Mills, roads, and trains shaped Washtenaw’s towns

In 1824 thirty-eight-year-old Orange Risdon and thirty-two-year-old Samuel Dexter spent four months on horseback exploring mostly uninhabited land in southeast Michigan. At the end of the 2,000-mile trip, they settled within a few miles of each other.

Risdon bought 160 acres fronting the Great Sauk Trail, the Indian footpath that ran all the way from Detroit to Rock Island, Illinois. Dexter bought land that included a stream that flowed into the Huron River, ideal for powering mills and machines and for irrigating. These were the beginnings of Saline and Dexter.

Risdon and Dexter came from very different backgrounds. Risdon left school when he was thirteen and was always proud he’d earned his own way. He learned surveying by apprenticing in western New York, where he helped lay out the towns of Lockport, Brockport, and Buffalo. During the War of 1812 he served as an assistant surveyor for the army. In 1816 he married Sally Newland. Six of their children were born in upstate New York, and the seventh and last in Saline.

Dexter’s ancestors, members of the Protestant ruling class in Ireland, came to the United States in 1642, fleeing a rebellion. His father, Samuel Dexter VI, was a Massachusetts congressman and senator who also served in the cabinets of two presidents. He was secretary of war under John Adams and secretary of the treasury under Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Samuel Dexter VII obtained both a college degree and a law degree at Harvard--unusual at a time when most lawyers learned by apprenticeship. When he finished law school in 1815, he set up a practice in Athens, New York. The next year he married a local woman, Amelia Augusta Prevost, and they started a family.

In 1822 Amelia and their two-year-old son both died. Dexter decided he needed to start a new life rather than obsess over his losses. He later wrote to a cousin, “I came to Michigan to get rid of the blue devils, or to speak more politely of the ennui which like a demon pursues those who have nothing to do.”

Michigan Territory was established in 1805, but most of the land remained in the hands of Native tribes until 1819, when they ceded much of the Lower Peninsula in the Treaty of Saginaw. The following year the government started reselling the land to settlers for $1.25 an acre. The first permanent settlement in Washtenaw County, Woodruff’s Grove, was founded in 1823 (today it’s part of Ypsilanti).

It’s not known how or where Risdon and Dexter met or why they ended up exploring together. But Risdon, too, had suffered misfortune in New York--he had been speculating in land, and lost money in the panic of 1817. Michigan needed surveying, so Risdon came here in 1823 and spent a month exploring on foot. The following year he and Dexter found new centers for their lives.

Dexter built a sawmill on the stream that ran through his property, naming it Mill Creek, and went back to New York that winter. Risdon found work extending Woodward Avenue from Detroit to Pontiac. He also started work on a map of Michigan lands available for settlement.

In 1825 Risdon became the chief surveyor for the first major road built across the state. Father Gabriel Richard, Michigan Territory’s representative in Congress, had convinced the federal government to build a wagon road along the Sauk Trail. Though sold to Congress as a way to move troops quickly in case of an Indian uprising, it proved more useful in settling the state. Known variously as the Military Road, Chicago Road, or Old Sauk Trial, today it is US-12 or Michigan Avenue.

The survey was difficult. Risdon wrote to his wife, Sally, of “job delays” and “the hardship of the weather and other obstructions,” noting that after “a few days wading in warm water our feet were so sore it was like dipping them in scalding water. We had to stop every three or four days to doctor.”

Meanwhile Dexter returned to Michigan with a new bride, Susan Dunham. They lived first in a log house on the west side of Mill Creek--originally built for the mill workers, it was the first residence in Webster Township. Then he built a wooden house near the Huron River on what is now Huron Street. On the other side of Mill Creek, Dexter had a gristmill built.

When Dexter and Risdon first came to Michigan, the trip overland was long and tedious, made worse by a swampy area near Toledo. In 1824 it took Ann Allen, the wife of Ann Arbor cofounder John Allen, two months to make her way from Virginia in a covered wagon. But in 1825 the Erie Canal opened, shortening trips from the East considerably. From the canal’s terminus at Buffalo, travelers could board a steamboat and get to Detroit in three days.

By 1826 enough settlers were coming that the organization of Washtenaw County, carved out of Wayne County in 1822, could begin. Territorial governor Lewis Cass appointed Samuel Dexter its first chief justice. He was also the village postmaster; once a week he rode to Ann Arbor to hear cases and get the town’s mail.

Dexter continued to develop his village. He built and stocked a drugstore in order to lure the area’s first doctor, Cyril Nichols. He donated land for several churches. He had the first school built. And he started Forest Lawn Cemetery after Susan died in childbirth, followed soon by their infant son.

A year later Dexter married sixteen-year-old Millicent Bond, who had come to Webster Township the year before with her mother and sisters. A justice of the peace presided at Millicent’s sister’s house. The bride and groom rode horses back to the village. “Millicent’s trousseau was packed in the saddle bags that Dexter used to carry the mail,” wrote their granddaughter Ione Stannard in a family remembrance. “When fording the Huron River her wedding dress was dampened but the saddle bags kept the judge’s trousers dry.”

Both Dexter and John Allen were fervent anti-Masons, part of a short-lived movement whose members believed Masonic lodges were conspiring to take over the country. Annoyed that Washtenaw County’s only newspaper was neutral on the issue, the two men bought the Western Emigrant in 1829. Allen, perennially short of money, soon sold his share of the paper to Dexter. From then on Judge Dexter’s trips to Ann Arbor included working on the paper. “Once a week my father rode to Ann Arbor on his fine white horse, with saddle bags strapped to the saddle behind him, to edit and print his paper,” his daughter Julia Stannard recalled in 1895. If Dexter planned to stay overnight in Ann Arbor, Millicent, who had been appointed his assistant postmaster, rode with him so she could bring back the mail the same day. According to family legend, one night she was followed home by a panther that stalked her until she reached the village.

In 1829 Orange Risdon finally stopped returning to New York each winter and moved his family to Saline. He and Sally built a house on a hill near the Saline River overlooking the Chicago Road. The house served as a stagecoach stop and inn. It also was the town’s post office for the ten years that Risdon was postmaster, and a courtroom and wedding chapel for the twelve years he was justice of the peace. Voters in the first Saline Township election cast their ballots in the house in April 1830. For good measure, the front parlor was rented to Silas Finch to use as a general store. Like Dexter, Risdon donated land for schools, churches, and a cemetery.

Both Dexter and Risdon waited a few years to plat their new villages--Dexter was busy developing his mills and Risdon was surveying. In 1830, when Dexter finally got around to laying out his town, he was helped by twenty-year-old John Doane. “We began the survey at the west end of Main and Ann Arbor streets, the judge picking out the trees to mark for the center of the street, which now comprises the business part of Dexter,” Doane later wrote. “After the stakes were glazed, I had his instructions to pace three rods each side of the stake to form Ann Arbor Street.” Risdon laid out Saline two years later, no doubt using more professional methods.

In the early nineteenth century, water and roads determined the locations of towns. By the middle of the century, railroads played a big role too. Manchester began in 1832 with the damming of the River Raisin. Chelsea was established in 1850 when Elisha and James Congdon convinced the Michigan Central to locate a railroad station on their farm.

Unlike Dexter and Saline, Manchester did not have the advantage of a single strong leader. But within the current village limits, the River Raisin dropped forty feet, offering great prospects for powering mills. Settlement began in 1832 when John Gilbert, an Ypsilanti entrepreneur, bought twenty-two acres straddling the river. Gilbert hired Emanuel Case to dam the river and then build and run a gristmill and a sawmill.

The following year James Soule put another dam a mile downstream and built a bridge and a sawmill, starting a separate settlement known as Soulesville and later as East Manchester. A third dam was built between the first two, at what is now the Furnace Street bridge. Barnabas Case built a distillery there in 1838 and Amos Dickinson a foundry a year later. These early dams were primitive affairs “built by laying trees and logs lengthwise of the stream and throwing on stones and dirt to the required height,” according to Manchester’s First Hundred Years.

