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The Lost Street Names of Ann Arbor

by amy

Cedar Bend drive

view from Cedar Bend Drive, ca. 1900-1919, Making of Ann Arbor

Little did I know that each time I trudge up Spring Street to Hunt Park, I pass by Pardon Street (formerly Walnut Street), which now lies buried under the grass and trees of lower Hunt Park. In his July 2002 Ann Arbor Observer article, "The Lost Streets of Ann Arbor," former AADL librarian, Don Callard, takes you on a fascinating historical tour down Ann Arbor's lost streets -- past Lulu's Court, down dangerous Chubb Street, over to Bowery Street and across the river to California Avenue. You'll find this article in our Streets and Roads binder on the second floor of the Downtown branch. Meanwhile, we've posted a handy list of former Ann Arbor street names and their current counterparts under the new Ann Arbor/Washtenaw County - History link from our AADL Select Sites.

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The More Things Change ...

by Debbie G.

"The question of street repairs and improvements will always be with you and cannot be too thoroughly studied." So said the Mayor of Ann Arbor. No, not Mayor Hieftje in 2008, but Mayor Francis M. Hamilton in 1905. The collection of Council Minutes and Proceedings of the City of Ann Arbor in the Local History Room at the Downtown Branch of the Ann Arbor District Library provides ample proof that elected officials may come and go (and come again) but the issues, concerns and downright quirkiness of Tree Town remain constant.

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But Wait ... There's More

by Debbie G.

The Local History Room at the Ann Arbor District Library also boasts a complete run of the Ann Arbor Observer from 1976 as well as the Observer's City Guide from 1987. We use the Observer constantly at the Reference Desk to answer all questions local. The covers alone are worth a visit!

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Good News on Old News

by Debbie G.

There is a treasure trove of area newsletters in the Ann Arbor District Library Local History Room and they provide histories of our streets and neighborhoods, social events and social groups, churches and businesses that cannot be found anywhere else. We have Washtenaw Impressions from 1943, Old West Side News from 1975, Family History Capers from 1979 and Washtenaw Jewish News from 1977 to name just a few. The Local History Room is located on the 2nd floor of the Downtown Branch Library.

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Carrie Nation in Ann Arbor, May 3, 1902

by amy

Carrie Nation

submitted by Wystan Stevens. Click here for a version with mouse-over features highlighting historical details in the photograph; or here, for a much larger view.

Mob cheers for a State Street hatchet job: but hey, who axed that woman to come here, anyway?

Carrie A. Nation (1846-1911), the "Vessel of Wrath," was 56 and at the peak of her fame on May 3, 1902, when, standing on the back of a horse-drawn cab at the corner of State Street and North University Avenue, she engaged in rollicking repartee with a boisterous crowd of Michigan students. Emerging as a Prohibition crusader in Kansas in 1900, Mrs. Nation had obtained quick national renown by vandalizing the stock and furnishings of numerous saloons -- at first hurling rocks, then switching her M.O. to smashing with a hatchet that she carried beneath her waterproof cape. She was arrested again and again, and paid the fines for her "hatchetations" by lecturing and selling souvenir hatchets and photographs. In this area, she spoke in nearby Milan and in Ann Arbor (at the Athens Theater, the former Opera House, at the SW corner of Main and Ann). Although she entered several Ann Arbor saloons to confront their owners or barkeeps, she was on good behavior there, and smashed nothing. Newspaper reports suggest that too-high admission fees kept her Ann Arbor lecture audiences small, and there were few verbal fireworks. In fact, while here she drew her biggest crowd during this free appearance on the edge of the University of Michigan campus.

"I have been to all the principal universities of the United States. At Cambridge, where Harvard is situated, there are no saloons allowed, but in Ann Arbor the places are thick where manhood is drugged and destroyed." --Carrie Nation, in her memoirs (1905).

The following report appeared in the "Washtenaw Daily Times," May 3, 1902:

One thousand students had a rollicking old time with Carrie Nation at the campus this morning and the collegians applauded everything she said . . . .

Just before the close of her address Mrs. Nation made a strong plea for the Prohibition party: "Now I want to see the hands raised of all you who vote the Prohibition ticket after this," said the smasher. Every mother's son in the mob put both hands high in the air. "Good!" shouted Carrie, with a broad smile and at the same time clasping her hands gleefully at the thoughts of making so many "converts." "Oh," she said, "that made the devil awful mad when he saw those hands."

"Rah-rah-rah! Rah-rah-rah! Rah-rah-rah! THE DEVIL," yelled the students in chorus.

Mrs. Nation spoke from an open hack at the northwest corner of the campus. During the early part of her address somebody passed up a whiskey flask that was labelled with a well-known brand, and containing a fluid that looked for all the world like genuine booze. Carrie held it aloft.

"Smash it!" yelled the crowd, and she complied. She bent down, took a good aim at the iron tire on the hack wheel and -- "crash" -- went the bottle.

Then the crowd was sorry that it had spoken, as the fluid in the bottle was a solution of hydrogen de sulphide, which is the polite name for the smell of rotten eggs. Some student pursuing chemistry had fixed up the dose and Carrie and the crowd got the benefit of it.

"Whew!" said the students, backing away and holding their noses, but it didn't seem to phase the agitator.

"Tell us about Doc Rose [an Ann Arbor saloonkeeper]," shouted some one.

"I'll tell you about that old Doc Rose," she declared.

"Rah-rah-rah! Rah-rah-rah! Rah-rah-rah! DOC ROSE!" yelled the students.

"All he wants you to go there for is your money," she said.

