-~!I..:'~" ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Ii'" WASHTENAW COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY· Founded December 17, 1857 MAY 1984 9(~'~ ~( WASHTENAW IMPRESSIONS

COBBLESTONE FARM WCHS 1984 BUS TOUR SATURDAY; JUNE 16, WILL VISIT _ SUMMER EVENTS CRANBROOK ART ACADEMY FOR A DAY WITH THE MUSES Cobblestone Farm, 2781 Pack­ A day with the muses at Cran- Elementary, Cran. brook Institute of ard Road, is open noon-5 p.m. week­ brook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Science, Christ Church Cranbrook ends and holidays May through Hills is in store for all attending the (Episcopal) and Cranbrook House, October. Free admission to WCHS WCHS 1984 bus tour Saturday, June the former Booth home, all in a members with membership card. 16. setting of lake, hills, trees, gardens, Special events include Cobble­ Flora Burt, a WCHS life fountains and sculptures. (The stone Farm Association's Spring member and alumna of Cranbrook, Booths had 18 gardeners). Festival 1-5 p.m. Sunday, May 20. has arranged a tour and box lunch The Booth home, designed by Folk music festival, Sunday, on the grounds of the}OO-acre Albert Kahn, and the church are June 24. educational community founded by English style. Most of the other First person re-enactment of the late Detroit News publisher, buildings are Art Deco by Saarinen. Ann Arbor's first Independence Day George Gough Booth, and his wife, Bus boarding at 8:45 a.m. at celebration of 1824 on July 4 with Ellen Scripps Booth, daughter of the Maple Village Shopping Center, ice cream social, children's games. paper's founder. , Maple Road just north of Jackson Civil War encampment, July The Booths invited Finnish Road, Ann Arbor. Return by 5 p.m. 14-15,with a behind-the-lines hospi­ Architect ElierSaarinen fo move The tour package will cost $25 tal scene. there, with his family, in 1924 to per person. Prepaid reservations Harvest Fair, August 26, co­ develop the academy. Saarinen due by Friday, June 8 to Mrs. sther sponsored by Project Grow and the brought the already famous Warzynski, 1520 Martha, Ann Arbor, City of Ann Arbor, farm owner. Swedish sculptor and pupil of M148103. Questions? Call 662-6275 TEDDY BEAR PARTY SET Rodin, Carl Milles (who did the U- or 663-8826. JUNE 2 AT KEMPF HOUSE M's Michigan League fountain). The only available bus is Ann Arbor harmonica virtuoso, Cranbrook includes the art smaller than last year. To be sure of Peter "Madcat" Ruth, will play at a academy, Cranbrook and Kin~s- a seat, please reserve early. Teddy bear party 2-4 p.m. Satur­ wood (High) Schools, Brookside day June 2 at Kempf House, spon­ IVAN PARKER TO DISCUSS 'THE HENRY FORD SCHOOLS sor~d by th~ Washtenaw Council AS I KNEW THEM' AT WCHS ANNUAL MEETING MAY 23 for the Arts. Visitors to GreenTlelO village hired by Ford on a handshake in Adults, children and favorite seeing the one-room schools Henry 1934. He taught in Willow Run and bears invited. Tours, exhibits of Ford attended may not realize that Macon Schools and served as prin- Teddy bears, raffle, refreshments. they and others were actually cipal at Macon and Greenfield Ruth program at 3 p.m. will include operated ey him as private school.s. Village until 1947, the year Ford bird whistles, animal sounds and Ivan Parker, a teacher and prln- died. "The Bear Went Over The Moun­ cipal in the Ford schools for 13 Please bring your own table , tain." Admission donation. years, will talk about "The Henry service and a dish to pass serving 8- Ford Schools As I Knew Th~m" at 10 persons. Beverages will be the WCHS annual potluck dmner provided. Election of.officers and .k~H~~ meeting at 6:30 p.m.Wednesd~y, business meeting also planned. The