Alvin Wood Chase

Alvin Wood Chase was a notable Ann Arbor author, printer, publisher, and physician whose book, Dr. Chase's Recipes, or, Information for Everybody, and its many editions, was a self-help phenomenon in mid-19th-century America. It was a must-have guidebook for pioneers heading west, and its enduring popularity, lasting well into the 20th century, turned Dr. Chase into a household name. 

Dr. Chase’s Early Years

Alvin Wood Chase was born in Cayuga County New York in 1817 and raised on a farm until his family moved to Buffalo when he was eleven. By his mid-teens, Chase was working as a peddler and salesman in the Detroit-Toledo area. Between 1840 and 1841, while living in Dresden, Ohio, he met and married Martha Shutts and started a family.

In 1856, Chase moved to Ann Arbor where he was determined to study medicine. By this time, he had accumulated a substantial collection of recipes, advice, and folk remedies gleaned from the household groceries and drugs he bought and traded on his peddling circuit. He also began publishing a series of short "recipe sheets" and pamphlets around this time.

Dr. Chase in Ann Arbor

After settling in Ann Arbor in 1856, Chase could be found auditing medical lectures at the University of Michigan. However, since he lacked any previous knowledge of Latin or the natural sciences, Chase was unable to pursue a medical degree from the University. Instead, he took a 16-week intensive course in 1868 at Cincinnati's Eclectic Medical Institute. He received a medical degree and began practicing in Ann Arbor. To support his growing family, he sold medicines and remedies to local druggists, including Ann Arbor’s first druggist, Christian Eberbach.

Over the next decade, Dr. Chase would travel widely across the country gathering additional remedies -- much of it useful, some of it questionable -- and he would eventually become one of the most widely known medical practitioners of the age. The recipes and do-it-yourself advice he curated covered a vast array of topics -- from cooking, dyes, and animal husbandry to tanning, soap-making, and bee-keeping. By 1865, less than a decade after settling in Ann Arbor, his once-modest pamphlet -- originally only 16 pages -- was now in its 26th edition and, at 384 pages, was so popular throughout the United States that only the Bible outsold it. Alvin Wood Chase was a household name.

The more recipes Dr. Chase added to his book and the larger it grew, the more it sold, and he quickly became a wealthy businessman and notable philanthropist. In addition to his books, Dr. Chase also sold a variety of medicines, ointments, and pills that remained popular well into the 20th century. 

Dr. Chase's Steam Printing Plant
301-305 North Main Street

During the Civil War, Chase hired builder W. H. Mallory to construct a large commercial building that would hold his printing press. Built in the Italianate style on the corner of N. Main Street and Catherine St. (currently Miller Ave.), Dr. Chase’s Steam Printing Plant was completed in 1864 and was one of the largest steam printing plants of its kind, with six presses and modern conveniences such as gas lighting and a steam elevator. Here Chase printed both his book and the local Republican newspaper the Peninsular Courier and Family Visitant (later shortened to Ann Arbor Courier). His printing business also cornered the market for handbills and posters in Ann Arbor, putting other smaller printing operations out of business. In 1868, Dr. Chase expanded the building, doubling it in size, and he celebrated with tours and a banquet that fed over 400 leading citizens, with a speech given by University of Michigan President Erastus O. Haven.

Just one year later, however, and though only 52 years old, Dr. Chase had grown sufficiently anxious about his health and his ability to continue growing his business that he sold the business, patents, the rights to his name -- even his horse and buggy -- to Ann Arbor publisher and retired lumber baron, Rice A. Beal. Agreeing never to publish again, Chase retired to Sauk Rapids, Minnesota. 

The printing plant remained in Beal's hands for several years but over the years was used for a variety of other businesses, including a rug factory, a wholesale grocery, and a Montgomery Ward warehouse. Throughout its many uses over the course of the 20th century, the building lost much of its characteristic ornamental detail and was even abandoned for a period of time. 

In 1968, the building was bought and renovated by the planning firm of Johnson, Johnson, and Roy and it regained some of the architectural elegance it had lost. During renovations in 1969, workers found a tombstone encased in the building’s rafters that may have been used in Chase's day as a “printer's stone” to assemble printer’s type.

The building still stands today on what is known as the Courier Block and is currently home to the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation and the law offices of Dever, Eby, & Issa, PLLC.

Dr. Chase Returns to Town

Alvin Chase eventually came to regret his decision to sell his lucrative business; especially as his health did not deteriorate as he’d feared, and as he watched Rice Beal grow wealthy through reprints of his “Recipes” book.  

Chase eventually returned to Ann Arbor - and to printing - through the support of a group of area businessmen eager to take advantage of his name and past success with yet a new edition of the book that included even more topics and recipes, titled Dr. Chase's Family Physician, Farrier, Bee-Keeper, and Second Receipt Book Being an Entirely New & Complete Treatise (1873). He also formed a publishing company and began publishing a competing newspaper, the Ann Arbor Register, with an eye toward pushing Beal out of business. But when Beal successfully sued for breach of contract, securing the profits from Chase’s new book in the bargain, Chase’s group removed to Toledo and bought out his share. 

Chase’s defeat left him once again peddling recipes in Ohio; this time by mail, in an attempt to rebuild his fortune. He also attempted to publish a new book, even unsuccessfully appealing to Rice Beal’s son Junius for funding, but he died of pneumonia on May 16, 1885 before he was able to secure the necessary backing.

Alvin Wood Chase is buried in Ann Arbor’s Forest Hill Cemetery.

After Rice Beal died in 1883, his son Junius continued to publish both the book and the Peninsula Courier until 1906. Dr. Chase's Third, Last and Complete Receipt Book, was published posthumously by F. B. Dickerson of Detroit in 1887 as a "memorial edition.” As with Chase’s other editions, it sold very well. All editions of the book would continue to see brisk sales well into the 20th century. When Beal sold the business in 1900, the book had ballooned to 1300 pages and its accumulated 60 editions had sold over a million copies. By 1931 it had sold 4 million copies. 

Read the 1883 edition of Dr. Chase's Recipes, or, Information for Everybody* (published by Rice A. Beal)

Full title: Dr. Chase's Recipes, or, Information for Everybody: an Invaluable Collection of About Eight Hundred Practical Recipes, for Merchants, Grocers, Saloon-Keepers, Physicians, Druggists, Tanners, Shoe Makers, Harness Makers, Painters, Jewlers [sic], Blacksmiths, Tinners, Gunsmiths, Farriers, Barbers, Bakers, Dyers, Renovaters [sic], Farmers, and Families Generally : to Which Have Been Added A Rational Treatment of Pleurisy, Inflammation of the Lungs, and Other Inflammatory Diseases, and Also for General Female Debility and Irregularities : all Arranged in Their Appropriate Departments

Additional editions and other books by Chase via the University of Michigan's Hathitrust.