During the Revolutionary War, British Captain Henry Bird departs Detroit with 1200 Indians to attack American settlers/rebels in Kentucky..
Sourcse :
Historical Society of Michigan
Henry Bird Ohio History Central Page.
Bird’s Invasion of Kentucky wikipedia entry.
Elizabeth Denison was born in 1786 on the estate of William Tucker, on the Clinton River in Macomb County. Her parents, Peter and Hannah Denison, were slaves on the Tucker estate: Hannah served as a housekeeper while Peter traveled up and down the river conducting trades for his owner. Though few realize it, slavery was fairly common in Detroit from the time of its founding in 1701 into the first few decades of the 19th century.
This was during a period of legal ambiguity in Michigan’s history when the area was technically a part of the Northwest Territory, but still under British control, for the British would not surrender Detroit until 1796. When William Tucker died in 1807, he deeded all of his property—humans included—to his brother, with the codicil that the Denison family was to be freed. Unfortunately, though, Tucker’s widow retained ownership of the six Denison children under a technicality. They were transferred to Elijah Brush, a prominent Detroit lawyer whose name still dots streets and neighborhoods around the city. But Brush was sensitive to the Denison family’s plight, and represented them in a legal case demanding that by the laws of the new territory, they were free citizens.
The case made its way to Federal Judge Augustus B. Woodward, recently arrived in the settlement. In a rather open-to-interpretation ruling, Woodward declared that all slaves born in Michigan before July 11, 1796, who were “in possession” of settlers before May 31, 1793, were slaves for life. Others born after that, Woodward ruled, were to be freed at the age of 25. It was a complicated solution for the problem, and points to a part of Michigan history that many aren’t aware existed. And though his ruling was incredibly harsh by our standards, Woodward left some wiggle room by declaring later that year that any slaves entering from Canada automatically held free status. Soon Elizabeth and her brother escaped, likely with the aid of Elijah Brush, to Canada.
Elizabeth Denison Forth, former slave and Detroit landowner and philanthropist
With her return to Detroit around 1812 as a free woman, Elizabeth Denison took a position as housekeeper with Solomon Sibley, another notable Detroit lawyer and politician. Although Denison never learned to read or write, she had a keen eye for business transactions and accounting. Soon she was speculating on real estate and stocks and amassing a remarkable nest egg, especially given her background and the circumstances at the time.
On April 12, 1825, Denison purchased 48.5 acres of land in Pontiac from Sibley. With this act, she became the first black woman in Michigan to own land. In 1827, she married Scipio Forth, who died within a few years of the marriage. Beginning in 1831, she entered the employment of Major John Biddle, and more especially, his wife. Denison maintained an independent lifestyle, however, owning property in several areas of greater Detroit, as well as a house in Greektown, and stock in several prominent Detroit banks.
Denison’s relationship with the Biddle family was, by all we can tell, a close and rewarding one. For the next 35 years until her death she remained in contact with and frequently traveled with the family.
Biddle’s wife, the wealthy New York-born socialite Eliza Falconer Biddle, grew up in circumstances that were vastly different than those of her friend Elizabeth Denison Forth. Her 1821 portrait by noted painter Thomas Sully depicts a young woman in the most fashionable of dress. She moved with her politician husband to Detroit, where he served at times as mayor and Congressional delegate, and founded the settlement of Wyandotte, named after the Native American tribe settled in the area.
In Detroit, the Biddles met the former slave turned savvy investor. And despite their differences, the two women struck up an intimate friendship that led Denison Forth to accompany her friend and employer to Philadelphia and even Paris for several years, where according to Brian Short of LSA Magazine, she solidified her reputation as a fine chef while tending to the often sickly Eliza.
After 1853, the Biddles retired to Philadelphia and Denison Forth to her home on Macomb and Brush streets. The women remained closely linked, though, joined by a common devotion to their Episcopal faith, and while in Detroit Denison maintained ties with the Biddle’s children, who had moved to Wyandotte and Grosse Ile by then.