Emanuel Case built the town’s first hotel, a block east of his mills. He kept an office there in his role as justice of the peace. The hotel was rebuilt in 1869 as the Goodyear House, later known as Freeman’s. Today it’s a gas station, but the hotel dining room’s tin ceiling can still be seen in the back room.

The mills drew more settlers to Manchester. In 1834 Lewis Allen built the first school, William Carr opened the first store, and Dr. Bennett Root started the first medical practice. The block east of the mill filled with shops.

After Risdon completed work on the Old Sauk Trail, a new road was built north of it to bring settlers into the second tier of counties north of Ohio. (Originally called the Territorial Road, it’s now known variously as Jackson Road or Old US-12.) Around the same time, a north-south wagon road, today’s M-52, connected Manchester to Stockbridge.

In 1832 brothers Nathan and Darius Pierce came to Washtenaw County from upstate New York. The house Nathan built on the Territorial Road still stands on the north side of Old US-12, just east of the entrance to Chelsea Community Hospital. Nathan often put up travelers overnight--and when one visitor didn’t get up the next morning, Pierce started the cemetery on Old Manchester Road near the fairgrounds.
Other settlers soon arrived in “Pierceville.” Stephen Winans kept a store, postmaster Albert Holt ran a sash and blind factory, and Israel Bailey was the blacksmith.

Darius Pierce settled north of his brother, where the Manchester road crossed Letts Creek. About five families gathered there and christened the hamlet Kedron. Farther south, at the corner of today’s Jerusalem Road, was a settlement called Vermont Colony. With no waterpower, these communities could not develop into manufacturing centers, but they did serve as trading towns for the surrounding farms.

In 1833 brothers Elisha and James Congdon arrived from Chelsea Landing, Connecticut. Elisha bought 160 acres south of Kedron on the east side of the Manchester road. James purchased 300 acres across the road. This proved to be an ideal location.

In 1841 Samuel Dexter donated land to enable the Michigan Central Railroad to reach his town. The next stopping point west was a small refueling station on Hugh Davidson’s farm, just west of James Congdon’s spread. When the station burned down in 1848, the Congdons gave the railroad land for a new station where the tracks crossed the Manchester road. Their donation made it easier for farmers to bring their crops to the train, and businesspeople from Pierceville began moving closer to the depot so they, too, could more easily send and get goods. The residents of Vermont Colony also relocated nearer the station, building a Congregational church on land donated by the Congdons. And so Chelsea was established.

The railroads let farmers ship their goods much farther and faster. As they prospered, so did the towns that served them--Dexter and Chelsea grew quickly because of the Michigan Central. In 1855 the Michigan Southern built a spur that passed through Manchester, followed in 1870 by a Detroit, Hillsdale, and Indiana line that passed through both Saline and Manchester. Orange Risdon was at the festivities marking the train’s arrival in his town; he died in 1876 at age eighty-nine.

All four communities have preserved landmarks to celebrate and honor their early years. Chelsea’s railroad station is now a museum and meeting place, and Elisha Congdon’s house is part of the beautifully expanded McKune Memorial Library. Dexter’s historic landmarks include its railroad station and Gordon Hall, Samuel Dexter’s third residence.

Manchester tore down its railroad station but saved its last blacksmith shop as a museum. The last Manchester Mill is now divided into offices and shops. In Saline, Orange Risdon’s house was moved to 210 West Henry Street in 1949 to make room for Oakwood Cemetery; it’s still there, now divided into apartments. Saline’s old depot is a historical museum, and on its grounds is Risdon’s livery barn. A walking path follows the old train tracks.

When switchboard operators ran the show

In the days when telephones had human connections, the most feared person in Dexter was Min Daley. As the village’s switchboard operator, she had the goods on everyone. From her perch on the second floor of the Gates Building, Daley kept an eye on everything in town, and she could listen in on anyone’s phone calls. She even slept in a small room behind the switchboard office, and if there was a blaze, she roused the volunteer firefighters.

Information is power, and Daley had it. She could answer such questions as “What stores are still open?” and “Has the band concert begun?” She could tell wives whether their husbands had left work for the day, and she knew where the doctor could be reached. It was hard to hide anything from Min Daley.
In these days of the Internet, it’s hard to imagine one person wielding the authority of Daley, who was Dexter’s ears and eyes from 1906 to 1938. Maybe she really didn’t listen in on very many calls, but just knowing she could do so made townspeople wary of her. When telephones were a place’s only means of speedy communication, the switchboard operator was the information gatekeeper.

It’s also hard to imagine a time when communication was so intimate. Before connections were automated, operators were so vital to village business and social life that they usually operated from thrones of a sort. In Manchester the phone switchboard was in a small second-floor office in the Arbeiter Building (now the site of a laundry and pizza store). In Chelsea switchboard operators sat above Oscar Schneider’s grocery store, now the Chelsea Market. In Saline a small Greek Revival house at 200 South Ann Arbor Street was devoted to telephone operation. These were the power centers of their communities for many years.

Phone service began in western Washtenaw County in the early 1880s, just a few years after Alexander Graham Bell’s famous 1876 conversation in Boston with his assistant Thomas Watson. The first local phones were like Bell’s, one-to-one devices linking two places--such as an office and a home, or two locations of a business, like a mill by a river and the mill’s downtown office.

The first phone in Saline was set up in 1881 by Beverly Davenport to connect his store at Ann Arbor Street and Michigan Avenue with his home on East Henry Street. “Not only can a conversation be carried on with perfect ease, but also while in the store we could distinctly hear the music of the piano Mrs. D. was playing,” reported the Saline Observer. Some lines were set up purely for social reasons. Chelsea’s John Keusch recalls that his mother had a line connecting her with a friend a block away.

Rural residents were the first to get phone lines with multiple users. “Local service was not demanded by small villages that could sling the local dirt over the back fence,” explained Archie Wilkinson, a prime mover in the Chelsea telephone system, in a 1920s reminiscence. “The demand came from the farmers.” As Manchester historian Howard Parr relates, “An influential farmer might go to his neighbors and ask if they wanted to chip in for poles and wires.” Some of these early lines, set up along country roads, were shared by a dozen or more families.

The next step was to establish toll lines between communities. About 1882, Chelsea’s George Glazier began selling coupons for toll service to Dexter. When he had enough money he set up an office over his drugstore on the northwest corner of Main and Middle streets. “You went up the stairs, had operator call party you wanted by name, and then a messenger would be sent out to locate party and bring them to central station” in Dexter, wrote Wilkinson. It wasn’t until 1895 that the Glazier Stove Company installed its own telephone. Later the phone office was relocated above Schneider’s grocery.

Thomas Keech, who had organized the first phone system in Ann Arbor, instigated phone service linking Manchester, Dexter, and Saline. In 1882 Keech asked Mat Blosser, publisher of the Manchester Enterprise, to help sell scrip good for phone rentals and messages. By May 1883 they had sold enough to set up a line between Manchester and Chelsea. Blosser at first managed it out of his newspaper office. Soon they moved the exchange to an office next door in the Arbeiter Building and hired their first operator, Jennie Moore, who later married Keech.

In Dexter, Keech persuaded Thomas Birkett, owner of the local flour mill, to link Dexter with the other long distance lines in his system. A public phone was installed in the Irving Keal drug and medicine store on Main Street, with Keal acting as the first phone manager. As in Manchester and Chelsea, the company helped meet the cost by selling coupons, to be redeemed when the service was completed. The phone office was later moved to the Gates Building.

