On December 18, 1829, Presbyterian Reverend William Jones organized the city's first Temperance society. He was scandalized at the city's moral laxitude, which included the unrestrained pitching of quoits (similar to pitching horseshoes) in present-day Riverside Park on the Lord's Day. The city's first distillery had been built three years earlier. Jones said, on arrival in town from New York:"I arrived at Ypsilanti on October 3, 1829, and found the people without a church, and in a deplorable condition. Almost the whole village, with few exceptions, were given over to the unrestrained indulgence in intoxicating drinks. The holy Sabbath was openly desecrated by revelry, drunkenness, and the pitching of quoits on the banks of the river. The first Sabbath after my arrival, as they were without even a schoolhouse or a public room for meeting, I met the people in a private dwelling; but the fetid breath of intoxication sensibly impregnated and polluted the atmosphere of the room. These things were literally true. I entered the field under heart-sickening' circumstances. I felt that nothing could be done until the people were restored to sobriety. So I invited different neighborhoods together and read to them Dr. Beecher's sermons on the use of intoxicating drinks. Attention was arrested, a temperance society was formed in Ypsilanti; and from thence the temperance reformation spread through the county." --Past and Present of Washtenaw County
That last "from thence" was a tad overstated--the cause of Temperance waxed and waned in Ypsilanti for the next century, until Prohibition began.'And Jones didn't even bother to try and ban beer and wine, but allowed the consumption of these milder drinks since it would have been impossible to ban alcohol outright.
Jones did not last for even a year in Ypsi. He was replaced by the summer of 1830. The subjects of Jones' first and last sermons here in town hint that he did not make much headway with his Temperance movement. The first sermon he preached here was based on the text "Fear not, little flock—it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom."
His last one was based on the text "Up, get ye out of this place, for the Lord will destroy it."