Eliza Biddle died in 1865 and Elizabeth shortly after in 1866. In her will, Elizabeth Denison Forth deeded nearly half of her sizeable savings for the establishment of “a proper Protestant Episcopal Church” on the island of Grosse Ile, especially focused on charity to the poor. The chapel stands on East River Road, looking across the water to the Canadian shore where Elizabeth gained her freedom in a youthful gamble. The chapel celebrated its first service in 1868 and continues to welcome parishioners and visitors to the island.
Mickey Lyons, “A remarkable tale of slavery and opportunity in early Detroit“, ModelMedia Blog, August 25, 2015.
Joe Thurtell, “The ex-slave who endowed a church for whites“, On the Road Blog, February 23, 2013.
When South Carolina’s coast guard batteries began firing on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, there were 72 union soldiers defending the fort, including a young Second Lieutenant from Monroe, Michigan named Norman J. Hall.
Jack Manning, “This Civil War Book is Different”, Detroit Free Press, April 9, 1961, p.17.
Articles and web sites about the Civil War:
Fort Sumter : Where the American Civil War Began : Decades of growing strife between North and South erupted in civil war on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on this Federal fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later. Union forces would try for nearly four years to take it back.
Fort Sumter: How Civil War Began With a Bloodless Battle, National Geographic Daily News, April 12, 2011.
Zlati Meyer, “Thank God for Michigan? Another Civil War debate; Lincoln remark questioned as Civil War milestone reached”, Detroit Free Press, April 12, 2011.
Dave LeMieux, “150 years ago, Muskegon residents filled regimental ranks after attack on Fort Sumter”, Muskegon Chronicle via MLive, April 12, 2011.
Civil war buffs may want to check out Classroom Connections: Civil War Poetry — Linking Literature to Primary Sources.
Also take a look at the Michigan and the Civil War Sesquicentennial, 2011-2015 web page.
Michigan in the Civil War, 1861-1865 : statistics, photos, and information about Michigan in the war assembled by Civil War Historian Don Harvey.
Civil War Day by Day – Courtesy of the University of North Carolina Library.
Civil War Interactive Web Site – courtesy of the New York Times.
Discovering the Civil War an online exhibit courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution.
Mrs. Helen Jackson Wilkins Claytor made it her life’s work to break down racial barriers, before the term “civil rights” became part of the country’s lexicon.
She was born in Minneapolis on April 12, 1907 and was a 1928 cum laude graduate of the University of Minnesota, where she was one of the few black students. In one of her early jobs, she was a caseworker supervisor for the federal Emergency Relief Administration in Jackson County, Mo.
She had been a member of the Young Women’s Christian Association since grade school and by the late 1930s, she was working for the organization — then racially segregated — in Trenton, N.J., and Kansas City,
She first traveled to Grand Rapids to speak at a convention in 1942 as secretary for interracial education for the national YWCA. She was a widow and mother at the time. Her first husband, journalist Earl Wilkins, died in 1941.
She met Robert Claytor, a Grand Rapids doctor, and they married a year later. She moved to the western Michigan city.
She could not get a job teaching in Grand Rapids in the early 1940s, which she attributed to racism.
Meanwhile, her husband became the first black doctor on staff at St. Mary’s Hospital. When his wife resigned her national YWCA post, joined the Grand Rapids YWCA board and became president in 1949, three white board members resigned in protest, saying the city was not ready for a black YWCA president.
In the early 1950s, she led the Grand Rapids Human Relations Study Commission to look at race relations. She led a study on de facto segregation in Grand Rapids public schools in the early 1960s and made recommendations on integration.
The elimination of racism was a key goal of Mrs. Claytor’s tenure as president of the national YWCA, and one of her proudest achievements was to get the organization to support that principle at the 1970 convention.