Keech and Clark Cornwell of Ypsilanti owned a phone line between Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti, and in 1881 they approached Saline to hook up to their service. Keech’s companies would grow into the Michigan State Telephone Company, later Michigan Bell. In its early days, the company was challenged by a number of small local companies and an Ann Arbor–based regional company called Washtenaw Home Phone. By 1913 Bell had bought everyone out and had become the sole provider, except in Saline, which was served by the Saline Telephone Company, a private company formed by Edward Hauser.

Hauser, a Saline wool dealer, started his own line between Saline and Bridgewater to save him the time and trouble of frequent buggy trips to make deals with farmers. In 1902 he set up an exchange in an office in the Union Block on Michigan Avenue. In 1933 he moved the phone office to the house at 200 South Ann Arbor Street. When Hauser died, he left the company to his sister, Ella Henne; her son, Ed Henne, became its manager. His office and the switchboard were in the two front rooms. A workroom in the back had benches for about four repairmen, a small room upstairs served as the lounge, and the garage stored phone equipment.

In Saline and other communities, the switchboard was linked to the lines of all the local users. People in most homes used wooden wall-mounted “magneto” telephones, so called because the power to start the connection came from a hand-cranked generator. People who wanted to make calls turned the crank to ring the operator, who used a switchboard to plug them into the line of the desired party. Often the operator recognized the caller’s voice. One person remembers calling as a child and asking the operator only “Can I talk to my grandmother?” That was enough to get connected to Granny. That personal service is quite a contrast to today, when you can’t even get someone in directory assistance who’s familiar with your own state.

Two one-volt batteries stored in the bottom of the magneto phones provided the power to send the caller’s voice over the lines. Another type of phone, the “candlestick,” so called because of its tall, thin shape, was more often used in stores and offices. Its batteries could be stored separately and were often kept in a box under a desk or counter. In both models, the batteries had to be replaced periodically. As a child in Manchester, Howard Parr used to take the carbon rods out of old phone batteries and use the rods as crayons to write on the sidewalk.

Party lines were common, especially in rural areas. Incoming calls could be heard at every home on the line, but the ring was different for each family. Sometimes, as a prank or to eavesdrop, somebody in another house would also pick up the phone.

Since all the neighbors knew one another, it wasn’t too hard to identify who was listening in. Parr says users would pay attention to various clues, such as “a grandfather clock striking while they were listening, or an asthmatic--we’d hear them puffing.” John Keusch of Chelsea recalls that at his grandparents’ farm “sometimes a third party would join in the conversation,” much to the annoyance of those talking. In the end, “we’d laugh about things. We were all neighbors--it worked out,” recalls Ruth Kuebler of Freedom Township.

Saline residents paid extra to reach other communities on the toll lines that Bell had installed. Kuebler, who grew up on a farm linked with the Saline system, remembers that to avoid long-distance costs her family would drive to a neighbor’s house to make calls to Ann Arbor, or to a different neighbor’s to make calls to Manchester. Neighbors outside the Saline area would come to their house to make calls to people in the Saline system.

In villages the party lines were less personal, because users were not necessarily neighbors. Many villagers went without phones for a long time. “If we had to find out something, we went somewhere to find out,” recalls Norma McAllister of Dexter.

Despite those holdouts, local telephone managers and switchboard operators soon became the towns’ most vital figures. They handled emergencies, calling doctors and police and ringing fire alarms.

In Saline, Ed Henne was a well-loved figure. Running the office during the Great Depression, “he was lenient if people didn’t pay their bills on time,” recalls Doris Henne, his daughter. She says that her dad often took in stray dogs at the office and found homes for them. When he died in 1939 at age fifty-one, the Saline schools closed for his funeral.

Min Daley was Dexter’s lifeblood; in turn, Daley’s whole life was the phone company. She never married. Daley could be very helpful; she’d even take messages for people when they were not home. But she was widely suspected of listening in on calls. “Everyone thought she did. The opportunity was there,” recalls Davenport. “People were afraid of her. They didn’t know what she knew or what she passed on.”

But Daley wasn’t infallible. Louise Mann, who worked as an operator in the late 1930s, recalls, “She once was telling everyone a man died, and then we saw that man walking across the street.”

Like the operators, the telephone repairmen were well-known figures in their communities. Chelsea’s William Van Orman was dubbed “Mr. Telephone.” “People in Chelsea never called the repair department in Ann Arbor--they’d call Dad at home,” recalls his son, Wayne Van Orman, who has a vivid memory from his youth of holding a flashlight one rainy night while his dad shimmied up a pole to splice a broken wire.

Western Washtenaw County villages began switching to dial phones in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The technology, developed in 1919, had been in use in Ann Arbor since 1925, when it was installed in the phone company’s new Beaux-Arts building at 315–323 West Washington. It was a big job to change systems: larger buildings were needed for the automatic equipment, and all the magneto phones had to be replaced with dial versions.

“We’d go from house to house to house putting in new phones,” recalls Bob Kuhn, who worked on the switchover in Milan. The change was always made in the middle of the night, with the phone company workers returning in the morning to pick up the old phones. For many people, this was their last personal contact with their phone companies. From then on, a dial tone rather than a voice greeted customers.

Today, even with the advanced technologies of voice mail, e-mail, and the Internet, getting quick and easy contact with a central source of information can be a daunting task. In the old days in the small towns, all you had to do was pick up the phone and you were connected.

When dial phones arrived in Dexter, Min Daley retired, but she was left with a memento of all the years she’d run the show in town. The company gave her the switchboard to keep in her home.

Old graveyards unlock the secrets of forgotten communities.

Washtenaw County is dotted with small rural nineteenth-century graveyards, often of startling beauty. Their stone markers, sometimes in rows but often clustered around trees or bushes, record the passage from birth to death; the more elaborate stones are also decorated with symbolic images such as weeping willows or open Bibles.

Some cemeteries are well maintained by townships, churches, or private groups, and are easy to find. Others, abandoned and overgrown, are harder to locate but worth the effort. Broken gravestones, tilted or lying on the ground with bushes and grass growing around and over them, contrast with thriving remnants of flowers planted more than a century ago. The decrepitude gives even more credence to the “life is fleeting” message of cemeteries and adds to their eerie beauty.

But local cemeteries are more than places for admiration and contemplation. Just as individual graves contain the mortal remains of people who once lived, these cemeteries are the remains of dead communities--villages, churches, or clusters of farm families—that long ago were centers of local life.

In the nineteenth century, mill towns dotted the Huron and Raisin rivers. Most of them died out after steam power replaced waterpower. In 1874 the town of River Raisin, at Clinton and Braun roads in Bridgewater Township, had a post office, railroad station, sawmill, gristmill, and cider mill. All that remains today is the Bridgewater Town Hall Cemetery, bounded on the south by a cornfield and on the north by the 1882 township hall. The hall replaced one built in 1856, which the township board mandated be made available for “moral and scientific lectures, and for funerals.”

Like all the old cemeteries, the Bridgewater Town Hall Cemetery stands on high ground, and many of the graves are grouped around trees. A patch of irises is planted in the back. Nineteenth-century mourners put a lot of work into making gravesites pretty, since family members frequently visited. Families usually bought cemetery plots in a large group; the family name is often marked on a pillar or stele, surrounded by lower markers for individual graves.

At the Bridgewater Town Hall Cemetery, local veterans groups have marked the grave of Ebenezer Annabil, who died in 1842 at age eighty-six. Annabil served as a sergeant and seaman in the Revolutionary War. Veterans groups also mark Civil War vets’ graves, which are numerous in these nineteenth-century graveyards.

The settlement of Hudson Mills, on the Huron River north of Dexter, also had a cluster of mills--flour, saw, pulp, plaster, and cider--as well as a general store and a hotel big enough to host dances. Nothing remains of this town but a few remnants of the millrace and crumbling foundations on the west side of Hudson Mills Metropark, and the Hudson Cemetery on Dexter-Pinckney Road just south of North Territorial. The graves of David and Betsy Dudley are placed prominently in the front of the burial ground, facing the road. The Dudleys, farmers who came to Michigan from New York in 1829, sold the land to Dexter Township in 1841 for use as a cemetery.

