Showing posts with label 1830-1840. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1830-1840. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Tidbit from Early Michigan Legislative Session
Interesting to read the accounts of the Michigan's earliest legislative sessions. The first accounts begin in 1835, and for two whole years the only thing the legislators do is nominate candidates to various offices: notary publics and county "auctioneers" are among these. Haven't figured out why auctioneers were a pressing need to fill, but I hope to in time. Anyways, the FIRST action by the Michigan legislature that is NOT a nomination and vote on someone for a legalistic state office is a proposal for a lecture to be delivered in the legislative chamber by the young state's very first, newly-minted geologist. Check it out:
Why did they want a lecture? My idea is that, faced with this largely unexplored vast new state, legislators simply wanted a better handle on "what the heck are we dealing with, here? Are there gold mines? Rare spices? Giraffes?"
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Wednesday Mystery Spot
Last time we ventured a bit out of town to view this Mystery Spot, which as BF and Phantom Railfan correctly guessed is the Saline Depot. As you know the structure still exists and is a museum, one of two maintained by the Saline Historical Society. The other museum is the Depression-era farm the Rentschler Farm.
This time we're back in town, but it's a tricky one since this building is long gone. According to the blurb accompanying this engraving, "It was originally erected for a hotel in the "boom" times of the early thirties; but after the financial crash of 1837 it was a dead property until [something] was established in the fall of 1844."
This time we're back in town, but it's a tricky one since this building is long gone. According to the blurb accompanying this engraving, "It was originally erected for a hotel in the "boom" times of the early thirties; but after the financial crash of 1837 it was a dead property until [something] was established in the fall of 1844."
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Childs Family Letter Video
Here's my first attempt at a local history video. This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time. It's pretty rough--I see many areas for improvement (and many built-in limitations, since I'm doing this at home as a non-pro). But I think it has great potential as a way to impart Ypsi history.
Monday, July 27, 2009
1839 Michigan Settler Mary Clavers Ventilates Her Spleen
"Mother wants your sifter," said Miss Ianthe Howard, a young lady of six years' standing, attired in a tattered calico, thickened with dirt; her unkempt locks straggling from under that hideous substitute for a bonnet, so universal in the western country [Michigan], a dirty cotton handkerchief, which is used, ad nauseam, for all sorts of purposes.
"Mother wants your sifter, and she says she guesses you can let her have some sugar and tea, 'cause you got plenty."
This excellent reason, "'cause you've got plenty,' is conclusive as to sharing with your neighbors. Whoever comes into Michigan with nothing will be sure to better his condition; but woe to him that brings with him anything like an appearance of abundance, whether of money or mere household conveniences. To have them, and not be willing to share them in some sort with the whole community is an unpardonable crime. You must lend your best horse qui que ce soit to go ten miles over hill and marsh, in the darkest night, for a doctor; or your team to travel twenty after a 'gal,' your wheelbarrows, your shovels, your utensils of all sorts, belong, not to yourself, but to the public, who do not think it necessary even to ask a loan, but take it for granted. The two saddles and bridles of Montacute [Clavers' Michigan town] spend most of their time travelling from house to house a-man-back; and I have actually known a stray martingale [horse tack] to be traced to four dwellings two miles apart, having been lent from one to another, without a word to the original proprietor, who sat waiting, not very patiently, to commence a journey.
Then within doors, an inventory of your plenishings of all sorts, would scarcely more than include the articles which you are solicited to lend. Not only are all kitchen utensils as much your neighbor's as your own, but bedsteads, beds, blankets, sheets, travel from house to house, a pleasant and effectual mode of securing the perpetuity of certain efflorescent peculiarities of hte skin, for which Michigan is becoming almost as famous as the land "'twixt Maidenkirk and John O'Groats'." Sieves, smoothing irons, and churns, run about as if they had legs; one brass kettle is enough for a whole neighborhood; and I could point to a cradle which has rocked half the babies in Montacute. For my own part, I have lent my broom, my thread, my tape, my spoons, my cat, my thimble, my scissors, my shawl, my shoes; and have been asked for my combs and brushes: and my husband for his shaving apparatus and his pantaloons.
But the cream of the joke lies in the manner of the thing. It is so straight-forward and honest, none of your hypocritical civility and servile gratitude! Your true republican, when he finds that you possess anything which would contribute to his convenience, walks in with, "Are you going to use your horses to-day?" if horses happen to be the thing he needs.
"Yes, I shall probably want them."
"O, well, if you want them--I was thinking to get 'em to go up north a piece."
Or perhaps the desired article comes within the female department.
