not entailed and cannot be
tied up beyond three lives, "the only standard of man's capacity is what
he finally accomplishes here during his life."  We all stand equal in
the race, and none but the wisest, the most industrious, the most honest and temperate win in the end. In casting your eyes today over the
wealthy, successful and really great men of this nation, you will find
'ninety-nine out of every hundred of them "self made men" like your
Detroit merchants, while here and there the son of some wealthy or
exalted family, like the Adams, the Winthrops, the Cushings of New
England, the Astors and Vanderbilts of New York, may take up the
lines and business of their fathers and carry them on successfully.
Emerging now from the basement of the old Bank of Michigan, four
doors east of King's corner, where the office of Cole & Porter was, and
had been for years, and turning toward the Michigan Exchange, the
first mercantile house of importance in 1834 was that of
Z. CHANDLER.
Mr. Chandler was then just of age, was very tall, as now, and had come
from  New Hampshire to begin the journey of life.    Of course he
brought with him energy, life, industry, and a thorough training in
the New England school of business and morals, and also a small patrimony, which was subsequently increased by the death of his brother,
who died young of consumption. No man ever devoted himself to the
du-ties of his business, and all the stern demands of youth, in a new
country, more zealously than he did. Sleeping in his store he was up
early always, worked late, was economical, prudent and energetic during
the week days, was always in his seat at the Presbyterian church on
Sunday; was an active and zealous worker in the Young Men's Society and all literary and moral enterprises; made a large business
acquaintance all over the territory; was never a moment away from the
counter during business hours; sold rapidly; selected his goods with
skill and taste and of course grew, day by day, in the confidence and
credit of business men, and in the good will of his neighbors and
friends. So he continued, year by year, to expand and enlarge his
business. And foreseeing the growth of Detroit and Michigan so early
as 1837, he began to invest his surplus accumulations in real estate all




382

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

around the four corners at King's, buying out the Brewsters, Brooks
and Halschom and all the other neighbors, who, becoming embarrassed
by their speculations, were daily caving in; so in the progress of a few
years he owned some dozen or more business houses, all around the four
corners, which cost him a mere bagatelle, and which he retains even
today as a part of his accumulated wealth. All his habits of life were
those of a thoroughbred New England youth. He was strictly temperate and no man did more to help build up his church, establish its
Sunday schools, its hospitals, and to expand its benevolent institutions
than he did. He was then no politician, but an earnest whig, and all
the energies and zeal of his life were directed to one grand object,
success in business; and that he soon attained, and as he grew older,#
and the State of Michigan advanced, his business steadily increased
until its area embraced the entire peninsula, and his sales increased by
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In the midst of the wild speculations of all the world around him,
like the. pilot at the wheel, he kept his eye always on the compass,
never bought nor sold anything on speculation, touched no real estate
except that which was improved, and which he always bought- at bedrock prices for cash in hand. Of course such a business, like jealousy,
grew and made the very food it fed on; and so Chandler's wealth
enlarged its area every year until he entered the political arena in
1856, when the management and mantle of all his business affairs fell
upon the shoulders of Allen Shelden, a boyish, smooth-faced, clever gentleman, whose activity, zeal and business skill more than equaled that of
his teacher, and who, during the war, as the sole managing man of Z.
Chandler & Co., more than tripled the old business and its profits, and
who, today, is one of the most respected, esteemed, successful merchants
of all the younger class of Detroit. Indeed no man in business today
among the merchants of Detroit, ranks higher in every respect than
Mr. Shelden.
Crossing Woodward avenue in the old Dequindre block we at once
encounter the sign and place of business of A. C. McGraw, a practical
shoemaker and shoe dealer, who was born and bred in Orange county,
New York, and, having a good common school education, had looked
away through the future and saw in Detroit the place where fortune
awaited him; and so he landed in Detroit in 1830 and at once went to
work at his business to accumulate capital by industry and economy.
But he builded better than he knew, and in the three years that
preceded 1833, when this old pencil first made its stake in Detroit, he
had gained the entire confidence of the community, a credit equal to




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

383

that of any man, and had accumulated quite a snug sum, all of which
went into his business, and which of course grew day by day as
Detroit and Michigan advanced in commerce and manufacture. In
that same store, on the ground near where Horace Hallock & Co., now
have their clothing store, for many a long year, A. C. McGraw traveled
steadily on, bending all his energy and devoting all his time and talent
to the pursuit of his business, watching the markets and studying the
growth and outcrop of his new home.
He was not only an excellent business man, industrious as the suni,
prudent and economical, but he was then and has continued to be
through a long and most success ful business career, a consistent,
devoted Christian, always temperate to the last degree, never in his
life for a moment indulging in dissipation of mind or body, but devoting all his time not actually occupied in his business to the reading
and study of the best books, to the most regular and earnest devotion
to the Presbyterian church, its schools and all its benefactions. And
while an earnest whig and thoroughly acquainted with the politics and
politicians of the land, yet never soiling his hands in the dirty pool of
partisan schemes, never seeking or accepting office of any kind. Each
succeeding year McGraw became better known, his credit and business
more enlarged and his income multiplied, and without one dollar of
patrimony or one penny of aid from any human being he has grown
and enlarged his old business until today the house of McGraw & Co.
manufactures and sells boots and shoes all over the northwest to the
extent of three-fourths of a million of dollars, and employs labor by
the hundreds. Not only this, but as his advance in life and wealth
came to him, he built and occupied a quiet, elegant American home.
He educated all his children with the utmost care in this country, then
spent with his family a long period in Europe, in Berlin, where he
was the guest and friend of the American minister, and with his
family he has traveled all over the civilized parts of Europe and
Africa, and recrossed this continent at least twice, so that he knows
today all that is interesting of his own country, and is familiar with
all the institutions and objects of interest in Europe. A large family
has sprung unto him, and they have all had the benefit of good
domestic training at home, access to the very best schools here and all
the benefits of visits and life in Europe, and today there is no black
sheep in all that flock. One son on the shores of the Pacific faithfully
performed the duties of United States District Attorney for Oregon,
another has now become eminent in Detroit as a surgeon, while two
more at the right and left hand of their gray haired father, belong to