COLUMNIST WILL SPEAK May 23, at the Ann Arbor American ' meeting is free, open to public. ON MEDICAL GENEALOGY Legion. Questions? Call 663-5281 or 663- Virginia Block, writer of "Heri­ A U-M financial aid officer for 8826. tage Hunt" column in the Oakland 32years, now retired, Parker was Detroit Free Press will talk about WYSTAN' STEVENS HEADS SLATE OF WCHS NOMI,NEES "Genealogy from a Medical Point of Besides electing officers and be immediate past president. View" at the Genealogy Society of directors at the annual meeting May David Braun, Elizabeth Dus­ Washtenaw County meeting at 1:30 23, WCHS members will be asked t9 seau, Cal Foster and Johanna p.m. Sunday, May 20, in Hale Audi­ vote on a bylaws revision to raise Wiese were nominated to three-year torium of the U-M School of Busi­ the quorum for general meetings to terIJls on the board and Lucille ness Administration. Officers also "10 percent of the membership but Fisher and Doris Bailey to one-year will be elected. not less than 20 persons." . terms vacated by Pat Dufek and PARK TO GET MARKER The nominating committee has Mrs. Warzynski. Ypsiianti'sHistoric East Side nominated Wystan Stevens for Concern was expressed that a Association has raised $1,450 for a president; Esther Warzynski, vice­ five-percent quorum as adopted in state historical marker for Prospect president; Alice Ziegler, recording the newly revised by-laws was too Park which they hope to have secretary; Karen Murphy, low. The board voted to present the erected by the end of summer. corresponding secretary; and Peter . above proposal for a vote. , They're working on the text now. Rocco, treasurer. Patricia Austin will ~ FORD COUNTRY: FROM THE GLASS HOUSE TO THE INNER CITY sell. So he built a replica." David L. Lewis, U-M professor The museum has an outstand­ of business history, took the WCHS ing transportation exhibit inciuding April audience on a slide tour of more than 180 cars. Most notable, "Ford Country" when Professor perhaps, are Henry Ford's first car, ;' .George S. May had to cancel his the 1896 quadricycle, and the "999," I talk. the world's most famous racing car, Professor Lewis, author of The in which Henry Ford set a world Public Image of Henry Ford, showed r~cord of 91 miles an hour in 1904 familiar and not-so-familiar Ford and Barney Oldfield gained fame as sites in the Dearborn-Detroit area the world's leading racing driver. Henry and Clara Ford's "Honeymoon and posed his favorite question: House" as It looks today, minus 19th century There are also personal Ford "Where is Henry Ford buried?" Most wraparound porch, inatchlng railings around family cars including Clara's people don't know. top and bottom roof line. electric and Henry's last car, a 1942 The show started with the big tained Mr. Ford's perspnal V-B. "Ford" sign along 1-94 and the Ford laboratory where he liked to repair The garage where Ford built his World Headquarters Building (the watches. first car is in the Village. One of the Glass House), visible from the Tne powerhouse generators two doors is wider than the other. expressway and "almost any part of have been restored. The power­ When neither was wide enough to Dearborn." house is connected to the mansion get the car out, Henry widened the It itlcluded scenes of Henry by a 300 foot tunnel you can walk right one with an axe. Ford Museum, Greenfield Village, through on aSt~inday afternoon tour. The building was removed from the River Rouge and Highland Park Henry Ford died April 7, 1947, at 58 Bagley Avenue in downtown plants, of course, and Fairlane Fairlane. Someone in the audience Detroit n the 1920's. That site today mansion but also showed obscure, . reminded that the Rouge was is covered