Hudson Mills and other early cemeteries are filled with sandstone markers, which were inexpensive and easy to engrave. The full dates of birth and death are usually inscribed, along with the age at death. If there is a symbolic picture on top, it is often balanced with a Bible verse on the bottom, such as “She has done what she could—Mark 14:8” or “It is a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead—2 Maccabees 12:45.” On most old stones these quotations, small and often in script, are almost impossible to read, because the material eroded so easily.

In the early nineteenth century granite had to be imported from Scotland and was too expensive for general use. By the 1880s, however, it was being quarried in Vermont, and ordinary families could afford it. People wanted granite headstones for their durability, but they were harder to engrave, especially with the tools then available, so the inscriptions usually were limited to the name and the years of birth and death. If there are no granite markers in a cemetery, it probably was not used after the 1870s.

Hudson has the usual array of nineteenth-century decorations on its sandstone markers. The weeping willow is the most common motif, followed by various religious themes--Bibles, fingers pointing to heaven, hands clasped in prayer. None of these small country graveyards, however, features the kind of grand sculptural markers--such as angels, lambs (for children who died), or tree stumps (for people cut down in midlife)--that are sometimes found in larger nineteenth-century cemeteries. Perhaps the people in these rural areas couldn’t afford the larger carvings or thought them too ostentatious.

At the back of Hudson Cemetery is the grave of Benjamin Chamberlain, a local farmer and son of David Chamberlain, a millwright and mill owner. Although the Chamberlain family is still in the area, Benjamin is the only one buried there. Welton Chamberlain, his grandson, explains, “My grandmother bought ten grave lots at Forest Lawn in Dexter when it was the moxie thing to do--be buried in a well-kept cemetery. She died in 1909. She always planned to move her husband there but didn’t.”

Chamberlain’s grandmother’s concern about the upkeep of the Hudson cemetery was well founded. “The Howards, who lived on the corner, used to mow and go in and trim,” Chamberlain explains. “They had family there.” The Chamberlains also kept up the place, but after World War II other families died out or moved away, and the cemetery fell into disrepair. About four years ago, at the prompting of the Pinckney Historical Society, the township began mowing the site again, and the county historical society also helps keep it trimmed.

Unfortunately, the cemetery at Scio Village gets no such attention, even though the village, between Ann Arbor and Dexter on the Huron River at Zeeb Road, was much bigger than Hudson or River Raisin. Laid out in 1835 by Samuel Foster, at its peak it had mills, a post office, grocery and hardware stores, a copper shop, a blacksmith, a saloon, a brewery, and a wagon repair shop. It was also a stop on the Michigan Central Railroad. Foster’s brother, Ted, coedited the Signal of Liberty, an abolitionist newspaper published in Ann Arbor, and ran a station of the Underground Railroad in Scio Village, helping escaped slaves reach Canada. But after Scio’s main mill burned in 1896, the community died out, with the post office closing in 1901.

Scio’s cemetery is on Huron River Drive at the western edge of the area where the town once stood. When members of the Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County first surveyed it in 1971, the graveyard was still easy to locate from the road, and they found thirty-one stones, although there were probably more than that originally.

Today the cemetery is so overgrown that it took me three tries to find it. Finally, following a small, unpromising path, I came to a circle of daylilies, a plant often used at cemeteries because of its easy maintenance and longevity. Continuing on the path, I finally found one stele lying on its side and a stone pedestal that must have been the foundation of another tombstone.

If an early community included a church, its cemetery stood a much better chance of being preserved. Rogers Corner, at Fletcher and Waters roads, and Rowes Corner, at M-52 and Pleasant Lake Road, today consist of nothing more than a few farmhouses. Yet graves are still well maintained in the church cemeteries there. That’s because the settlements’ respective churches--Zion Lutheran in Rogers Corner and Sharon United Methodist in Rowes Corner--both have active congregations today.

Of course, not all nineteenth-century churches in the area made it to the next century--much less this one. Roman Catholics in Manchester, Dexter, and Chelsea all trace their places of worship to country churches that no longer exist, although the cemeteries attached to these churches are still there.

In 1839 Germans in Freedom Township founded St. Francis, the first Catholic congregation in western Washtenaw County. They built a log church at Schneider and Hieber roads, and Catholics from the area, including Manchester, came to services in buggies. In 1858 the congregation built a brick church about a mile south on Bethel Church Road near Koebbe; it was used until 1911, when the congregation merged with St. Mary’s in Manchester.

The cemetery for the first St. Francis is overgrown and unused, with scattered tombstones, many fallen on the ground. Crosses are the only decorations on these stones. The site is reverting to forest, but the ground cover of myrtle, another common cemetery plant, still thrives.

The second St. Francis Cemetery, maintained and sometimes used by St. Mary’s, is in better shape. A wrought iron fence, with grapevines climbing it (see cover photo), surrounds the site. Inside are plantings of hosta, rose of Sharon, and lilac. The German ancestry of the founders is obvious from the names on the mostly granite tombstones, such as Dettling, Friedel, Schneider, and Fritz. The church was razed in 1933, but the Italianate rectory next to the cemetery is still there, now a private home.

Dexter’s Catholic church, St. Joseph, originally stood at Quigley and Dexter Townhall roads, five miles northwest of the village. The first burial at its churchyard was in 1839, a year before the church itself was built. The tombstones bear mainly Irish names, such as Haggerty, McEntee, Reilly, and O’Connor. James Gallagher’s stone says he was born in Sligo, Ireland.

When the original church burned down in 1856, the congregation moved its services to Dexter and after 1870 stopped using the old cemetery. A marker at the site explains: “Time, neglect, and vandalism took its toll until 1980, when parishioners reclaimed and restored this sacred place. Unable to locate the original gravesites, the monuments were gathered into the present arrangement to preserve them and honor the memory of our ancestors.” The stones were laid flat and embedded into two cross-shaped concrete slabs, one at each end of the cemetery, with groups of steles planted in the middle of each.

Another former churchyard survives as a municipal graveyard. Two miles west of Sharon United Methodist Church, another Methodist church once stood at the corner of Pleasant Lake and Sylvan roads. After a tornado destroyed its building in 1917, the congregation decided to join the Methodist congregation in Manchester. The Sharon Township Hall across the street was also destroyed, so the township bought the church property, including its cemetery, and built a new hall there.

Both the township hall and the cemetery are still in use. Near the cemetery entrance is a Civil War monument honoring Abraham Lincoln and twenty-four Washtenaw County men who died in that war.

Many farmers saw no need to use anyone else’s cemetery, preferring to bury family members on plots at the backs of their farms. Sometimes neighbors used the space, too. One example is the Popkins Cemetery in Scio Township, on the old Popkins farm on Pratt Road near Honey Creek. One of the earliest cemeteries in the township, it is now almost entirely overgrown.

The Phelps family had a plot at the corner of Baker and Marshall roads south of Dexter. Alexander and Margaret Phelps came from Connecticut in 1831 with their two grown sons, Norman and Amos, and all bought farms near each other. The cemetery in the back of Norman’s farm was the burial spot not just for the family but for other early Dexter residents as well. Dexter historian Norma McAllister recalls, “Dexter people used to be buried there. Then people with families there were told to move them to Forest Lawn, that it was no longer going to be kept up.” Most of the site is filled with trees and forest undergrowth, but a few graves remain in derelict condition, along with some myrtle and lilies of the valley.

The Scadin family of Webster Township had better luck with its cemetery at Webster Church and Farrell roads. It stayed in the family until 1967, when the last Scadin, named Will, died and left the farm to Webster United Church of Christ. Today the church maintains the Scadin Cemetery on the northeast corner of the intersection, along with its own cemetery on the southeast corner.