384

384          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

the firm of A. C. McGraw & Co. If success in the acquisition of
wealth, the attainment of an unsullied character, a credit untarnishedby a single act of dishonesty, a reputation as unspotted as 'the blad&
of Damascus, hands unsoiled by one spot of political dishonesty, a.
mind thoroughly stored with all the books and information appertainingto his pathway in life, be evidence of wisdom, then A. C. McGraw may
go to sleep in Elmwood and have this inscription on his tombstone
"Sacred to the memory of a man who achieved success in everythinghe undertook." Wealth has not spoiled or changed him; he is neither
a miser nor a tyrant, but now, as forty-five year s ago, a plain, staid,.
industrious, hard-working, honest, temperate American citizen, whom
any minister of ours in all Europe might be glad to present to' the
crowned heads of the world, as one o'f the very best specimens, of a.
true American merchant, manufacturer and mechanic. But we pass on
to Jefferson avenue, just below the store of A. C. McGraw & Co., and
here we stop and peer in through the window, and there hard at work,,
busy as bees, are two young men, only a, year or two since from
Pennsylvania, who are destined to write their names all along the.
future of Detroit in splendid huge warehouses, great mercantile.
establishments on Woodward avenue or Jefferson avenue, sturdy and
massive banking houses and insurance offices all along Griswold -street,.
and they are the brothers
FREDERICK BUHL AND CHRISTIAN BUHL.
They are, "hat and cap manufacturers" and subsequently, like old.
John Jacob Astor, they becam~e successful fur dealers.
Down in the old Kercheval house on Woodbridge street, below' and
back of the Michigan Exchange, they have thei r great manufacturing'
hat shop, and if you pass there on a dark night, at any hour earlierthan 12 o'clock you will see a huge fire, a furnace and all the material
and machinery of hat dyeing and manufacturing, and Chris. Buhl with
his strong armas trimming and scraping furs, and going through the.
entire process of hat manufactu.ring, while Frederick Buhi is always in
the shop on the avenue, from early morn to late at night, supplyingcustomers with hats, and all the materials and trimmings appertaining
to the business. Frederick Buhl is a spare, quiet, cool man, perfectly
absorbed in his business, while the younger onle, Chris., is a strong,.
active, go ahead, outdoor fellow, and conjointly they make a perfect
duet in business, the one managing, superintendling and in person
manufacturing all kinds of goods belongring to their business, and theother making sales in Detroit and visiting New York, in the purchase



SBY-GONES OF DETROIT.

385

of new supplies. Both of them are very active, thoroaghbred and
devoted business men. And so they prospered and grew, and never
amidst all the changes and chances of a deranged currency did they
touch bottom, or suspend their straightforward business. Nor were
they ever seduced to turn to the right or the left from their legitimate
business. No speculations, no promised profits, in real estate, or in
furs, or in anything else, could bend them a hair's breadth from their
daily, hourly and yearly track. So they both stepped up the ladder as
firmly as the hodman does and each year their old business extended
its area until they became the leading Detroit house in all that branch
of business. Then C. H. Bahl, anxious to out-strip his old partner,
went into the iron business, having bought out with poor Charles
Ducharme the old stand of A. H. Newbould & Co.; and then and during the war have his gains accumulated until he is now a millionaire,
and one of the very largest and most successful merchants in Detroit;
and today he may be found, as in 1834, at early morning and long
evening at work in the, counting room or in his splendid buildings all
over Detroit.
Years ago they both bought real estate-only with their surplus
gains-improved that property, with their accumulated earnings, and
today every foot of it is worth many times its cost. All their business
transactions have turned to gold, and there has been no break in their
chain of success. Why? Simply because they have always, everywhere
attended personally to their business, and never trusted to another what
they could do themselves. Clerks, accountants, apprentices and all
employ6s always work with, not under them.
And so all moves on like a patent lever watch. Close, economical,
prudent to the- last degree, no man ever saw them in a drinking house,
riding after fast horses, or building or occupying extravagant and
foolish places. They have always, too, maintained and preserved their
mercantile and business credit and integrity as pure and unsullied as
the chastity of Caesar's wife. And in all their history while money
getting, they have always kept their hands clean and their characters
" sans peur, sans reproche." Rich, very rich, they have become. They
are careful and economical to the last degree, but no man ever questioned their justice, their integrity and their honor. But these by-gones
grow and we must pause.
49




386

386BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

No. XIII.
BY - GONE MERCHANTS.
June, 1836. It is still the year, of jubliee, to Detroit and Michigan.
Every steamer that lands at our docks is over-burdened with its freight
of living, moving, human' beings,, and they arrive some. two or three each
day. The roads from Detroit in every direction are whitened all along
with covered -wagons, crammed with women, children and furniture,
while cows, and sheep and horses follow on. The hotels are thronged
with an eager, excited crowd of strangers, all rushing about as, if afraid
Michigan would be bought out ere they had a chance to buy an acre;
and old Major Kearsley, receiver of public lands, at Detroit, is hustled,and jostled about on his wooden leg by one mad, crazy crowd of land
buyers, so that he goes back to his more substantial support-the
crutches. New brick stores spring up all along Jefferson avenue,- and
a vast cutting down and filling in of the Cass front. has begun, which will
end in giving 1,500 feet of new water front to Detroit, and adding
fourteen acres, to the Cass farm. Stage coaches, in the morning, by
the dozen, crowd around the Michigan Exchange, Uncle Ben's, and all the
other hotels, producing a revenue" of $92,000 in six months; and land
speculators swarm like bees all over the streets of Detroit. All goes'
"6merrie as a marriage bell," and we -will now watch these new young
merchants who have Just come to make new homes, or who, beginning
in 1830, have just started in the grand ýrace for fortune land fame, with
high hopes and earnest efforts to achieve success. And now, rushing
down the avenue at railroad speed for the St. Clair boat, 'we meet a
tall, strong built, very active young man,
ALANSON SHELBY,
'who, very stout and active, goes ahead as if he meant to win the race,
and he has done it. A large head, covered with black, stiff hair, an
aquiline nose, large blue eyes, very strong arms and limbs, a deep
guttural voice, outline this young lumberman, who has just come from
northern INew York toý take charge of " The Black River Steam Mill
Company," a company created by and working in, the pine forests of
St. Clair, on the capital of Capt. Thomas Perkins, a Boston. millionaire;
which company had erected extensive saw mills at Black River, pur-,chased pine lands by the thousands of acres, and is' already placing o n
the market immense quantities of lumber at prices'so small that they




