Abba Owen's Dad to Become City Utility

Kind readers may recall that recently in her diary, 16-year-old Abba Owen noted that her dad was in talks with the city to supply water, as a one-man municipal utility. On August 6, 1888 she wrote:

To-night was city council meeting . . . Papa's proposition was accepted for water works and a committee of aldermen one from each ward was appointed----report for next meeting to city council.

Throughout the summer of 1888 talks were ongoing regarding Tubal Owen's supplying water to the city. The excerpt pictured here shows an earlier meeting with city council, as it appeared in the July 20, 1888 Ypsilanti Commercial:

As will be seen by the report of the Council Proceedings published elsewhere Mr. T. C. Owen submitted to that body at its last meeting, a proposition to furnish water to the wards on this side of the river*, provided he could have the exclusive franchise for 30 years, and the city would pay $50 each for not less than 5 hydrants in each of the 3 wards, and he to furnish water to private consumers at a price not exceeding that paid in Ann Arbor. This proposition, which was tabled, has since been withdrawn by Mr. Owen, but we hope not permanently.

*"this side" is of course the west side of the river (48198 today), and the city had 5, not 3, wards at the time. The 3 wards referred to above were wards 1,2, & 3 on the river's west side.

How will Tubal Cain Owen's ambitious aquatic venture work out in coming months? Will his well at Forest Avenue and College Place be piped all over the west side? Stay tuned...

Tubal Cain Owen: Family Notes

Kind readers likely think of Ypsilanti's water baron Tubal Cain Owen as an eccentric genius and a master of self- marketing. His well, drilled near where EMU's Roosevelt High School building stands today, made him a fortune with its murky water. But his family was interesting as well. Tubal's son Eber got a law degree from U-M but apparently never used it, preferring to spend his adult years breeding fancy poultry. Tubal's daughter Abba kept a colorful diary. Though Tubal sold his water as a cancer cure, tragically both of his children died of this disease.

Abba's diary reflects the occasions of her day, such as the election of Benjamin Harrison as President in November 1888. She and her mother were 30 years shy of being able to vote, but Abba took a lively interest nonetheless. Here are a few excerpts:

November 5th: Tonight is the last night before election and the Republicans and Democrats each had a torch parade. The boys went down and tried to get a torch to join the Republican parade but there were none left so they did not join it. . . We could hear the noise of the horns, bands, and cries way up to our house.

November 6th: Today is election day, the tug of war. It has been cloudy but it did not rain. Everybody is excited. This evening about half past seven we began to get reports and by the time we went to bed we heard that YPSILANTI had gone Republican the first time in a great many years. All the Republicans are quite positive that Harrison will be elected.

November 7th: The boys did not get home last night until 12 o'clock and they said that they went over to the Light Guard Hall [northeast corner of Michigan and Washington] where they received the reports and the Republicans were so tickled that they sent for the band and had a great time. The latest news we have got today is this evening that Harrison is elected even the Democratic papers own up to it. Mama and I were downtown this afternoon and most everybody was talking politics. Harry Ferrier, a little boy whose father is a Democrat, met a little girl and said, "I have just heard that New York State had gone Democratic and if it has we will beat the Republicans all to shucks," and off he ran and it did sound so funny for such a little boy. The band is out serenading Allen this evening."

Harrison was elected, but the vote count wasn't finalized for many days, and not until the 15th do victorious Republicans in Ypsilanti stage a "grand torch light parade" in town, also memorialized and handed down to us through the years in the little diary kept by the daughter of Ypsilanti's water baron.

EMU Overlooks Magical Mystery Well in Preservation Award

EMU has just won an award for preserving the several historic buildings on its campus.

Now all they need to do is to bring back Tubal Cain Owen's magical curative water well, which he called "Atlantis." Its gigantic wooden derrick once towered above the spot where the old Roosevelt High School now stands on EMU's campus.

Tubal Cain Owen was not a man to do anything by half-measures. When he drilled for water and struck a vein of smelly reddish-brown liquid of questionable ingestibility, did he drill elsewhere? No! He marketed the heck out of it! Owen sold his water across the nation as a life-giving elixir--even as a cancer cure. It was Ypsilanti's golden age of dubious curative water, just shy of the turn of the century.

But the glowing testimonials festooning Owen's miracle beverage withered away with the 1906 Pure Food Act. Also, "local residents complained of the yelling of the patients at Owen's house of healing so the state condemned the property, claiming that the sanitarium posed “a serious menace to the social life of the Normal College,” allowing it to then “acquire” the land for the college's use. The Roosevelt Building was constructed on the site of the former Owen home as a high school for teacher training."