“Cemeteries are a peaceful place to visit,” says McAllister. Anyone who has spent time poking around old graveyards will agree with that. One warning: if you go cemetery prowling, wear long pants and a long-sleeved shirt to protect yourself from poison ivy and burrs. A very useful guide is the Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County’s Directory of Cemeteries of Washtenaw County, Michigan, a booklet listing more than 100 cemeteries, complete with maps. It’s available through the society’s website, www.hvcn.org/info/gswc/.

The Library Board, too, Attracts a Crowded Field
But good will, not con­flict, is the draw

I love the library. I want to give them something back because I use their services," says Ruth Winter, explaining why she's running for the Ann Arbor Dis­trict Library board. The other seven candi­dates, who are vying for three seats at the June 8 election, echo these sentiments.

This will be the second election in the district library's history. Two years ago eleven people ran for seven seats. Those with the most votes (Carol Hollenshead, Robert Potts, Ed Surovell, and Gene Wil­son) won four-year terms, while the next three (Don Axon, Richard Dougherty, and Sandra White) were given two-year terms, which are now expiring. In the future, all terms will be for four years, but staggered so that every two years either three or four seats will be up for election.

Dougherty and White are seeking re-election, but Axon has decided to step down. A week before the filing deadline, no one had filed to fill Axon's seat, but af­ter a notice appeared in the Ann Arbor News, six people stepped forward. The candidates seem motivated more by a de­sire to be of service to the library than to radically change it. None of them disagree with the library's strategic plan (which in­cludes new branches, increased technolo­gy, greater outreach), though some have suggestions for fine-tuning or adding to it.

Two years ago there was an undercur­rent of tension between computers and books, although all of the candidates came out saying that both had their place in a modern library. This year the exis­tence of technology is taken for granted; the concern, if there is any, is for more equal access.

Incumbent Richard Dougherty, the former head of the U-M libraries, is currently vice-president of the library board. "The first two years, so much positive has happened," he says, explaining why he's running for a second term. "It was a diffi­cult process separating from the schools, [but] the board came together." Dougherty particularly wants to stay to see the suc­cessful conclusion of union negotiations.

Henry Edward Hardy, computer con­sultant and former grad student in the U-M School of Information, says he's running because "I am active and concerned with issues of censorship." Although he hasn't seen any indication that the library is on what he considers the wrong side of this issue, he's worried about some of the signs he sees in the community, such as com­plaints about CTN coverage of Safety Girl and the U-M's naked mile. He'd like to expand Internet access and create patron E-mail "so we don't create an information underclass."

Warren J. Hecht, assistant director of U-M's Residential College, says he would bring perspectives as an administrator, writer, and editor to the board. He says, "The library of the future will be comput­er- and digital-oriented, [but that] will nev­er replace curling up with a good book."

Sigurd A. Nelson II, an engineering consultant, says he supports the library's goals but has specific suggestions on their implementation—in particular, he wants the replacement for the Loving Branch to serve as a pedestrian anchor for the neigh­borhood in the same way the branch does now. He's also interested in making sure that every user has equal access to the In­ternet: "I worried that those who need it most, won't get it."

Marlene Ross, recently retired after thirty-five years as a mental health profes­sional, would bring her administrative background to the board. She is particular­ly interested in augmenting the "Babies are Born to Read" program, which encour­ages new mothers to read to their children.

Incumbent Sandra White is secretary of the library board. An administrator in the state WIC program, White is running again because she's excited about what has already been accomplished. She notes, "I can look back and see what worked."

Charles Wilbur, state director for Sen­ator Carl Levin, earned a degree in library science and worked in a school media cen­ter before going into politics. A member of the Michigan Technology Commission, he says he's running because he's intrigued by the process the library is going through "to transform themselves with technology and [still] preserve their traditional func­tion." He, too, is concerned with providing "universal access to the information age."

Ruth R. Winter, an anesthesiologist who works two days a week at Jackson's Foote Hospital, says that as the only candi­date with elementary school-age children, she would bring that perspective to the board. Winter is impressed with the high regard people hold for the library. "When I circulated my petition in the neighbor­hood, people were skeptical," she says. "But when they heard it was for the li­brary, the doors were wide open."

The area around the Broadway Bridge was once home to factories, junkyards, and hoboes. Its transformation into three riverfront parks is one of the city's longest-running sagas of civic improvement.

The Broadway Bridge, connecting the central part of Ann Arbor with the north, spans the Huron River at a historically busy spot. Potawatomi Indian trails converged to ford the river there. When John Allen and Elisha Rumsey came west from Detroit in 1824, looking for a place to found a town, they, too, crossed the river at this spot. The first bridge was built just four years later. Replaced and widened several times since, it was most recently redone in 2004.

In 1830, Anson Brown, a pioneer who settled in Ann Arbor after working on the Erie Canal, dammed the river upstream from the bridge. Brown, his brother-in-law, Edward Fuller, and Colonel Dwight Kellogg used the flow from the dam to power a flour mill located just west of the bridge. Brown had grandiose ideas about turning the north side into the center of the city, but he died in the cholera epidemic of 1834, before his dreams could be realized. In 1839 William Sinclair purchased the property, repairing the mill and installing new machinery. His new setup worked so well that after the 1841 harvest he shipped to New York, via the Erie Canal, 8,112 barrels of flour--a record for Ann Arbor up to that time.

Sinclair's mill was destroyed by a fire in 1860, but he quickly rebuilt it and was back in business the next season. The next owners were the Swift family, first Franklin, then his son John Marvin. In 1892 the mill became part of a conglomerate. The Ann Arbor Milling Company, later called the Michigan Milling Company, bought it, along with several other mills in the area, and renamed it Argo. In 1903 they improved the mill and built a new dam, but again, fire claimed the mill. They rebuilt the mill, but with the development of cheaper steam power, water mills were increasingly hard put to compete. The dam and mill were sold in 1905 to the Eastern Michigan Edison company (later Detroit Edison), which was buying up all the water power along the river to generate electricity. Edison built a generating station that is still there; though it no longer produces power, it is still used as a transmission substation.

Beginning in 1866, the Sinclair Mill also powered the Agricultural Works, on the east side of the bridge (power was transmitted through a tunnel under the bridge). Founded by Lewis Moore, the Agricultural Works made all kinds of farm implements--plows, seed drills, mowing machines, hay tedders, rakes, straw cutters, corn shelters--and shipped them all over the country.

Finding a ready market in the days when most of the country's population was farmers, the Agricultural Works expanded throughout the century until it covered three acres, with a main building, wood shop, machine shop, painting building, lumberyard, and a foundry near the river. As it grew, it supplemented water power with steam power; by 1896, the promotional Headlight magazine declared it "one of the most important manufacturing enterprises of the city." But national manufacturers gradually took over the agricultural market, and the company closed in 1903. The Ann Arbor Machine Company, which made hay presses, occupied the premises for the next twenty years, using the same buildings. In 1924 Detroit Edison bought the site to build the garage and storage yard that are still there today.

Mills and factories weren't the only industries drawn to "Lower Town," as the area north of the river was known. In the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, six slaughterhouses were built on the floodplain between the river and Canal Street. (Canal, although called a street, was "really an alley," according to Thelma Graves, who grew up nearby on Wall Street; residents of Wall used Canal to reach their back entrances.)

Though the last slaughterhouse closed in 1915, the floodplain remained heavily industrialized. In the 1920's, it was home to a concrete company, David A. Friedman's junkyard, a wire products company, the Leever and Leever lumber company, and Otto Earth's tin and upholstery shops.