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

387

soon prove a burden to the eastern capitalists, who have sent these
large sums so far away from Boston. But Yankees though they are,
they look clear ahead, and see, stimulated  by cheap   money the
immense rush to the west, the wonderful growth of Detroit, Pontiac,
Port Huron, Ann Arbor and such cities. This company adds to its
invested capital each year in dams, mills, machinery, boats, etc., many
thousands of dollars. And so Alanson Sheley, a sturdy, careful, earnest, go-ahead young man, with an uprightness and honesty that nothing
-could sway or bend, with pluck and vim, courage and backbone, that
never bowed nor bent to any one but God himself; with "an eye that
never winked and a wing that never tired" when duty called to action
or labor, with a religious character as fixed, and puritanical principles
as unyielding anc& exacting as Cromwell himself, Sheley was put at the
head of the great enterprise and vested with absolute power by its
eastern owners, to manage and work in the very best manner for the
interest of his employers, and he did just what he was employed to do.
Up and down the Detroit river, day after day, on the old steamer Gen.
Brady and the Macomb, he vibrated between the lumber mills at Black
River and the lumber yard at Detroit, rushed up his supplies, brought
down his logs and lumber, and keeping his eye steadily on all his work,
he speculated in nothing but how best to promote the welfare and to
make money for the stockholders of the Black River Steam Mill
Company all his week days, while each Sunday, in the Presbyterian
church, early and late, he was always on hand, singing and praising
God with the same force, zeal and energy as on the week days he
rolled logs to the mill or made the dust fly from the buzz saws and
*uprights in the mills. But the flush times of 1836 soon ended, and
lumber, like everything else, ceased to pay, and Captain Tom Perkins,
too, weared of paying taxes, making advance~ and spreading out capital
so far from Boston, so they offered to sell out to Sheley and another,
at $100,000, which offer was accepted, notes were given for the
property, all of which were met promptly at the day of maturity, and
the purchasers are supposed to have realized as much more by that
one operation. The lumber business, however, dragged for a long time,
so Sheley for a time retired, but afterwards, in 1859, went into the
drug and oil business as one of the firm of Farrand & Sheley, now
Farrand, Williams & Co., always, however, keeping his eyes wide open
for an investment-not to speculate. And so, in 1852 just a quarter of a
century since he bought, away out of town, on Woodward avenue, five
acres of land at $5,500 cash, which has grown up today to a value of
twenty times its cost, and on which he has erected a neat, elegant,




388

388          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

American gentleman's house, where every comfort and elegance is.
found, and where, with his robust, snow haired wife, he entertains with
all the simplicity of a Yankee Puritan, combined with the hearty, oldfashioned liberality and hospitality of the pioneers. Always a whig,
his house is ornamented with steel engravings of Clay and Webster
both. Since their death he has been a most decided republican, has
twice been State senator, has served several terms as alderman from
the sixth ward, was for years a'member of the- sewer commission, was.
a member of the board of review, and has been a power in republican politics. He -never smoked a cigar, took a chew of tobacco or
tasted, touched or even looked on the cup when the wine is red; but
totally abstinent from  all follies and vices, he has grown now into a.
sturdy, wealthy, old-fashio~ned merchant.
The business of his firm is carried on in an immense building
erected by the owners when property was less valuable than at present,
and to which they have attracted a custom from all parts of the State,
and where, by hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth each year, drugs,
oils and paints and all such merchandise is handled. But he has.
traveled all over his own country, explored all the west, visited California and the Pacific coast. Spent ten days with his eyes wide open,,
his ears, too, in Utah, talked by the hour with old Brigham Young,
made his notes and observations, and today comprehends the situatio n
there as well as if he had lived there years. He has grown very
stout, is still young and active, hears and sees everything, forgets
nothing. So we shall place him on the, right flank as orderly sergeant
of our by-gone merchants, to dress up this splendid company of Silver
Grays of 1832-6.
His partner,
JACOB S. FARRAND,
at that time was a clerk of Edward Bingham, dealer in drugs and
medicines, at 112 -Jefferson avenue, where for many a long year Mr.
Bingham, a most excellent, honest -man, conducted that busi~ness, until
the first of January, 1842, when his store was destroyed by fire and
he thus sustained a loss from which he never rallied, as he never
again went into business.
Mr. Farrand, however, was not with Mr. Bingham at the time of
this disaster, being then deputy collector of the port of Detroit under'
Col. Edward Brooks, a position which he held from 1841 to 1845, when,
under his own name, he went into the drug and grocery, business on
Woodward avenue, next door to King's corner.




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.38

389

In 1855 the firm became Farrand & Wheaton, William Wheaton
obtaining an interest which he retained until 1858, when he went out.
In 1859 Mr. Sheley took- an interest, and the firm name became
IFarrand and Sheley, since which time other partners have been added,and the name has been changed to Farrand, Williams & Co.
Mr. Farrand is and ever has been a stanch, temperate, industrious
man, ever prominent in all church and charitable work, a member of
the reunion of the old and new Presbyterian churches, and during the
past summer a delegate to the pan-Presbyterian council, which met in
Edinburgh, Scotland, in July, 1877, from whence he, with his family,
has but recently returned. He was a member of the executive
committee of the Young Men's State Tempe rance Society of which
Marshall J. Bacon was president, John Owen, district treasurer, iRev.
Robert Trumbull, who died last month in Hartford, corresponding
secretary, and Gov. Mason, Judge Hand, John Chester, and Asher S.
Kellogg were the committee. Farrand and Judge Hand are the sole
-survivors of the first temperance society ever organized in Michigan.
Of course Farrand is rich, president of the First National Bank, president. of the Michigan Mutual Life Insurance Company, director in the
Wayne- County Savings Bank," and in the Detroit Fire and Marine, and
the holder of other positions of honor and trust. He has been alderman from the fif th ward and acting mayor of the city, and has always
been a prominent and influential republican. He has a clear head, is
respected and esteemed by everybody, and has raised a family, " fit
body to fit head," in which there is no stain or spot.
But we hurry on, and down on the avenue, and at No. 82, just -above
the Michigan Exchange we see, in a large sugar cask, a young man,clad in a smock frock,.. with an iron shovel, at work emptying that cask
of sugar, as if his life was at stake. We approach him, his eye is
gray, too, his eyebrows shaggy, his voice deep, rather harsh,. all his
-nerves are like iron, and he digs and digs, as if the treasures of Capt.
Kidd were buried under that sugar. That is
JOHN OWEN,
the working, active, successful partner of Chapin & Owen, among the
very first drug, oil, and grocery merchants of Detroit. At this time
he was alderman of the first ward in Detroit, afterwards its mayor,
then State treasurer of Michigan for two or three successive terms,
always doing business for the public as he did for himself-on the
square, using the plumb line of honesty and the compass of truth as
his tools in trade. Dr. Chapin died of cholera in 1834, and John Owen




