Yesterday

in Limerick, Maine, on September 28, 1804. He was educated at a local academy. at Phillips Exeter, and at Bowdoin College, where he rubbed elbows with several other bright lads -- among them Hawthorne, Longfellow, and future President Franklin Pierce. After college he read law, and was admitted to practice in 1830. His health was frail, and the Maine climate harsh. His doctor warned him to move south, or he would not survive another winter. Felch's ailment was tubercular; the doctor seriously thought malaria might be a good antidote. The healer's theory remained untested. Instead, poor Alpheus caught the cholera in Cincinnati and decided to tempt fate no further. When he recovered, he moved to the frontier Territory of Michigan, settling at Monroe in 1833. It was not easy for a young, unproven lawyer to establish a paying practice. Politics beckoned. with promise of a secure, if meager, income. A conservative Democrat, Felch plunged in and swam the stream of public service for twenty years, devoting all his energies to a career of extraordinary variety and meticulous integrity. So honest was he that he insisted on paying additional tax when his property was under-assessed; he refused to press lawsuits for clients if he thought they couldn't win. TAMING WILDCATS In 1835 he was elected to the Legislature, where he spent two years. His was the only voice raised against the popular but ill-conceived bill establishing the infamous "wildcat" banks which soon sprang up in nearly every village, issuing depressed paper money. In 1838, soon after his marriage, he was appointed one of the Bank Commissioners, traveling the state and exposing numerous frauds. Because he was often away from home, he wrote many newsy letters to his wife Lucretia, which have been preserved - along with many of hers -- in the University's Bentley Historical Library. In a report dated January 10, 1839, he told of a visit to Ann Arbor, where "I found occasion to go at my old business of Killing Banks, and obtained an Injunction against the Bank. I hope the course I have taken with it will quiet all that kind of feeling." Before Felch was through, the charters of nearly all the wildcat banks had been revoked, and the law repealed. In 1839, Felch resigned his post, and the following year was defeated in a race for Congressman. But he bounced back in 1842 when Governor John S. Barry appointed him Auditor General. Only a few weeks later, William A. Fletcher of Ann Arbor resigned from the state Supreme Court, and Felch was named to replace him. fTl-iÉ nQtnpc nf VMrh nnr FlftnVipr wpi-f tn nnnnppt acjaiti in which, after the financial panic of J.837, had become a drain on the state treasury. The Central, complete from Detroit to Kalamazoo, sold for two million dollars. The Southern, laid to Hillsdale, fetched $500,000. Felch risked his life to swing the deal. LET HER RIP Talking to a Lansing newspaper editor many years later, Felch remembered that both lines were poorly equipped and had been allowed to run down under state management. He had to convince the Eastern buyers that the roads were safe. To do so, he rode with them at a breath-taking thirty miles an hour over the Southern route. "He remembers that trip as aging him more than any other experience of his life," the State Republican reported. "The rails were the old strap iron sort, the road rough, and every instant he expected a 'snakehead' to come up through the floor of the rocking and shaking car, and a general smash-up to occur. The engineer was a reckless fellow, chosen for the trip on that very account, and he 'let things rip.' But the party got through safely, and I the bargain was concluded. Then the Governor took a slow I train home." Felch leaped from office to office like a man on a trapeze, I seldom finishing the full term in any of them. He resigned the I Seized with emotion, Alpheus Felch declared it an occasion he would never forget -- that day in 1894 when members of the Michigan Bar celebrated his ninetieth birthday with a dinner at Cook's Hotel. Judge Thomas M. Cooley was there, with a passel of former governors, Ann Arbor barristers, and other politicians and celebrities. Toasts and speeches rolled on into the night. Two years later, Alpheus Felch died -- the oldest attorney in Michigan, the oldest ex-Governor and ex-Senator in the nation. Next Saturday morning, the toasts will ring out once more for Alpheus Felch 'when a state historical marker is unveiled in Felch Park, to honor the memory of one of the most distinguished men who ever lived in Ann Arbor. Both the park and Felch Street were named for him while Alpheus Felch still lived; the historical marker should rekindle memories of the man in the town he honored with his