Meanwhile, the south bank of the river was dominated by the railroad. The Michigan Central reached Ann Arbor in 1839, and the first train station was built on the west side of the bridge, near the present Amtrak station. In 1886 a new stone station, now the Gandy Dancer, was erected on the east side. But the handsome station had some less-than-attractive neighbors. In 1898, the land between the river and the original railroad station was purchased by the Ann Arbor Gas Company to build a new plant and storage tank. The plant heated coal (or, in later years, oil) in a vacuum to create a flammable gas that was piped into homes for cooking and lighting. The foul-smelling gasworks remained in operation until natural gas pipelines reached Michigan in 1955. Purchased by MichCon in 1938, the gas plant site is now the company's service center for Washtenaw County and parts of Wayne and Oakland counties.

By the turn of the century, manufacturing industries were being replaced by power industries, but all four corners around the bridge were still given over to commercial and industrial uses. By then, however, Ann Arborites were beginning to think that parks would be a more enjoyable use of the riverside--and present a better picture to the outside world.

Mayor Royal S. Copeland, in a 1902 address to city council, bemoaned the fact that "to enter Lower Town it is necessary to cross the smoky Detroit Street bridge [today the Broadway Bridge], [and] traverse a long dusty street with the gas tanks on one side and foul smelling dump heaps on the other."

The junk-strewn field east of the bridge was a particular sore point, because it was the first view of Ann Arbor to greet passengers arriving at the train station. Calling it "a blot upon an otherwise fair page," Copeland went on to paint a more attractive alternative: "How different it would be if the ground east of the street were a green sward, garnished with flowers and shrubs! How much more convenient for the Fifth Ward [Lower Town] if they could follow a gravel footpath through that Riverside park, climb a flight of steps to a narrow bridge over the tracks and find themselves at the foot of State Street."

Copeland appointed a committee, including the city attorney, empowered to negotiate with the property's owners. He also announced that an anonymous donor had offered to pay half the costs of condemnation and purchase of the land. The donor, he said, "believes our city is damaged in the eyes of the traveling public by the unsightly and disgraceful outlook from the [train] car windows." Copeland was confident that the $1,000 appropriated in city funds would finish the job and the rest could be used to improve the park.

The committee had meetings, met with property owners, and had the city attorney write letters; but in three years it did not make much progress in obtaining the land, which was owned by eight different people. In October 1905, the committee reported that "some of the persons interested in said lands refused to name any price for the same and others have placed a value upon their lands far in excess of what your committee is willing to recommend the council to accept. Your committee is of the opinion that said lands can only be acquired by condemnation proceedings." With the exception of some land near the station that the Michigan Central Railroad donated, the properties were obtained by condemnation. Pleased with their work, the committee reported that "by removing the unsightly and ill-smelling dump heap of tin cans and dead cats, the traveling public will form a better opinion of our city." On April 30, 1907, the site was formally named "Riverside Park."

The original Riverside Park all cleaned up.

Although the acquisition of Riverside Park was touted as a major accomplishment, little was done to develop it. Ann Arborites who were around before World War II say that Island Drive Park and West Park were the places to go; they remember using Riverside Park only as a cut-through, especially from Lower Town to campus. Jack Bauer Sr., who grew up in Lower Town, scoffs at the idea that it was ever even a park, saying, "No one ever went there. It was nothing but an opening." Indeed, it was so little used that when the park across the river on the north side was developed, it appropriated the name "Riverside Park," and Mayor Copeland's creation became known as "Hobo Park."

Hobo Park got its name because, as the closest public land to the railroad station, it was a favorite place for hoboes to hang out. Hoboing--riding the rails without benefit of a ticket, looking for work--probably started as early as railroading itself; but it became a real phenomenon in the 1890's and peaked in the Depression. Hoboes separated themselves from tramps by their willingness to work. Ann Arbor was a likely destination because the presence of the university meant work was somewhat easier to find here than in most Michigan cities.

Hoboes arrived by train, mostly in the warmer months, and fanned out all over the city. Older Ann Arborites, wherever they lived, remember hoboes coming to their doors and being given some food, sometimes in exchange for odd jobs, such as shaking out rugs, cleaning out furnace ashes, spading the garden, or mowing the lawn. Although some hoboes were tough characters, many were well mannered and clean. Some reportedly even had college educations. They were rarely invited inside, but ate their food on the back steps or in the backyard.

Jack Bauer recalls that when he visited his aunt on Swift Street in the 1930s, he saw the police come to break up fights among the hoboes camped along the overgrown millrace between the Argo dam and powerhouse. Hoboes also slept farther east at Dow Field--the bottom of what is today the Arboretum but was then a university dump--and, of course, at Hobo Park. Bauer cut across the "park" in the 1930s to get to St. Thomas School, and he was often chased. He was young and strong and could run fast, but if he was worried, he would go into the railroad station and ask Mr. Mynning, a friend of the family who worked in the mail office there, to escort him to the bridge.

World War II put a stop to most hoboing, since able-bodied men who weren't drafted could enlist or find a factory job. When Betty Gillan Seward began working at the train station in 1941, there were only a few hoboes left, she recalls, and "they slept, whenever they could, in boxcars, but never in the station. Usually they slept on the banks of the river behind the station."

The hoboes never left altogether. In 1976, when photographer Fred Crudder took his now wife, Sally, on their first date, he suggested going to Hobo Park, by then officially called "Broadway Park." She thought he was kidding, but when they arrived, sure enough, there were some people sleeping under newspapers there. For years after that, early morning walkers sometimes found homeless people camped in Broadway Park, and one latter-day hobo maintained a wood-and-canvas shack in the woods above the Argo millrace in the 1990s.

The new Riverside Park north of the river was started for the same reasons as the original one: to clean up a blighted area that by then was being used as an unofficial dump. The new park, too, was pieced together parcel by parcel, although in this case city officials were more successful in persuading people to sell or donate their property. In a nine-year period from 1925 to 1934, the parks commission, under the leadership of Eli Gallup, acquired sixteen parcels of land totaling eight acres located between the river and Canal Street.

During the Depression, Gallup enlisted workers from the federal WPA jobs program to clean the site, remove piles of rubbish, and tear down old buildings. To fill in the low, marshy floodplain, Gallup used waste material from construction projects, like ashes and rubbish. He had the WPA workers remove the topsoil--which was of good quality though quite stony in places--throw it into ridges, and fill in the resulting trenches with any available material. After the land was raised, the topsoil was replaced and the park developed. Gallup put in a regular supervised playground--much appreciated by residents on the north side of the river--two tennis courts, and a baseball field. For drinking water, he ran a pipe out from the Donovan School.

The third park abutting the Broadway Bridge, Argo Park, was the last to be completed. In 1907 the city bought the land just north of the present Argo Pond canoe livery for a municipal beach. The rest of the tract, including the dam and the millrace, was not acquired until 1963. Detroit Edison first invited the city to buy its holdings along the Huron River, including the Argo, Barton, and Geddes dams, in 1959, but the purchase had to wait until 1962, when voters approved a bond issue to finance it.

Today DTE (Mich Con and Detroit Edison) is the last industrial user remaining near the Broadway Bridge, although they no longer produce power there. What will replace their building when, or if, they choose to sell is a topic of lively speculation. Housing is one perennial favorite suggestion. Though the idea would have seemed ridiculous a century ago, the gradual transformation of the surrounding area into attractive parks makes housing a very real possibility.

Riverside Park, once slaughterhouses and factories, is now the "green sward" that Copeland envisioned. During the school year, St. Thomas and Gabriel Richard schools use the park as a practice field, while in the summer numerous teams enjoy the baseball diamond. Argo Park, linked with Riverside by a pedestrian bridge, provides an attractive hiking area right in the city with the river on one side and the millrace on the other.

As part of the recent Broadway Bridge project, the city cleaned up the original Riverside Park on the south side of the river and put in benches, plantings, walks and lights. Finally, a hundred years later, Mayor Copeland’s vision is coming true.