390

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

continued the business until he had acquired capital, when he became
president of the Michigan Insurance Company, and was engaged also
in large enterprises in lumber, carried on by Elisha Eldred and Wesley
Truesdail, under his eye and supervision. He, too, like all these
predecessors, save one, never drank, chewed, or wasted one moment of
time during the week, while on the Sabbath, in the Methodist church,
he taught a whole generation of Sunday school scholars as earnestly
and devotedly as if he were their real rather than their spiritual
father.
In the long by-gones, John Owen with Chauncey Hurlbut, organized, supported and ran the old Detroit fire department, and on the
top of a burning house, with his speaking trumpet as foreman, or on
manning the brakes, John Owen was just as earnest, active, and
persistent as he was on this June day, 1836, in shoveling up that sugar;
and during all his long and useful life he has never slipped or faltered or
stopped, and as you meet him  now, with scarcely a gray hair in hishead, walking a quick pace, very earnest, lithe and youthful in ~iis.
gait and action, you could scarcely believe that he was a man nearly
or quite seventy, who, had won in all the great struggles of life, and
had achieved, as he deserved, perfect success. Let him step to the,
front and align himself in this extraordinary company of by-gone
merchants, and dress himself by Alanson Sheley on the right, acting
orderly, and answer to the roll call when it 'is made.
Passing on to the corner of Jefferson avenue and Shelby street, we
find the firm of Webb, Chester & Co., wholesale and retail dealers in
crockery, in the corner of the Michigan Exchange, established as a
branch house of Webb, Douglass & Co., of Albany, in which
JOHN CHESTER
had been reared, and who came to Detroit in 1835 to establish this,
branch and carry on the business.
Henry L. Webb, of Albany, and his partner Douglass, had for many
years previous to 1835 built up a large and lucrative business there as
crockery dealers, had accumulated a large fortune, so they educated in
the business John Chester, a cousin of Mr. Webb, and sent him thus
early to Detroit. Mr. Chester was a punctilious and cultivated gentleman, a man thoroughly educated in his business, a most perfect and
elegant accountant, a well educated, old-fashioned merchant, not a mere
man of business, but a gentleman, familiar with books and affairs
generally; and he no sooner established himself and his business,
here than they became successful and he very popular. As an old




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

391

Brady Guard he was the neatest and "nattiest" of soldiers, was made
orderly sergeant, and always was minute and particular in all its
duties. He was a prominent Odd Fellow, an active and thorough
member of the first temperance society of Michigan, and very zealous
in the Young Men's Society, and indeed in all the institutions and
organizations to improve and to refine our people. For some years
he continued the firm of Webb, Chester & Co., and then sold out and
went on to the dock as one of the firm of Pease, Chester & Co., the
firm  being composed of Capt. Win. T. Pease, John Chester and
Tarleton Jones of Green Bay, a nephew of De Garmo Jones, which
new firm took the old business of De Garmo Jones & Co. on the
dock, and continued for several years.
In all his habits of life John Chester was correct, pure and strictly
temperate, and was the very soul of honor and chivalry, and although
he died early, in 1852, and left a reputation without one single spot
or blemish. No man ever heard John Chester utter a profane or
impure word; no man ever saw him in the slightest degree.affected by
wine or liquor; no man' on earth ever heard of any act of meanness or
dishonesty committed by him; but in all respects in business, at home,
in the world, in the sunshine of prosperity, and in the dark days of
disappointment and financial distress, which swept all over the Northwest, John Chester stood erect as a pure, good man.But here we are again at 110 Jefferson avenue, close to the Buhls,
McGraws and all the hard workers, and here we find
FARNSWORTH, MATHER & HALL,
in the old stand of Davis, Broadhead & Co., a new firm, B. S. Farnsworth, a very tall New Hampshire democrat, still living; Alonzo F.
Mather, and Amos T. Hall, the present and past treasurer of the
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad ever since its organization-a
man whose robust form, pure white hair, very rosy cheeks, and fortune
and character, make him a sort of lighthouse in Chicago, where nearly
all these merchants of his age have "caved."
Farnsworth came from New Hampshire and brought some capital;
Hall was the son of old Dr. Hall, a bright, smart young man, and so
they bought out Phineas Davis & Broadhead, old Boston merchants,
and soon became successful merchants. And now, after these long
forty-four years, they, too, stand firm and erect, as men who always
paid all their debts, had no vices of any kind, were industrious, devoted'
to their business, and keeping along the cool, sequestered vale of




392

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

life, they are men respected and ready when called to go, leaving
behind them no enemies, no frauds, no drunkenness, no debaucheries,
no defalcations, no dishonor.
No. XIV.
BY-GONE MERCHANTS.
June, 1836. The times in Detroit are still booming, new  steamers
arriving daily, the crowds of immigrants swell like the wave of ocean
under the impetus of a volcano; and as we tramp along Jefferson avenue
the streets are more crowded with men and women and wagons and
carriages than today. So we 'resume our inspection of the by-gone
merchants and begin with
JOHN & JAMES WATSON,
218 Jefferson avenue, in the block between Bates and Randolph streets
just adjoining the Williams block.
There we find a store full of general merchandise, marked so far as
the dry goods are concerned, by strong shades of red, white and blue,
and all the surroundings and infillings demonstrate the characteristics
of strong French tastes, while the room itself is crowded with purchasers,
nearly all women and children, who speak mostly the French patois of
that day and who come from Canada, the Rouge, Ecorse and Monguagon; while the two young owners and a host of clerks rush here
and there to serve them. Both these Brothers Watson are "native to
the manor born," they being connected on the Scotch side with the
Abbotts and Whistlers and all that set; while by marriage they were
members of the French families of the Godfroys, the Morans, and all the
ereme de la' creme of the upper classes of the old French regime.
John Watson, the elder of the two, was then about thirty, and James
say twenty-eight years of age. John was an earnest, active man,
thoroughly educated as a merchant here; was of sanguine, nervous
temperament; most industrious, temperate and careful in all his business;
while James, the younger brother was taller, very much more slow
and sedate; yet he, too, was always at work, always at his business,
and during that and subsequent years the sales by this firm must have
been very large, and as their customers, although slow, were all small