with a huge office build­ crumbling former Ford homes in flooded and the electricity off so ing and indoor parking structure. Detroit's inner city. that Ford died as he had come into There was a plaque, stolen in 1977, "A dining room and six bed­ the world, by candlelight. affirming it as the birthplace of the rooms for top executives are in the At the time of his death, the first Ford car. penthouse on the top floor of the company couldn't locate a Lincoln In the Village is Thomas Glass House. About a mile south is hearse, so a Packard (preferable to Edison's Menlo Park, New Jersey the former Ford Division head­ a GM Cadillac) carried Ford's body laboratory in which Edison created quarters, now Ford's N'orth to his grave, Lewis noted. the electric light bulb and the American Automotive operations Lewis's students and phonograph. headq uarters. audiences usually think Henry Ford In 1929, in commemoration of "Across and down the street is buried in Greenfield Village or the 50th anniversary of the event, from World Headquarters is the Fairlane. Actually, he is buried in the Edison re-enacted the invention of Henry Ford Centennial Library, built old Ford Family Cemetery on Joy the light bulb there. Henry Ford to commemorate the 100th Road, jus,t west of Greenfield, in immediately nailed Edison's chair to anniversary of Ford's birth (July 30, what is now Detroit. the floor. 1863) and opened in 1969. In 1947 it was open farm land. In the Village are actual homes "In front of the library is a life­ Henry and Clara Ford's graves are of Orville and Wilbur Wright, size statue of Henry Ford, one of covered with iron grillwork. For removed from Dayton, Ohio, and only two in the world, the other years, watchmen guarded the grave Noah Webster's from Connecticut. being in front of Ford of England's around the clock, for it was feared Webster compiled America's first plant." grave robbers might act on rumors dictionary. Ford's I5lrthplace, about two the auto king had been buried in a There is a courthouse where miles northeast of the Village at solid gold coffin with a Stradivarius Abraham Lincoln practiced law and Ford and Greenfield Roads, is violin and other valuables. the chair in which Lincoln was shot deSignated by a Michigan Historical Until Greenfield Village's in Ford's Theatre in Washington in Commission marker, but the house School closed in 1969, the school 1865. It was put up for auction in itself was moved to Greenfield children with their prinCipal, placed 1929 and Ford outbid everyone else. Village in 1944. wreaths on or near the anniversary There is a covered bridge and The Ford estate, Fairlane, a of Ford's death. the oldest windmill in the country U.S. historic landmark, the only one Since then, Edison Institute from Cape Cod. As you enter or in Michigan in the field of commerce officials and Episcopal clergymen leave the Village notice the serpen­ and industry, is owned by the do it. (Edison Institute is the official tine wall separating it from the old University of Michigan-Dearborn name of the village-museum Ford Airport, now the company's which conducts tours through it. complex). St. Martha's Episcopal Dearborn test track. It's said to be The rear of the mansion faces a Church is near the cemetery. the longest wall of its kind in the muddy Rouge River where the Fords "If the Henry Ford Museum world, Lewis said. had a dock for an electric boat and a looks like Independence Hall, it By the early 1920's the Rouge dam for a private powerhouse. The figures. Henry tried to buy the real was the world's largest single­ top floor of the powerhouse con- thing. But the government wouldn't company industrial concentration. It !. ,. ', 2 - ,! .

