Teenaged Jessie Swaine's Reflections on the 19th Century

One recent discovery in the Archives is the 1895 literature notebook from Jessie Swaine, onetime domestic science instructor at Ypsilanti High School and the Normal School. Jessie lived for much of her life in what is still called the Swaine house at the northeast corner of Forest and River. She wrote in this notebook when she was approximately 16 years old. One of the entries is an essay on the 19th century.

The Nineteenth Century

The Nineteenth century period is the present period and is the most wonderful period of all; it is an age of invention and their [sic] has been a great advancement in Education, Religion and Literature also in the social life and politics have been bettered and science has advanced greatly nearly every school boy and school girl knows now and more than the men that made science a special study in the past ages, it is taught in all schools and in nearly all grades. The invention of electricity has aided us greatly in lightly on streets and many other useful things, the sewing machine has taken the place of the needle, and fire arms have been greatly improved.

The different churches have become more united and societies have been formed in which the Bible is read and people are taught more about religion, then missionaries are sent from Christian countries to countries where God is not known and they teach the people there so that the Christian religion is being spread all over the world.

In Literature fiction has taken the place of the drama of the Elizabethan age and it is purer than it used to be, and treats more of the life and ways of people then of wars etc. We read not only for the story but for what we can get out of it, we find most of our best reading in the magazines and Reviews.

Baron [Byron] was one of the best poets of this period but his life does not correspond with his writing and many think that he will not have a lasting remembrance, his poems are gloomy, melancholy but deep and beautiful. Is this not true:

There is a rapture in the pathless woods,
There is a pleasure on the lonely shore,
There is society where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar.

His words are certainly stricking [sic] and stirring....

Remnants of the Peckville School

This Daily Ypsilantian-Press article from February 6, 1926 reveals that in the 20s, remnants of the old northside Peckville school were still standing, near Forest and River. The city's second-oldest school, it was then being used as part of a garage by the Swaine family.

The 1856 plat map clearly shows the school on Forest near River. Other interesting details: Maple was called Mill St., and Prospect was called Cemetery St. One wonders when the last bits of the old Peckville School were razed. Also, this map shows the school abutting Forest, but the school is said to have been later turned into the Swaine malt house, which is set back some distance from Forest. Were there two iterations of the school building? Another note is that plat maps are not infallible and were drawn by non-resident plat map companies. You can certainly find errors on old Ypsilanti plat maps.


Here is a Reward of Merit given to one Florence Small(e)y in 1857 and recently published in Gleanings. At first I thought that the school illustrated on the form was the Peckville school, and thought, "that''s a pretty imposing structure for a then-semi-rural schoolhouse!" On closer examination I see that one has to fill in the school name on this form, so I speculate that it was just a standard purchased form someone ordered from a school supply-house.

Modern-day Peckville resident Janice A. has written a delightful account of her onetime neighborhood, published in the Summer 2010 Gleanings. It's worth a read to learn about this onetime northside community.

Catchin' Crawdads in the Huron

Two boys who grew up in Ypsilanti's beautiful Swaine house had an adventurous childhood, according to their autobiography, which is excerpted in today's Courier.