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.33

393

real estate holders and farmers, they never lost much by bad debts.
During the ups and downs from 1836, clear over the dark ditys of
1841-45, they continued in business, when James Watson sold out,
went to Bay City, then a wilderness, became engaged in the lumber
trade, where he accumulated a large estate, and today is a retired, old
by-gone business man of Detroit, who has a sufficient fortune, a spotless reputation, and all that one, may win in the pursuits of life begun
at that early day.
John Watson, the elder brother, married as his 'second wife the
daugphter of Peter Godfroy, of the lower part of the city, through whom
he became the owner of a part of that Godfroy farm, on which he
built a handsome residence, and made other real estate improvements,
exhibiting taste and enterprise; but he died many years since lamented
and respected by all. These two young men, like all the other by-gones
on our muster role, were most industrious, attentive to their business,
avoiding speculations in real estate, strictly temperate in all their
habits, economical in their style and mode of living, and so take
their positions in the front rank of business men.who achieved success
for themselves. They were devoted Catholics in religion, and like all
that class of people they lived their whole lives in strict conformity
with their creed, and the death of John and the removal of James
left a void in the Catholic church of Detroit. But we hurry on down
Jefferson avenue, and just below old Joseph Campan's old, old home,
at No. 86, we find another example of the native born boys of Detroit,
DANIEL J. CAMPAU,
who, although the son of the richest man in Detroit, broke away from
his father's restrictions, and beginning life for himself and without any
aid or assistance from the old gentleman, who was very queer and very
careful of his property, young Dan struck out for himself, and then
not more than twenty-five years of age had opened a dry goods store
where he, too, like the "Watson's, was doing a large business with the
old French people and the tide of new comers now crowding the streets
of Detroit. Those who see Mr. Campau now, a confirmed victim of
malpractice in the medical profession, a decrepit, prematurely old man,
unable to get out of his carriage, can hardly imagine that he was quite
tall, straight as an arrow, active and thorough in business, with a large
blue eye, and very much of a dressy, fashionable by-gone merchant,
whose blue coat and brass buttons, white vest, black pants and gaiters
on Sundays and holy days, with his mauve colored gloves attracted the
50




394

'9BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

attention of all the young French ladies of the city, and whose presence ond address were striking. His strange old father remonstrated
with him for his venture in commercial life, and never gave him
pecuniary aid or assistance, but Daniel J. Campan was industrious,
temperate, economical, intelligent and in. this year, 1836, he ranked as
A No. 1 among his business friends and mercantile brethren. Not
only this, but he was very popular among all the people of Detroit;
was twice or thrice elected as treasurer of Wayne county, was a military aid to the commanding general of this division, was elected a
delegate to the national convention that nominated Gen. Pierce, and in
all these positions he discharged all the duties of his office with honor
and fidelity. He never stole any of. your public money, he never carried
off your coupons, never soiled his hands with public property, but in
office, as in his mercantile business, he kept his conscience void of
offense, and gave back all the property and money inirusted to him
by his constituents. When a raid was made on his father's estate,
after the old man's death, he rushed to the front and by his energy and
ability saved his brothers and sisters from the nets of the legal fishermen
and the toils of the hunter; and while his body has been left a mere wreck
of misfeasance among the medicos, yet his reputation, his character, and
his conduct, remain pure, clear, untarnished and unsullied, and no man
can join hands with him now without realizing that he was and is one
of the fairest and best specimens of the by-gone French merchants of
forty years ago. Of course Campau, like all these merchants, was always
temperate, attentive to his business, economical in all his habits of
living, and but for the mishap to his health he would today have been
a millionaire alongside of Chris. Buhl and that class of the most
wealthy, enterprising, and go-ahead men of Detroit.
But we cross the street, go down towards the old Mansion House,
and here where business seemed then to be tending we find
A. E. MATHER,
No. 17 Cass street, a large crockery merchant who came here early in
1834 or 1835, and subsequently did business on a large scale on
Woodward avenue. Coming here from     Vermont at so early a day, he
soon became successful; purchased real estat6 in large quantities,
erected many buildings, and seemed on the highway to a large fortune.
He was a very quiet, retired gentleman, a very active and leading man
in the Presbyterian church. Earnest in his support and endeavor in
the Sunday school, and faithful and upright in all his dealings, he
won high standing as a merchant and business man, but in the revul



BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

395

sion of prices in real estate he suffered in common with all who bought
and sold, and so did not achieve great wealth; but he always maintained his integrity and his character entirely unsullied; paid all his
debts, avoided all the blandishments of vice, was industrious, careful
and temperate to the very last, and so left a right to stand in, line
with the Detroit merchants of 1836, and to a record for strict honesty
and sterling integrity.
But we return to Bates street and Jefferson avenue, and here at
once we see the sign of
HENRY P. BALDWIN,
boot and shoe dealer who has just-late this year-opened his business
in Detroit.
Born in Rhode Island about the year 1814, our newcomer was
educated in boyhood for a profession, but ere he had completed it his
father died, and- his uncle, being a business man, prepared him for a
business life, and he took quickly and kindly to the change. He had
hardly passed the age of manhood when the rise and growth of Detroit
attracted his attention, and having a most excellent character and
credit, he came here with a large stock of goods, and at once rushed
into a successful business. He was in person a blonde, with light
hair, light eyes, light complexion, very spare, very nice in dress and
very precise in address. In manners he was bland, gentle, and genial,
"commingling the suaviter in modo with the fortiter in re."  In his
heart he was most benevolent, so that his success was assured ere he
began. No sooner was his store opened and business crowding around
him than he rushed up into the Episcopal church, took a class in
Sunday school, constituted himself a missionary all over Detroit, and
next to his business he has for forty-five years been not a mere auxiliary, but a mighty power in that conservative sect, and from Detroit
to San Francisco his benefactions are displayed in new churches,
chapels, Sunday schools, and even in Utah, a beautiful and expensive
church owes its success to Governor Baldwin. Not resting upon the
doctrine of Episcopacy that "the laying on of hands will convert sinners
into saints by the mere power of the Holy Ghost," he has always put his
hands in his pocket and has contributed more effectually to the rise and
growth of that church than any other living man in the Northwest. In
Detroit he built, equipped, finished and fitted up one of the handsomest
churches and parsonage in all the west; and if by baptism and confir.
mation alone Episcopalians are assured of Heaven, then Gov. Baldwin
will ascend to its very highest seat.