"Mother wants to get some buter: that 'ere butter you bought off Miss Barton this mornin'."
And away goes your golden store, to be repaid perhaps with some cheesy, greasy stuff, brought in a dirty pail, with, "Here's your butter!"
A giel came in to borrow a "wash-dish," "because we've got company." Presently she came back: "Mother says you've forgot to send a towel."
"The pen and ink, and a sheet o' paper and a wafer [wax seal]" is no unusual request; and when the pen is returned, you are generally informed that you send "an awful bad pen"....
--A New Home: Who'll Follow? by Michigan settler Mary Clavers, 1839
"Mother wants your sifter, and she says she guesses you can let her have some sugar and tea, 'cause you got plenty."
This excellent reason, "'cause you've got plenty,' is conclusive as to sharing with your neighbors. Whoever comes into Michigan with nothing will be sure to better his condition; but woe to him that brings with him anything like an appearance of abundance, whether of money or mere household conveniences. To have them, and not be willing to share them in some sort with the whole community is an unpardonable crime. You must lend your best horse qui que ce soit to go ten miles over hill and marsh, in the darkest night, for a doctor; or your team to travel twenty after a 'gal,' your wheelbarrows, your shovels, your utensils of all sorts, belong, not to yourself, but to the public, who do not think it necessary even to ask a loan, but take it for granted. The two saddles and bridles of Montacute [Clavers' Michigan town] spend most of their time travelling from house to house a-man-back; and I have actually known a stray martingale [horse tack] to be traced to four dwellings two miles apart, having been lent from one to another, without a word to the original proprietor, who sat waiting, not very patiently, to commence a journey.
Then within doors, an inventory of your plenishings of all sorts, would scarcely more than include the articles which you are solicited to lend. Not only are all kitchen utensils as much your neighbor's as your own, but bedsteads, beds, blankets, sheets, travel from house to house, a pleasant and effectual mode of securing the perpetuity of certain efflorescent peculiarities of hte skin, for which Michigan is becoming almost as famous as the land "'twixt Maidenkirk and John O'Groats'." Sieves, smoothing irons, and churns, run about as if they had legs; one brass kettle is enough for a whole neighborhood; and I could point to a cradle which has rocked half the babies in Montacute. For my own part, I have lent my broom, my thread, my tape, my spoons, my cat, my thimble, my scissors, my shawl, my shoes; and have been asked for my combs and brushes: and my husband for his shaving apparatus and his pantaloons.
But the cream of the joke lies in the manner of the thing. It is so straight-forward and honest, none of your hypocritical civility and servile gratitude! Your true republican, when he finds that you possess anything which would contribute to his convenience, walks in with, "Are you going to use your horses to-day?" if horses happen to be the thing he needs.
"Yes, I shall probably want them."
"O, well, if you want them--I was thinking to get 'em to go up north a piece."
Or perhaps the desired article comes within the female department.
"Mother wants to get some buter: that 'ere butter you bought off Miss Barton this mornin'."
And away goes your golden store, to be repaid perhaps with some cheesy, greasy stuff, brought in a dirty pail, with, "Here's your butter!"
A giel came in to borrow a "wash-dish," "because we've got company." Presently she came back: "Mother says you've forgot to send a towel."
"The pen and ink, and a sheet o' paper and a wafer [wax seal]" is no unusual request; and when the pen is returned, you are generally informed that you send "an awful bad pen"....
--A New Home: Who'll Follow? by Michigan settler Mary Clavers, 1839
Monday, May 11, 2009
Four Dollars and Eighty Four Cents for Mr. Enos, County Pauper
The Archives contains in its "subject" files one file labeled "Poor House." It contains two lists of poor house residents from two random years and about 8 very old documents relating to the early days of the county poor house, which once stood in present-day County Farm Park, near Washtenaw and Platt. The pictured document reads,
4-84 To the Treasurer of the Town of Ypsilanti
Sir
Pay to [Edmunds] and Godard four Dollars and Eighty four cents for expenses laid out for Mr. Enos (deceased) a county Pauper
Elias M. Skinner
Poor Master for the Town of Ypsilanti
for G. [Spencer]
Ypsilanti Sept. 16 1833
"Elias Skinner" was the name of the first lawyer to hang a shingle in Ypsi, and presumably is the same man who wrote this letter.
$4.84 in 1833 dollars would be about $105 today. Is this document a bill for Mr. Enos' death expenses? Dusty Diary at first thought so, but reflected that 1. I don't believe funerals were as expensive in those days and 2. the county would spend the minimum for a pauper's death and also 3. the poor house had its own graveyard, now partially buried by Washtenaw Road. So what is this document?