"Ain't got any money," remarked the student who has been waiting to hear from home.

"You go in there sensible, continued Mrs. Nation, not noting the interruption, "and you come out --"

"Broke," emphasized a student.

"I want you to be like Daniel of old. Daniel was a captive and --"

"Rah-rah-rah! Rah-rah-rah! Rah-rah-rah! DANIEL!" yelled the students in chorus again.

The collegians simply made a farce of the whole performance. At the close of her talk Mrs. Nation reminded the crowd that she had some souvenir hatchets and photographs for sale.

The mob rushed in and she was proceeding to do a land office business, when it began to look as if the hack would be overturned in the mad rush. The hackman whipped up the horses and the carriage rolled away, but not before one student had climbed up behind and stole a hatful of little hatchets. He dropped down and distributed them among his friends.

The crowd chased up the hack for about a block and then gave up the pursuit.

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Washtenaw County, Michigan Heritage Driving Tours

by amy

The weather may be more suitable for sleighing than driving, but if you're up for a trip into Tree Town's past during the holiday, try one of The Washtenaw County Historic District Commission's four driving tours. Each of these themed tours--the Esek Pray Trail tour; the Greek Revival Architecture tour; the Historic Barns tour; and the German Heritage tour--comes with a detailed, color brochure you can download to accompany you on your drive. The tours are offered as part of The Washtenaw County Heritage Tourism Map Project to guide visitors and locals through the County’s cities, villages, and rural areas and to celebrate the region’s rich heritage.

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Life of Nathaniel Stacy, first Universalist pastor in Ann Arbor

by amy

submitted by Wystan Stevens

The St. Andrew's history committee should check out this book, which I discovered during a Google Books search. Nathaniel Stacy published his memoirs in 1850, and this rare volume is now in the Universalist collection at Harvard University -- and fully readable online. Stacy was invited in 1835 to pastor the Ann Arbor Universalist congregation, and he came and stayed here about five years. He discusses the establishment of the Universalist church in Michigan, his acquaintance with Mssrs. Kellogg and Fuller, businessmen of Lower Town Ann Arbor who were members of his congregation, and his conversion to Universalism of John Williams, an ex-Calvinist (Presbyterian) farmer of Webster Township. The Ann Arbor material in Stacy's book begins on page 383.

Stacy's account has several pages on his own financial troubles, and he relates them in strong terms to the immoral craze of speculation that afflicted Michigan in the 1830s -- the era of Wildcat Banks and worthless paper money. The St. Andrew's history committee should relish the account of his doctrinal dispute with the pastors of the mainline protestant churches of Ann Arbor, which resulted in a public challenge to debate each of them -- either in his pulpit or in their own.

The debate challenge was flung boldly, via a letter printed in the Ann Arbor Argus and the Ann Arbor Journal, and it was ignored by all of the pastors except, finally, Mr. Marks, the Episcopal minister, who published his retort to Stacy (a lengthy letter) in the same newspapers. After that, Marks avoided Stacy on the street. Then he left town . . . .

Portrait of Rev. Nathaniel Stacy, in the fronticepiece of his memoirs:

Around page 450, Stacy writes briefly of his return visit to Ann Arbor years later, by train.

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Sanborn Maps

by wheloc

Want to know more about your house? Then you need the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. These indispensable tools for historical cartographic research were created by the Sanborn Map and Publishing Company to help fire insurance companies find who they needed to bill and what they needed to pay, they now serve as an important record of America's urbanization.

The maps cover some 12,000 cities and towns across the country and were published from 1867 to 1970. Many libraries and historical societies will carry maps of their surrounding areas. The Ann Arbor District Library has copies (on micro film) for Ann Arbor, Chelsea, Dexter, Manchester, Milan, Saline, and Ypsilanti (with dates from 1884 to 1948). They can be found in the micro film drawers (2nd floor, way behind the periodicals desk).

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Longone's Lost Cookbook Author

by Debbie G.

Ann Arbor's own Jan Longone, curator of the Longone Culinary Archive at the William L. Clements Library makes an appearance today in the New York Times with A 19th Century Gost Awakens to Redefine Soul, about Jan's quest to uncover more information about Malinda Russell, author of "the earliest cookbook by an African-American woman that had ever come to light." The Ann Arbor District Library is one of the lucky recipients of a limited-edition facsimile of the only known copy of Mrs. Russell’s cookbook from the Longone Center. The Ann Arbor Cooks website provides digital access to a growing collection of heirloom local cookbooks.

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The DKE house at 1912 Geddes Avenue, 1913-1967

by amy

DKE fraternity


(Click for larger view.)
Submitted by Wystan Stevens

I looked up the City Directory information on the house at 1912 Geddes (across from the entrance to the Arboretum), which is pictured here on a lovely handcolored Albertype postcard view, from c. 1930, that was published by Ann Arbor book merchant George Wahr. The photo shows the house after it had become home to the Delta Kappa Epsilon (DKE) Fraternity, which was Gerald Ford's fraternity while he was a student at Michigan in the 1930s.

This house was built as a private residence for George W. Millen, and is first listed in the 1913 directory. Millen was a vice president of Ann Arbor's Farmers and Mechanics Bank.

The Dekes moved here when their former home on State Street was demolished for construction of the U-M Law Quadrangle. They had occupied that house for about 35 years. The DKE Shant, their ceremonial meeting place on East William, never was a residence.

When Millen left 1912 Geddes, he moved to 816 East University Avenue. The Dekes were here until 1967, when the house burned down. Another building now occupies the site, but the lot was empty for quite a few years after the old one burned.