396

396          BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

In the winter of 1860-1 Mr. Baldwin served as State senator, and as
chairman of the finaiie committee, -personally made the investigations
and wrote the report which exposed the disorganized condition of the
finances, and he it was who drafted and introduced the necessary bills
to perfect the financial reorganization which then took place. He was
also chairman of the investigating committee which exposed and sent
to the penitentiary, McKinney, the defanlting republican State treasurer,
Not only this, but the repnblican party during the war, needing an
honest man and a thorough business man to take the helm of State,
selected him as governor. Rie never sought the office, but the office
sought him. No man ever saw him. in saloons or lager beer shops
smoking and drinking to secure votes, nor using his wealth to buy the
assistance of rings or cliques, but he was the honest and best choice
of all that party and they were compelled to ask him to leave his
business and take care of theirs. He did it, and during the four years
of his administration no single man was ever appointed to office unless
"&honest and capable," and -no republican thief ever stole one dollar
from the treasury. In short he conducted the business of State as
he did his store in Detroit, and left office with clean -hands, no single'
ring except the people being around him.
At the special session of 1872, six days after he made the recommendation, the legislature passed and he signed the bills appropriating
$1,100,000 to finish the capitol building, which had been commenced
in accordance with the recommendations in his message of 1871, and
which, when finished, will be the most elegant public building-for the
money expended-which exists in this country.
His career has been in everything a triumphant success, and while
he has accumulated a very large fortune on earth, and is now building
avery large and palatial honse in Detroit, he has simultaneously laid
up huge treasures in heaven, "where neither moth nor rust doth
corrupt nor thieves. break through and steal," and his bank account
there is as large as at the Second - National Bank of Detroit, while
heavenly mansions are all prepared and angels await to welcome him
thereý with their- benediction: "Well done, thou good and faithful
servant; thou hast been faithful over a few things, thou shalt be lord
over many things."
But just at the corners we meet one of the sturdy old by-gones, a
man very quiet but a mighty power in those days among Masons, in
the Mechanics' society, in the common council and elsewhere-Nathan
B. Carpenter, who for a great many years had plodded on, working
and saving money, buying lots here and there, until he had accnmu



BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

397

lated quite an estate. On all Masonic occasions he could be seen with
the immense Bible spread out in his brawny arms, the square and
compass lying thereon; and with Levi Cook, Dr. Whiting, Jerry
Moore, John' Farrar and all old Masons, he was always a devoted
brother. His son
WM. N. CARPENTER,
just about this time emerged into business, and on Jefferson avenue,
three doors above the old bank of Michigan, opened a large and
elegant stock of dry goods, selected with great taste, for the owner
was and has always been a gentleman of refined taste, great good
sense, and a most accurate, careful and upright business man, never
soiled by any bad'habits or- vices, but devoted to business and the
cultivation of his own mind and tastes and the happiness of his
family.
Leaving the dry goods business many years since, he became a manufacturer of tobacco on Woodward avenue, and of course like all other
men in that business he accumulated large profits, and soon became a
retired capitalist, but still is engaged in business quietly, and by no
means rusts out or lies on his oars. Mr. Carpenter-with Gov. Baldwin,
has always been a devoted churchman, has contributed both by precept and example and liberal donations to build up the waste places
of Zion, and can stand in the ranks of successful Detroit merchants of
forty years ago, whose lives have been ornaments to this city and
creditable to themselves.
His tobacco business descended many years ago to
JOHN J. BAGLEY,
a huge big man with a big body, head and heart, as Lincoln would
say; a great manufacturer of tobacco, and a great consumer thereof,
too, whose life is almost a romance. Coming to Detroit many years
ago very poor and penniless, with considerable picked up education,
great shrewdness, sleepless energy and pluck, he began life here in the
humblest employments, but he walked on steadily, in summer heat and
winter cold, until he became not merely a rich merchant, but the
successor in the executive chair of Michigan, of Governor Baldwin.
Ever since John Bagley had earned his first dollar, his triumph was
as certain as the rising and going down of the sun. Money rolled in
upon him in rivers, he built a splendid home in Detroit and proved
to be one of the very best governors Michigan ever had. He was not




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

merely honest-that of course-but he knew the infirmities of poverty
and the temptations that beset youthful criminals, and so he turned
his great head to 'the means and appliances of preventing crime and
of ameliorating its punishment in youths, and that most useful institution at Coldwater is the work of his big hands, and a thousand
amendments to the discipline and management of the penitentiary of
this State are the simple practical workings of Bagley. He has developed a power of public speaking. His address to the pioneers of
Coldwater is full of pathos, humor and touching allusions, while his
welcome to the national stove manufacturers was a happy hit, worthy
of any speaker. His manners are simple, brusque and plain; but the
grip of his hand and the jolly "How are you?" assure one that he is
a man of real heart, not a cold-blooded, scheming, sneaking politician,
and should the fortunes of political life place him in the senate of the
nation, he would be something besides a partisan and would do something there beyond the mere dirty work of distributing offices to his
pets and prot6g6s. With unsullied integrity, both in private as well as
in public life, and being comparatively a young by-gone, he bids fair
to live many years more, and to do in the future as he has in the
past-good unto all.
No. XV.
NEW   YEAR'S, 1836.
New Year's, 1836! How time, like history, duplicates itself! That
New Year's forty-two years ago was just like the New Year's of 1878,
only a little more bright, clear, and with the ground just enough
frozen to make walking or riding very pleasant with a light spring
overcoat; and New Years in these long by-gones, was the day above
all others when old Detroiters gave themselves up all day long to
visiting and having a happy, happy New Year.
From early New Year at 12 midnight, until 9 or 10 o'clock in the
morning, in all the streets of the olden times, the boys, armed with
pistols, crackers, guns of every calibre and size, small cannon and
everything else that would hold a cartridge, or would explode, were
summoned into service and one grand French feu de joie was fired 'all
over town, all along the river; and its reverberations were echoed and