~~----~--~------~--~~------~------~------~ still is, and thanks to automation produces more now with 30,000 ' workers than it did with 100000 . workers in 1929 or during W~rld War II. . Across and dewn the street from the museum is the Dearborn Il)n, opened in 1931 across from ~hat was then Detroit's principal airport. Across from the inn is one of Ford's original airplane manufac­ turing buildings. In front of the inn is one of eight State of Michigan historical markers dealing with Ford. This one dis­ cusses Ford's pioneering in aviation and his Trimotor airp lane. Another is in front of the museum. Across from the museum is the Guest Center where bus tours of the River Rouge plant originated before Photos courtesy of David L. Lewis they were discontinued in 1980. Behind the museum is the 1923 Life.size statue of Henry Foriil in front of Henry Ford Memorial Library in Dearborn is one of only two in the world. Ford. Wor!~ H?ad9,uarters at right. Dearborn Engineering Laboratory in .... ~ which the Model A was designed. The Abraham Lincoln stafue once in The third, from which the Fords On May 26,1927, Henry and Edsel , front is now at the Detroit Public moved into Fairlane, is now owned posed with the first and 15 millionth Library. by a religious organization combin- Ford in front of that building. Henry's Place, a Dearborn ing the teachings of Christianity and Next to the lab are railroad restaurant, sports a "Food" sign in astrology. tracks along which Henry Ford often characteristic Ford script on an A couple of miles north of the walked to the laboratory or village. oval. Highland Park plant is Edsel Ford's He also walked these tracks to About 10 miles northeast of grave in Woodlawn Cemetery. Detroit with his lady friend, Evan­ Dearborn is the Highland Park plant. Woodlawn's Automotive Row is a geline Dahlinger. From 1910 to the early 1920's it was virtual "Who Was Who of the Motor The concrete arches which the world's largest auto plant. Industry:" march for miles along the Detroit, Visitors were awed by its size and • James Couzens, Ford's Toledo and Ironton Railroad that spell bond by the newly-developed business manager and ~econd Ford owned in the 1920's are still mass production methods. largest shareholder during the early Dearborn area landmarks. They A historic marker is located in years, later mayor of Detroit and U.S. were built to power electric trains front of the plant. William Clay Ford, Senator. but never used. They're so solid that Henry Ford II's youngest brother • The Dodge brothers, John it is prohibitively expensive now to now owner of the Detroit Lions f~ot- and Horace, major Ford sharehold- tear them down. ball team, was on crutches when he ers from 1903-19, have an opulent Just down the road from helped dedicate the marker in 1956. maus?'eum guarded by sphinxes. Dearborn Engineering is the George 1~.:1959, the administration and Edsel s grave compared to Couzen's Washington Carver laboratory powerhouse were torn down. Ford and the Dodges is modest. where Dr. Carver and Ford research­ has abandoned plans to keep the • E~sel's brother-i~-Iaw, Ernest ers experimented. It is now a Village building for historical reasons and it Kanzler, fired from Ford In 1925 for storage area. is crumbling. having the audacity to tell Henry Two miles east of the Village is The older Piquette and Ford that the Model Twas out- Ford's old administration building, Beaubien factory built in 1904 and moded and should be replaced. now the Ford Parts and Service operated until 1911 now houses a • George M. Holley, who sold Division. Henry Ford's former office firm that launders industrial Ford millions of carburetors. in a first floor corner has a private clothing. • C. Harold Wills, the brilliant entrance. Three of Henry and Clara's metallurgist who furnis~ed the type A mile east of that building is former homes are still standing not for the famou~ Ford SC~lp! and had Springwells Park shopping center far from Highland Park _ their John much to do With the bUilding of the built in the late 1930's and said to be R Street home of 1891-92, their flat Model T. America's first shopping center. A in 1907-08 and the Edison Avenue • John Gray, the Ford stone memorial to Henry and Edsel home from 1908-15. Company's first president. at the center is inscribed, "The The first an abandoned • Wendell Anderson, one of Shadow Passes - Light Remains." firetrap, likely will be torn down. The Ford's original 12 share~olders . Detroit Edison now occupies second is an apartment building in • An~ Alfred Lucking, Ford's the original Lincoln factory built good repair. Until Lewis took the la~yer dun~g the D<;>dge and during World War I in Detroit. Ford picture, the owner was not aware ChIcago Tnbune SUitS. bought it from the Lelands in 1922. that Ford had lived in his