[Photo caption from book]: A hobo cooks dinner near the Broadway Bridge during the Depression. For years, the city park behind the rail¬road station was known as "Hobo Park." “Courtesy Bentley Historical Library”

[Photo caption from book]: Before Eli Gallup created Riverside Park in the 193O's, the river’s north bank was a maze of small work shops and impromptu dumps. “Courtesy Al Gallup”

The stream that flows through Ann Arbor’s Old West Side hasn’t been seen above ground since 1926, but you can still see its influence everywhere.

Allen’s Creek, the site of the city’s first settlement, still runs through Ann Arbor’s west side. Named for Ann Arbor’s co-founder John Allen, it has a romantic sound to it, bringing to mind pictures of Potawatomi Indans following its course, settlers camping and picnicking on the banks, livestock drinking from it, and children playing in it. That idyllic picture has some truth in it, but Sam Schlecht, who knew it well in the years before it was put in a pipe below ground in 1926, says the creek was by then more like a “ditch in the road.” Historically, its value to Ann Arbor had more to do with urban development than natural beauty.

The main branch of Allen’s Creek runs northward roughly parallel to the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks, starting at Pioneer High and spilling into the Huron River just below Argo Dam. Three tributaries flow east into it from the Old West Side. Eber White starts on Lutz, crosses Seventh Street, and flows into the main stream at William; Murray-Washington rises at Virginia Park, crosses Slauson Middle School playground, and joins the creek near West Park; and West Park-Miller drains the ravine between MilIer and Huron.

Ann Arborites who were born after 1926 or who came to town after the creek was interred would probably not even know it exists except that it surfaces periodically as a political issue. In 1983, the voters approved a bond issue to repair it. And in recent years it has been part of an ongoing discussion about a possible Greenway that may include opening it up again.

Allen's Creek must have been named immediately after John Allen and Elisha Rumsey founded Ann Arbor in 1824. It is referred to by that name in all the early accounts and shows up on the map of "Ann-Arbour" that they registered in Detroit in May 1824.

Allen and Rumsey arrived here in February, looking for government land to buy as a town site. After returning to Detroit to pay for one square mile of property, they came back and set up camp on what is today the corner of First and Huron, with the creek right behind them as a water source. Rumsey and his wife, Mary Ann, later built a house on the site.

Allen’s Creek going by the Dean and Company warehouse near the Ann Arbor Railroad tracks between Liberty and Washington.

As Ann Arbor developed in the 1850s and 1860s, many businesses located along the creek. The creek apparently did not have a current strong enough to furnish real water power—the only industry that used it in that way was the Ward Flour Mill, at the mouth where the creek joined the Huron—but many businesses used its water for processing. Four tanneries on or near the creek used its water to soak cowhides and pelts of wild animals trapped in the surrounding forests. A foundry, Tripp, Ailes, and Price, on Huron Street where the Y is today, used the creek's water for its sand casting. And two breweries, the Western, later called the Michigan Union, on Fourth Street (today Math Reviews) and the City Brewery on First Street (today the Cavern Club), used the creek water to cool their beer.

In 1878, when the Ann Arbor Railroad reached town on its way between Toledo, Ohio, and Michigan's north, its developers chose the land beside Allen Creek to lay their track. Not only was it flat, but it was already the location of many of the industries they wanted to serve. Putting the tracks there guaranteed that the area would remain industrial even after water supply was no longer crucial.

As industry grew, so did the population. In 1846 William Maynard laid out the first section of the Old West Side, from First to Fourth streets. He added more streets in 1858 and 1861. But unlike today's subdivisions, with houses built one after another down each street, the area took shape slowly, with the higher land being built on first. The most desirable streets were Liberty, Huron, and Miller because they were high and dry. The three streets were laid out in a fan shape, rather than parallel, to avoid crossing the creek tributaries that ran between them.

Cross streets going down into the valleys between those main arteries weren't developed until years later. Murray and Mulholland streets, which cross the creek, were not laid out until 1911 and 1916. And some of the lowest parts of the creek bed were never built on at all--today they are West Park, Slauson playground, and the second Bach School playground.

A few west side homeowners took advantage of having the water nearby. David Allmendinger, owner of the downtown organ factory, built a house in 1890 at 719 West Washington, just in front of the creek. He dammed the creek to create a series of ponds, incorporating natural springs that were found on the property. He brought in soil to plant a rose garden and added a rustic bridge across the pond and a gazebo for family gatherings (he had thirteen children).

Allmendinger planted water lilies and stocked the pond with carp, one of which, according to family legend, answered to the name of Billy. But the carp were endangered when the city water pump station next door began drawing more water from the springs: the pond level fell so low that the family cat could catch fish by just reaching in.

Some westsiders used the creek more practically--to water their livestock. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the line between city and country wasn't as sharply drawn as it is now. Many people kept chickens, or even a horse or a cow, on their city lots. (There are still a number of barns around the Old West Side, used today as garages.) Sam Schlecht remembered his grandparents telling him of cows drinking from the creek near their Seventh Street house. Marty Schlenker's family told him that their livestock used to drink from the creek at First Street behind their Liberty Street hardware store.

Although the creek influenced the location of industry, houses, and the railroad, its importance had shrunk to almost nil by the early 1900s. Water was piped indoors after 1885, when the Ann Arbor Water Works Company was set up, so the creek was not necessary for industry, and homes and the railroad tracks had already been established. The only use for the creek was for recreation.

A stream running through a residential neighborhood can be a beauty spot and a play area, as the Allmendingers proved. But people around today who were children before the creek disappeared say that was the exception. Many interviewed said they didn't remember playing in the creek at all, while others remembered it as simply not important.

On hot days, Geraldine Seeback and her sister used to wade in the branch of the creek that ran by the east side of their parents' fluff rug factory on Huron, which replaced the foundry where the Y is today. Asked if her parents worried about her safety, Seeback laughs and says, "It wasn't dangerous." She remembers the water as about four feet wide but only ankle-deep.

Allen’s Creek flood in 1902 as it crosses Washington Street.

Karl Horning, who grew up on Third Street around the same time, has similar memories of the creek. He says, "It was nothing of significance; it didn't add anything to the city." He remembers that he and his friends could see the creek running under the Ann Arbor Railroad freight house on William and Ashley. The freight house was built right over the creek: evidently the creek was so small that builders just ignored it. Marty Schlenker remembered that the Feiner glass warehouse across the street from the freight house was also built over the creek.

Perhaps the person still around who is most familiar with the creek back then is Sam Schlecht, an inveterate explorer who lived in several different Old West Side houses as a boy and saw the creek from different vantage points. Between Seventh and Eighth streets, near Slauson Middle School (now Waterworks Park), the creek widened into a little pond. Schlecht and his friends made a burlap swing and attached it to a tree so they could swing out over the pond. If they fell in, they were in no danger of drowning--only of getting very dirty. Schlecht describes the pond as "slop water covered with algae," not deep enough for swimming.

Although the creek was low most of the time, it could overflow in the spring when the snow melted. Horning remembers that it would back up into gardens on First Street. That was a problem, since the water was polluted from outhouses and years of industrial use. In 1921, the city pumping station on Washington Street, which drew water from the springs that fed the Murray-Washington branch of Allen's Creek, was closed because of contamination from surface water.

In 1923, eighty-seven of the 100 property owners along the main branch of the creek petitioned city council to make it into a storm sewer. At a joint meeting that July, the city council and the Ann Arbor Township board agreed to the request. Alderman Herbert Slauson (for whom the school is named) said, "We do hereby determine that said proposed drain is necessary and conductive to the public health, convenience, and welfare."

It took three years to do the engineering and to enclose the main creek in underground cement pipes. The pipes taper from eleven feet in diameter at the mouth to four feet at the head waters near Pioneer High. In 1925, property owners along the West Park-Miller branch petitioned to have it put into a storm drain, and in 1927, residents along the Murray-Washington and Eber White branches followed. The tributary pipes range from four feet to about eighteen inches in diameter. In 1969 the creek and its tributaries were consolidated into the same drain district.