presence. Felch spent most of his life in Ann Arbor, but he was born 1966, when Judge Fletcher's casket was dug up in Felch Park during construction of the Fletcher Street carport. Felch Park was once the city cemetery, but most of the bodies had been removed in 1891. Fletcher Street marks the western border of Judge Fletcher's farm.) Felch was bored hearing cases in the towns along his circuit, but he didn't have to wait long for a change. In January, 1843, the Legislation elected him to fill out an unexpired term in the U.S. Senate. Then in 1845 the people of Michigan elected him Governor, and he began his term with the new year, 1846. IS PAPA DEAD? Meanwhile, Lucretia was worrying. Alpheus was away from home so often, and so long, she feared they would become estranged. She was prpud of her husband's sense of public duty, and recognized their financial need, but often wondered if he couldn't settle down and begin the private practice of law. "It seems very hard that you cannot be at home some of the time," she wrote in 1844. "Dear little Lilly asked me if Papa was dead. It stuck me painfully." Felch decided Monroe was not a good place for his family. A town along the Michigan Central Railroad would bë easier to reach. They considered Detroit, Ann Arbor, and Jackson. Alpheus disliked Detroit, so Ann Arbor won almost by default when his wife offered her opinión: "Erasmus Boyd says I will never by happy in Jackson. So I do not see but that I will be obliged to make up my mind to go to Ann Arbor.... I cannot help noticing that no one speaks well of Jackson." To Ann Arbor they came in 1843, but with Alpheus ever on I the move, Lucretia was still unhappy. In November she wrote I that she had "been so homesick, I feit that I could not bear I the idea of living here much longer. Dear me, I have been I down to the village once or twice, and I do not find it near so I pleasant as I had supposed it to be." Mrs. Felch and the I children lived in rented houses for five years, then in 1848 I local contractor Andrew DeForest built a house for the I Felches ond North State Street, which the Governor occupied Ëto the end of his very long life. Heavily remodeled, the I building at 116 North State has housed the Spaulding lApartments since 1925. Felch 's most important act as Governor was the sale to BEastern capitalists of the Central and Southern railroads, i legislative election to the U.S. Senate, where he did remain I six years, four of them as Chairman of the Committee on I Public Lands. He was instrumental in gaining federal backing for the Soo Canal. I It was the Senate' s golden age, when the fabled oratory of I Clay, Calhoun and Webster packed the chamber and the I galleries with eager auditors. Felch's letters to Lucretia are filled with anecdotes about great men and events in the I capital. On one memorable New Year's Day he joined the throngs calling on President Polk, the feeble John Quincy I Adams, and the aging but attractive Dolley Madison -- "the famous Presidentess" -- who "knows how to set off her I person by fine dress and a good share of paint." For three years after his Senate term expired in 1853, Felch I served in California on the commission to settle Spanish and Mexican land claims arising from the war with Mexico. Although he made other tries for elective office, his political career was over. Michigan was firmly in the grasp of the new Republican Party, and Felch's Democratie credentials had become a liability. His private practice aided by his fame, Felch now prospered. In 1879 he accepted a professorship of law at the University, retiring four years later. His eyesight and hearing troubled him, but he retained a keen interest in public questions, reading through several newspapers every day. Students were awed by his age and experience. They persuaded him to speak one evening about his recollections of Daniel Webster. His sight failing, Felch seldom left home at night. But a few young men called for him in a carriage on this occasion, and the speech was a stunning success. When the address was over, five hundred students unhitched the horses from the carriage and drew Felch in homage to his home. Felch was unaware of the tribute until told of it afterwards. In February, 1892, former (and future) President Grover Cleveland carne to speak at the University. Felch, sitting on the porch with his daughter's family, watched the procession rise up State Street from the Depot. As it neared the house, Cleveland and University President James B. Angelí left the crowd and carne up the steps to pay their respects to the aged statesman and professor. Present-day residents of Ann Arbor and Washtenaw County are invited to do the same at 9:45 Saturday morning in Felch Park.