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.39

399

re~choed from the shores at Windsor, and away along down to Springwells, to Sandwich opposite, and all along the river' banks, so that
sleep was ended the moment New Year's began. The French people
especially on these days-entered into the pleasures of New Year's with
a zest that no other people save the Chinese ever equaled; and Detroit
was always in all the early morning of New Year's a blaze of fire from
happy boys, and even exhilarated old Frenchmen. While the "Bon jour,
mon ami, " "Bon joutr, ma femme," had a softness -and power in their
tones that told that the heart of that day alway*s went with the hand,
and that the latchstring of every house and cabin-and not a stupid
basket-hung on the outside. Not only did the guns and drums of
those days usher in the New Year, but all the bells of all the churches
of old Detroit rang out their " merrie " peals, and with the first rays of
light the winter morning was made musical and melodious -from every
Catholic and Protestant bell of the then Village of the Strait~s.
Time, which changes- all things has changed Detroit much, and now
New Year's gropes silently and darkly into day; and the old inhabitants, having grown rich and proud, close their doo'rs, shut their hands,
hang out their baskets, and the churches all from their towers, in
solemn silence await the morning call to prayers, and the long and
muddy day drags along heavily, only here and' there relieved by the
loud frolics of a dozen or more young gentlemen, who are striving
hard to make it happy, happy New Year. "Old times are gone, old
-manners changed" but it is now 9 o'clock, a. in., 1836, and as
THE DUTIES OF NEW YEAR'S
in Detroit are arduous and exacting, we must begin early, keep on all
day -and end late, else some respected official, some old friend, some
young stranger in Detroit, shall be overlooked or forgotten.   So,
pursuant to an old custom, the members of the bar in squads meet.,
all in full dress coats, neatly gloved, at some one office, and start out
to pay-first, visits of official courtesy, then visits of fraternity, and
finally visits of real old-fashioned friendship, for in those days the
bar and bench of Detroit were a band of gentlemen, brethren, men
who were proud of their profession and full of fraternity, unity, and
esprit du corps; so we meet at Cole & Porter's office under the old
bank of Michigan, midway between King's corner and Bates street,
and here they arie-Henry S. Cole, Augustus S. Porter, Jacob M.
Howard, Franklin Sawyer, James A. V~an Dyke, Anthony Ten Eyck,
G. Mott- Williams, Daniel Fletcher Webster, John L. Talbott, Fisher
Ames Harding, Marshall J. Bacon and George C. Bates, all equipped




400 1

BY-GONES OF DETROIT.

according to law, and a jolly set, we sally out for the day. And first,
as in duty bound, we repair to the American Hotel, on the present
site of the Biddle House, where in an immense parlor and ante-room,
we make our grand salaam to his Excellency,
STEVENS THOMPSON MASON,
Governor of the State of Michigan-not yet admitted into the Unionand there the young governor, with his elegant old mother, his sisters,
Emily Mason, Kate Mason, afterwards Mrs. Isaac Rowland, Laura
Mason, afterwards Mrs. Chilton, assisted by Charles L. Whipple,
always in love with all three girls, received us with a hearty, joyous
"Happy New Year," that even now rings in one's ear-while Emily
Mason, now a silver gray maiden of sixty, at the head of a Catholic
literary institution in Paris, with the manners of a queen, the brilliancy
of a diamond and an intellect like a blade of Damascus, welcomed
us all; and with true Kentucky hospitality, we are made welcome
with apple toddy, egg-nogg, Jamaica toddy, old Monongahela, pure and
oily, wines of ait kinds, cold ham, cold turkey, tongue, pickles and
oysters, and everything that would tempt one to eat or drink. The
young governor is handsome, elegant and happy; and his mother and
sisters idolize Tom, and well they might, for today no man in
America has a brighter future before him than this then young
Governor of the youngest and brightest state then soon to be in the
Union. Having thus paid our respects to the commander-in-chief of
the State, we march on up to 308 Jefferson avenue, and there we enter
and are saluted by
GEN. HUGH BRADY,
straight as an arrow, brave as Coesar, pure as Washington, who stands
in full uniform, supported on the right by Capt. Backus, his son-in-law,
of the Fourth Infantry, also in full uniform; while on his left stand his
daughters, Mrs Backus, Mrs. Capt. Thompson, Cassandra Brady, afterwards Mrs. Judge Witherell, and Mrs. Samuel Preston Brady. And
on the splendid buffet lies his old sword, which saved his life at
Lundy's Lane, and the splendid one with gold scabbard, presented to
him by his native state, Pennsylvania; while these are again flanked by
pitchers of apple toddy, Jamaica toddy and all the then famed drinks,
which were always found on every gentleman's table in Detroit. No
one could look at Hugh Brady on such an occasion and not recall the
battles in which that old hero had won a fame as lasting as that of
Perry, Harrison, Macomb, Scott, Worth or Wool and not feel proud to




BY-GONES OF DETROIT.                    401
grasp his, hand and say "Gen. Brady, I wish you a happy New Year;
God blessyou;" and so we all feel honored in our call on such, a
man. And we pass on across Hastings street, and here at 312
Jefferson avenue we enter a neat, elegant, brick house, now the site of
Solomon Gardner's residence, and here in elegant simplicity and refined
taste we meet
GEN. FRANK LARNED,
paymaster United   States Army, and   his accomplished and then
beautiful wife, who, although a strict member of the Presbyterian
church, clung to the hearty social manners of the olden times; and so
the Major in uniform, and his wife in 6legant and stylish costume,
welcome us all, and while liquors are denied, yet wines the richest and
the most luscious are poured out abundantly in commemoration of this
happy New Year of 1836. Everything is elegant, tasteful, simple and
rich, and the very air you breathe is that of true, refined, old-fashioned
hospitality. But we must countermarch by the right, and in passing
down Jefferson avenue we enter at 292 and find
HON. SOLOMON SIBLEY,
still a territorial judge, surrounded by his entire family-old Mrs.
Sibley, then one of the largest, most joyous, happy old ladies of
Detroit, always glad to see and make happy everybody; and on her
right and left are her daughters, Miss Mary, afterwards Mrs. Charles
A. Adams; Miss Augusta, the first wife of James A. Armstrong; Henry
Sibley, late Governor of Minnesota; Alex. H. Sibley, then teller of thebank of Michigan, and Fred, a mere boy. Old Judge Sibley was just
then going into retirement, after a life of half a century, spent in the
public service, and remained in quiet until death knocked and summoned him away.
Passing on to the Michigan Exchange, now about a year old, we
ascend to the parlors and there are welcomed by the
HON. GEORGE MORELL,
his wife and daughter, and find him a territorial judge of the territory
of Michigan, not yet extinct, and simultaneously a justice of the supreme
court of the State of Michigan, not yet admitted into the Union-a conjunction of apparent antithetical duties, which George Morell performed
gracefully and with the dignity of an expert. But we are not yet done
with our officials, and so we visit next the
51[