Sam Schlecht remembers when the creek was being put underground. The section near Keppler Court was on the path he followed to walk downtown, and he often stopped to watch the workmen. He remembers that although they had a primitive backhoe, a lot of their work was done by hand. When he got too close, the workmen would shoo him away. At the time, he remembers, Mulholland Street ended at the creek, with a cement wall to stop cars from going farther. After the creek was put into the pipe, Mulholland was extended across and turned north to end at Seventh Street. Later it was moved east to end at Washington.

The main section of the drain was finished in 1926, just after the city celebrated its hundredth anniversary. The Ann Arbor News wrote: "Planned as a part of the city's permanent sewerage to take care of the drainage from the creek's watershed for all time to come, it is probable that the concrete house for John Allen's creek once it is completed, will remain intact on the two hundredth anniversary of the founding of Ann Arbor."

Invisible for most of its course, Allen's Creek emerges to join the Huron below Argo Dam.

That was optimistic-—it was more like fifty years later that Allen's Creek again needed attention. The Allen Creek drain, as it is now known, flooded in 1947 and 1968. Putting a creek in a drain was no guarantee it would stay there-—the pipes, of course, hold a finite amount of water--and as Ann Arbor continued developing to the west, filling in more land with buildings, houses, and parking lots, the amount of runoff channeled into the drain kept increasing. By the mid-1970's, it became obvious that the Allen’s Creek drain needed a fresh appraisal.

A study commissioned by the city in the early 1980s offered a choice of several solutions. The most effective options--replacing the pipes with larger ones or building a second drain parallel to the first--were rejected as too expensive. Instead it was decided to repair the present system to make it as efficient as possible. Ann Arbor voters approved a $1.1 million bond issue, and in 1983 the city set to work repairing deteriorated culverts, relocating other utilities' pipes that crossed the drain, and resurfacing bottom areas that had eroded.

The bond money covered the most critical work. Since then, the Washtenaw County drain office and the city's engineering department have continued to work together on drain maintenance. The county is responsible for routine upkeep of the main line of the drain, while the city takes care of the tributaries going into neighborhoods. Major projects are financed using the county's full faith and credit and with the city’s storm water utility fees.

In 1993 the last two sections identified as needing work--an area near the Salvation Army headquarters on Arbana and another on Seventh Street near West Park--were completed. Both the city and county agree that Allen Creek drain is, at least for now, in good shape, even if undersized to serve its drainage area. Drain commissioner Janis Bobrin says there are "no visible areas of concern," but that the county "will continue to evaluate and maintain the drain."

Periodically people talk about opening up portions of the drain and returning it to a natural creek. Current discussion is focusing on the potential of creating a Greenway along the creek corridor. Whether Allen's Creek stays underground or not, its importance to the city has, if anything, continued to grow over the years. For instance, when Michigan Stadium was returned to natural turf in 1991, a tributary of the drain that ran right under the fifty-yard line was directed around the field and large pumps were installed to permanently lower the water table. The pumps allowed the U-M to lower the playing field itself by more than three feet--below the level at which it otherwise would have been covered with water. Without Allen’s Creek, Michigan Stadium would be a lake.

[Photo caption from book]: Map of Allen’s Creek. “Courtesy Washtenaw County Drain Commissioner”

The steel magnate's gift was grafted onto the public high school Look closely at the north side of the U-M's Frieze Building on Huron opposite North Thayer, and you'll see that part of it is actually a distinct structure, set closer to Huron Street and built of stone blocks rather than brick. The main brick building was built in 1907 as Ann Arbor High School. The smaller stone one was built the same year, as one of America's 1,679 Carnegie libraries. Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) was a Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in steel (he replaced many wooden bridges with steel ones) and railroads (he introduced the first sleeping cars). After he sold Carnegie Steel to financier J. P. Morgan in 1901, he devoted his energies to giving away his vast fortune for social and educational advancement. Carnegie believed that great wealth was a public trust that should be shared. But he did not believe in straight alms-giving. (This was, after all, the Carnegie who broke the 1886 strike at his steel plant in Homestead, Pennsylvania, with 200 Pinkerton detectives. It took the state militia to put down the riots that resulted.) Building libraries to encourage self-improvement was consistent with Carnegie's philosophy of helping people help themselves. He paid for the buildings but required the community to provide the site and to pay for books and maintenance in perpetuity. At the time it was built, Ann Arbor's Carnegie Library was believed to be the only one in the country attached to another building. But it was a natural pairing in a town where the library and the high school had already been associated for nearly fifty years. The contents of the high school's library, which started operating in 1858, were the city's first publicly owned books. In 1883, the collection was given its own quarters on the second floor of the school, and Nellie Loving was hired to be the first librarian. At this time, or soon after, the general public also was allowed to use the library, thus setting the precedent, continued to this day, of the school board taking responsibility for the public library.

Post card view of Ann Arbor's Carnegie Library. It was said to be the only one in the country attached to another building.

Another source of books for nineteenth-century readers was the Ladies Library Association. It was organized in 1866 by thirty-five women as a subscription library, based on a model started by Benjamin Franklin. By 1885, members had raised enough money — through Easter and Christmas fairs, lectures, cantatas, and strawberry festivals — to build their own library on Huron Street between Division and Fifth, in a building since torn down to make room for Michigan Bell. In 1902, Anna Botsford Bach, then president of the Ladies Library Association, suggested applying for a Carnegie grant to build a city library. The city's application was supported by the school board, the city council, and the Ladies Library Association. But after Carnegie granted $20,000 for the project in 1903, the applicants could not agree among themselves on a site. (The school board wanted the new library to be near the high school so the students could continue using it. The Ladies Library Association thought an entirely separate location would better serve the general public.) The deadlock was resolved only after the application was resubmitted in 1904 without the participation of the Ladies Library Association. This time, the city and school board were awarded $30,000. The Carnegie grant came just in time: on the night of December 31, 1904, the high school burned down. Luckily, school officials and students who rushed to the scene were able to save most of the library's 8,000 books before the building was destroyed. A few months later, voters approved a bond issue to build a new school. The school and the library went up simultaneously; both were designed by architects Malcomson and Higginbottom of Detroit, and built by M. Campbell of Findlay, Ohio. (The interior finishing work was done by the Lewis Company of Bay City, which later began building kit homes.) Despite its unusual connection to the high school, the library looked much like other Carnegie libraries: large pillars on the front, big windows, high ceilings, and a massive center staircase. The board of education, pleased with the result, called the new building "beautiful and commodious." In 1932, the high school library moved into separate quarters on the library's third floor, but students continued to use the lower floors after school. Gene Wilson, retired director of the public library, remembers that when he began working there in 1951, the busiest time of day was right after school, when the students would flock over to do their homework. By the time Wilson came to the library, the once spacious building was, in his words, "obscured by shelving on top of shelving. It was a rabbit warren of a building, typical of libraries at the end of their life, with six times as many books as planned for with stacks all over." Since the late 1940's, citizens' groups had been talking about the need for a new library. The school board took action in 1953, selling the high school and library building to the U-M for $1.4 million. (By then the new Ann Arbor High — now Pioneer — was under construction at the corner of West Stadium and South Main.) The board used the proceeds of the sale to buy the Beal property at the corner of Fifth and William as the site for a new library, ending nearly a century of close association between the high school and the public library. The library remained in the old Carnegie building for a few years after the high school moved out. It left in 1957, when the new public library on Fifth Avenue was ready for occupancy. The university remodeled and enlarged the old library and high school building and renamed it the Henry S. Frieze Building, after a professor of classics who also had served as acting president. In 2004 the university announced plans to build a dormitory on the site.