building. A number of schools bear 3 Henry Ford's name, the newest in HISTORICAL HAPPENINGS: OF SESQUICENTENNIALS, northwest Detroit. A few miles west of the cemetery is Botsford Inn on MODEL T'S, DOLL HOUSES, BOOKS, GRAND OPENING Grand River Avenue. Built in 1836, it Chelsea Historical Society: lication. They have gathered is the oldest operating inn in Chelsea will celebrate its sesqui· between 150 and 200 photos for the Michigan. centennial June 30-July 4, beginning 150-page manuscript and hope to Henry Ford courted Clara there. with a parade the 30th. The Society have it in print for the Whitmore A historical marker tells that Henry will offer wagon rides, exhibit old Lake July 4 celebration. bought the inn in 1924. It remained fashioned clothing at the town hall, Professor Hennings is now in Ford hands until 1951. make a quilt to raffle and sell things. serving as president, since Marta A picture of Henry Ford sitting Will Connelly is compiling a history Larson resigned. beside the inns' old fireplace reveals booklet and the 125th anniversary Webster Historical Society: The that, as in the famous picture of booklet also is to be republished. Webster United Church of Christ Adlai Stevenson, his shoe needed The Society is conducting a sesquicentennial will wind up June resoling. membership drive. Meeting at 7:30 23-24 with a picnic at 5 p.m. Satur­ From Botsford one may drive p.m., Monday, June 11, at McKune day the 23rd at the Community by six of Henry Ford's former hydro­ Memorial Lfbrary, 221 South Main. House followed by a 7 p.m. pageant. electric plants on the Rouge River. Questions? Call 475-8971. Following early services, The Northville plant is the last of Dexter Historical Society: luncheon is planned about noon Henry Ford's village industries still Grand opening oHower level exhibit Sunday, then a dedication ceremony operating under Ford auspices. It's hall of museum, ~443 Inverness, about 1 p.m. of a life·sized bronze predecessor plant, a 19th century after Memorial Day parade Monday bust of Daniel Webster by a local mill, began producing valves for the morning;" M~y 2S. ~·l splay of farm artist, Dennis Oberto. Model Tin 1920. tools, old Dexter Leader equipment. Daniel Webster, for whom the The present facility, built in New llJuseum hours 1-4 p.m., surrounding township was named, 1935, made valves until temporarily Fridays, 12·4 p.m. Saturdays from contributed money, reportedly $100, closed in 1981. It reopened in 1982 Memorial Day through October 3-1 or to help complete the church build­ to make fuel tanks and repair steel by appointment. Call 426·2519. ing, the oldest in continuous use in shipping racks. The water wheel is Milan Historical Society: Third the county. only decorative. annual ice cream social 1·6 p.m., A one-day Fall Festival is Driving from Northville down Sunday, June 17 (Father's Day) at planned Saturday, September 15, the Rouge River to Dearborn one will Hack House, 775 County Street. jOintly sponsored by the Society and pass five more tiny hydro plants - Pies, cakes, ice cream, banana the Church at Webster Church and Waterford, Phoenix, Plymouth, splits - the works - promised. Farrell Roads. Newburgh and Nankin Mills, one of The national Model T tour, 250 Ypsilanti Historical Society: the smallest, which had 11 strong, plans to take a break at Doll house display through mid· employees. Milan on the morning of Thursday, June. Two are about 80 years old, A few miles south of Nankin July 26, at Wilson Park. The Society one is a 1950's metal model, another Mills in Garden City is the Square will open Hack House and serve is an electrified three-story Depres· House or "Honeymoon House" refreshments. The tour will then sion model made from orange which Clara Ford designed and head to Macon before ending in crates; also miniature doll houses. Henry cut the timer for and helped Livonia:. The museum is open 2·4 p.m. build. They lived in it from 1889-1891. Northfield Historical Society: Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays. In 1937 they installed a couple Thomas P. Hennings, Eastern Mich­ Extended hours during Heritage who lived in it until 1979. They sold it igan University professor of English, Festival August 24·26. to a young couple who plan to is author of a new history of North­ Editor: Alice Ziegler, 663·8826 move it back to its original site in field township. The Society is now Keylining: Anna Thorsch Mailing: Karen Murphy, 665·5844 Dearborn. looking for patrons to sponsor pub· Publishing monthly September through May,

Non·Profit Org. u.s. Postage WASHTENAW COUNTY PAl D HISTORICAL SOCIETY Permit No. 96 MEETING Ann Arbor, Mich. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday May 23,1984

AMERICAN LEGION Alice Ziegler 1035 South Main Ann Arbor, Michigan 537 Riverview Dr". Ann Arbor, MI 48104