40 3                  BY-GONES OF DETROIT.
HON. JOHN NORVELL,
senator-elect of the United States, below the Exchange, where Mr.
Norvell, as prim and elegant as Jefferson himself, whom  he idolized,
and Mrs. Norvell, then the most beautiful and always one of the most
accomplished women who ever graced society in Detroit, a model wife,
mother and lady, whose hospitality was as boundless as the winds and
as beautiful as home itself; and here again all viarids that could tempt
the taste, and all liquors that could stimulate and satisfy the thirst,
are offered in boundless profusion by host and hostess, for each today
is happy in the thought that at last he has won the toga and will soon
occupy the seat of an American senator. But we must move on again,
and so, in- double files we travel to Springwells then, now about
Fifteenth street, and there we once more pay our respects to the
military, to
MAJOR ROBERT A. FORSYTH,
paymaster United States army, a native to the manor born, a pet of
General Cass, a thorough, perfect gentleman, and one of the very
handsomest men that ever wore a uniform. A man who at fifty years
of age danced as elegantly and was as chivalric in his manners as
Count D'Orsay in London. His gentle, quiet, good Christian wife was
the friend of the poor, who visited the sick, fed the hungry and always
discharged every duty enjoined in the Christian calendar.
Returning once more up Jefferson avenue to the corner of Randolph
street, we call on
MAJOR JONATHAN KEARSLEY,
an old hero on his crutches, minus a limb, the register of public lands,
who holds his office by the grace of Andrew Jackson, president of the
United States, who knows full well of Kearsley's heroism at Fort Erie,
where he left his leg, and who, now stern and austere as Chancellor
Bismarck, still melted down on New Year's day and gave every Detroiter
a hearty grip and a loud, earnest " Happy New Year," with wines of
all kinds, and salads and meats of all kinds, but no distilled, or malt
liquors. A distinction at that time on which the first. temperance
society of Detroit was founded,. whose president, one of our squad,
died long after, for the want of a red ribbon pledge and shield.
One single more official call awaits us and our formal duty is ended,
and so we hurry back to Fort street, and there near Griswold in the




BY-GONES- OF DETROIT.

403

house since rebuilt, and now occupied by Hon. C. I. Walker, we enter
and wish a very "Happy New Year" to
CHANCELLOR ELON FARNSWORTH,
his wife and two daughters. The chancellor is very affable, very
smiling, very cordial; his shirt collar is very high, his neckerchief very
broad, and his manners befit the new chancellor of the new State
not yet in the Union; and as a brother member of the bar promoted
we drink several times to the bench, then the bar, then the chancellor,
and start out now to visit all our old friends; and so we go up Jefferson avenue, and find Charles C. Trowbridge and Major John Biddle,
one of the most elegant, accomplished gentlemen, gallant soldiers and
true patriots that Philadelphia ever produced; a man whose hospitality
was. generous and elegant, and who will always be mourned by all
who 'knew him. And then we go back to Springwells, and there
see B. B. Kercheval, and De Garmo Jones, and Judge Wo6dbridge,
and John Mullett; and on returning upwards and remem'bering our
Lord Mayor, we go and pay our respects to Levi Cook, mayor, and this
done the long day is passed in pleasant calls on Thomas C. Sheldon,
John Palmer and Mason Palmer, and finally on eaplh and every member of our bar, and when night comes we all med  at Harry S. Coles,
on Larned street, where we are regaled with anelegant supper, and the
day is finished with pure wines and exquisje music on the violin by
Mr. Cole and the flute of Augustus S. Porter. And so ends New
Year's forty-two years ago.          /
NOW MARK THE CHANGES.
In those days Detroit numbered not over 4,000 people; today it has
fully 125,000. Then the entire State had about 60,000; today it has
1,500,000. At that time allwest of Michigan did not count more than
three millions of people;' today it can tell six. times that number.
Then the houses were all plain, neat, warmed with old-fashioned fireplaces or square dark stoves; today they are palaces, lbeated by subterranean furnaces or magnificent base burners; then our -churches were
few, very plain and humble; today God's houses are temples; then our
carriages were carts, and our horses Canadian ponies; today the landaulets and coaches are drawn by blooded animals which cost thousands;
then a trip to Chicago required six long days; today you may rest. on
the Golden Gate in just that time. Such are some of the changes that
press upon the memory of the few old by-gones now here.




404

SETTLEMENT OF OAKLAND COUNTY.,

But there is one other sad, sad thought. Of all our lawyer squad of
that day this one single one remains, and of all those officials, then
full of hope, and pride, and fame, no single one can be found outside
of Elmwood cemetery, while all those then elegant, hospitable homes
and their inmates are scattered, destroyed and gone forever.
Wishing, then, to all of our old set who remain, and to all these
newcomers, a happy New Year, we let the curtain fall for the present
on the by-gones oft Detroit, perhaps     never to rise again.    Vive
Valeque.
A ICTURE OF MEMORY-SETTLEMENT OF OAKLAN
COUNTY.
BY JOHN N. NORTON.
[Delivered at the supervisors' picni 'n Oakland county, An st 24, 1892; also at the meeting of the
Michigan Pion  and Historical So ty, June 7, 1893.]
31r. President, citizens of 0  lan  county-Once more under bright
skies, in health, in prosperity an    peace, we exchange greetings at
our annual county reunion. I     is  ermed the "Supervisors' Picnic,"
but its meaning and its natu   are br der than its name. This yearly
assemblage imports sometl* g more than     mere summer's day outing
for a set of township a    ward officers.    signifies something nobler
than the atmosphere     office, its dignity is  her and deeper.
This annual pi    c is the yearly refreshm    t of a great people's
heart. Its issu    are the brightening of thoug     the rekindling of
healthful em   ion, the rejuvenation  of life, Cor     of union   and
affection w  ch else might ravel and break, are here   engthened and
renewed   For the hour, each individual is transfigured  all utterance
is tr, every purpose is unselfish.
o pictures are hung before the eyes of this multitude to y. One
traced by the pencil of hope, and it hangs agains1' the su    ise of
the future; the other is painted by the brush of memory, and it ans










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