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AACHM BWC Interview: Michele Jewett Trigg

When: August 1, 2023

Transcript

  • [00:00:07] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: Hello, my name is Michele Jewett Trigg. I'm a descendant of George Henry Jewett I. My father is the late Coleman Jewett, which many people know.
  • [00:00:26] JOYCE HUNTER: Thank you, Michele, for participating and for doing this interview. I'm going to start with the questions, we have four. The first one is, can you describe your family tree and ancestry?
  • [00:00:38] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: Yes, thank you. My great great grandfather was George Jewett I. He migrated from Bowling Green, Kentucky in 1856. He came here and had two children, George Henry Jewett II, and his brother George Henry Jewett III. My great grandfather was the first Black football player for the University of Michigan as well. He also became the first Black football player for Northwestern University, and the Big 10 Championship. They now have a trophy to honor him. George Jewett the football player, was my grandfather. His father Richard was my great grandfather's son and Coleman's dad. Coleman and Yvonne Jewett had two children, which I am the first born of Coleman and Yvonne Jewett. It goes George Henry Jewett I, George Henry Jewett II, then he had George Henry Jewett III and Richard Jewett, which is Coleman Jewett's father, my father and great grandfather. All of that side of my family would be considered of African American descent. On Coleman's mom's side, our great grandfather was Native American. His name was Alfred Dean, and he was a Delaware Native American. That's where some of my lineage has transpired over the years as well. My father Coleman Jewett was very well known, of course, here in Ann Arbor. He was administrator at Tappan Junior High for many years, and had a lot of students who respected and admired him. As a result, they've created a set of bronze Adirondack chairs at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market because that's where he was a vendor for over 47 years. To my knowledge, my brother and I, Michael and I, are the only two people in this area of African American descent who have two monuments, or artifacts maybe you could say, in our people's honor. That being the bronze chairs at the Ann Arbor market, and the George Jewett trophy now in the possession of the University of Michigan.
  • [00:04:27] JOYCE HUNTER: I'm going to go to question two, and you might have touched on that already. How did your family arrive in the Ann Arbor / Ypsilanti / Washtenaw County area?
  • [00:04:40] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: George Jewett I, was the blacksmith. He came here from Bowling Green, Kentucky as I said. His motivations, I have never gotten the total story on that, but I would think because his skill, his craft enabled him to make a pretty good living here. Like many African Americans, I think he came here because he saw the opportunity to create a better life for himself through his skill, his craft. It's interesting to me because my father also developed craft and became an entrepreneur. We have this theme in my family, on my father's side, being not only having a job working for the corporation, if you will, but also becoming entrepreneurs. My father, my great grandfather, who had his own business called the Valet on the corner of Williams and South State Street, that's where his dry cleaning business took place. He was also an entrepreneur, and then George Henry Jewett I, had his own business as a blacksmith, so he too, was an entrepreneur. We came here through George Henry Jewett I because of his crafts and his gifts of being able to make a good life for himself here.
  • [00:06:31] JOYCE HUNTER: We're going to go to question three. Were there any local places of importance for your family? If so, please describe the place and why it was important to your ancestors?
  • [00:06:47] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: Well, the first thing that comes to mind actually is through my father's work when in the summertime he was a supervisor at West Park. At that time in Ann Arbor, there were many African American families that lived on the west side of Ann Arbor, and my father used to do his woodworking there. He brought all his saws and stuff like that there and did it there. They had a wading pool at the time, I remember watching him go start the wading pool and then go walk off and do a bunch of other stuff, and come back and turn the water off later, so people came down to the West Park and we played tetherball, we played this game called box hockey. We had a hockey box, so the puck would never leave the box unless you popped it out too hard. The French Dukes used to come down to the market and practice their steps at West Park. My father used to run baseball games. They had two baseball diamonds down there at the time. We had a baseball team going, and I would sit and watch him write down all the names of the players and everybody coming up to bat. West Park was actually one of the places that has special meaning to my family. Another place I would say, is we claim Jewett Avenue here in Ann Arbor, which is off the South Industrial / Packard area. My father said it wasn't named after our family, but we're the only people we know still here, so we claim it as ours, anyway. That's a special thing to us. Of course, the trophies that have been made in my great grandfather's honor now at U of M and my father's chairs at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. Who could ask me for more? We have two pieces of things that can go into eternity in my family name. All of those things are very special to my family.
  • [00:09:33] JOYCE HUNTER: Tell me where you lived when you were growing up? That wasn't the question, but I'd like to know more about that.
  • [00:09:45] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: The time when my father was actually a student at Eastern Michigan, we lived in Cornell Apartments because he was married, so he lived in married student housing on EMU Campus. And then 856 Wickfield Court. If I ever do a memoir, I'll put that address in there. But that was our childhood home, my brother and I, our childhood home. On the Northside walking distance from Northside School, which they now call STEAM, it was in a court, Wickfield Court, and there were other Black families that lived on that court. Blackwell, Franklin, just to name a few. That is where we spent some of my time growing up. We lived in Longshore Apartments for a while when my dad was taking college classes and then we got a two family home on Pontiac Trail. That put us next door to what's called the Beckley House, which is on the corner of Pontiac Trail and Argo. It was part of the underground railroad, so we lived next door to the Beckley House. When we lived at 1415 Pontiac we lived next door to a historical home in Ann Arbor, and we lived there until I graduated from high school and went away to college.
  • [00:11:42] JOYCE HUNTER: Thank you. The fourth question.
  • [00:11:45] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: Yes.
  • [00:11:47] JOYCE HUNTER: You already talked about some of these, but if you want to add or repeat, are there any people, artifacts or pictures unique to your family that you would like to share?
  • [00:12:04] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: The people I would like to acknowledge or say thank you to definitely, Rita and Peter Heydon of the Mosaic Foundation. Thank you for your gifts to my father's project at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. All the people who put money, time and effort into creating my father's Adirondack chairs at the Farmers Market, thank you. His students. Many students, I can't even name or know all of them. Thank you for your time and effort towards my father's memorial project at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. Warde Manuel. The sports director of the University of Michigan, thank you for spearheading a project to honor the first Black football player at U of M. Thank you for that. All the people at U of M and Northwestern who helped out creating that trophy in my great grandfather's honor. Those are just a few of the people I would like to thank. O'Neal Construction Company for seeing to it that my father's chairs made it to the property at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market near his boots. Thank you for that. I should have wrote all the names down, but it's a long list, but that's just a short list of the people and all of the things that I am grateful for and my family is grateful for that have been created in my family honor. I have a few pictures. This is a very common photo actually of George Jewett, which has already been recorded and posted through your website. There's plenty of pictures of Coleman as well. I have a sample of Coleman's chair, one of his little mini chairs that he did at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market.
  • [00:14:59] JOYCE HUNTER: I actually have a couple pieces of his work that I purchased from him.
  • [00:15:04] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: Yes, I've met many people just in my goings and comings from home where they have pieces of his work too. Since his passing, some people have re-inherited some to me, I'm grateful for.
  • [00:15:27] JOYCE HUNTER: Those are the four questions and so I want to thank you for doing the interview and for participating in this exhibit. Unless you have any final thing you want to share, I'm going to have Heidi stop the recording.
  • [00:15:44] MICHELE JEWETT TRIGG: I just want to say thank you. Thank you for having me. I truly appreciate it. Some of the things that have transpired over the years, it's mind boggling that no one could know your great grandfather, it seems, and now it's all over the internet. I truly appreciate you inviting me and thank you so much. I appreciate being a part of local history.
  • [00:16:18] JOYCE HUNTER: I appreciate you as well. I'm just really excited about this project.