Sources :
Michigan History, March/April 2015
“Helen Claytor: Activist in Civil Rights, YWCA“, Washington Post, May 14, 2005.
“Helen Claytor Statue Dedication“, MLive, July 23; updated July 24, 2014.
Cindy Lang, “Dr. Robert W. and Helen J. Claytor“, HistoryGrandRapids.org, April 13, 2010.
n less than a week following the announcement of war against Germany, Michigan Governor Sleeper hears farmers request for labor at food conservation conference.
On April 12, 1917, Gov. Albert Sleeper learned at a food conservation conference that the number one issue confronting Michigan farmers was a lack of labor, particularly at planting and harvest time.
Farmers pleaded that factories let their workers out during these two critical times to help with the work and that high schools let their students out to assist in the collection of crops.
“I had no idea that the labor situation was so serious as it is,” the Governor said.
One Marquette farmer conceded that he “stole” teenage boys from the local high school and are paying them “men’s wages” because he could get no one else to work for him.
Source: “Labor Famine Peril’s State’s Food Supplies“, Detroit Free Press, April 13, 1917.
“Safe, effective, and potent.”
With these words on April 12, 1955, Dr. Thomas Francis Jr., director of the Poliomyelitis Vaccine Evaluation Center at the University of Michigan School of Public Health, announced to the world that the Salk polio vaccine was up to 90% effective in preventing paralytic polio.
Dr. Francis made the announcement to a crowd of scientists and reporters at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium, concluding his two-year national field trials of the poliomyelitis vaccine developed by his former student, Jonas Salk. Francis was chair of the School of Public Health Department of Epidemiology where Salk did postgraduate training.
April 12, 1955 was chosen for the announcement because it was the 10th anniversary of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s death. FDR was one of the most famous sufferers from polio.
Over 1,800,000 children participated in the field trials, which were unprecedented in magnitude.
Source : 1955 Polio Vaccine Trial Announcement, University of Michigan School of Public Health
For more information, see Pat Zacharias, “Conquering the dreaded crippler, polio”, Detroit News, May 9, 1999.
April 12, 1964, Malcolm X delivered, in Detroit, one of the most important speeches in the history of the Civil Rights Movement, “The Ballot or the Bullet.”
The title alludes to an article written by Frederick Douglass over a hundred years before, also called “The Ballot or the Bullet.” They both openly confront racism, enslavement and argue that either people of color will have the vote, the power to take control of their communities or violence will prevail.
Malcolm had broken with the Nation of Islam a month before and was attempting to create two new organizations designed to engage the civil rights movement. He was about to travel to Africa to consult with leaders who had already largely defeated the colonialists. He was different. He was expanding. He spoke differently. His political views were changing. What transformed him was not always clear but transformed he was.
Malcolm saw more clearly by 1964 how structural racism held the nation – black and white – by its throat. He now conceived of the world more globally, understanding that blacks were part not of a minority but a worldwide majority, a majority that faced similar problems of economic and political disenfranchisement. And he had matured into a highly skilled and profound leader who disavowed even his own racism. While perhaps once understandable, he realized that racism made him no different than those he opposed.
For the full article, see Ron Manuto and Sean Patrick O’Rourke, “Ballot or the bullet, 50 years later”, Detroit News, April 10, 2014.
On April 12, 1997, the world’s largest black history museum opened in Detroit. The 120,000-square-foot Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History houses more than 30,000 artifacts and archival materials and is home to the Blanche Coggin Underground Railroad Collection, Harriet Tubman Museum Collection, Coleman A. Young Collection and the Sheffield Collection and a repository of documents of the labor movement in Detroit.
More information about the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History
Source: Michigan Every Day
The state record for black buffalo goes to Sage Colegrove of Muskegon.
The fish, weighing 44.54 pounds and measuring 38.50 inches, was caught on the Grand River in Ottawa County at 1 a.m. Sunday, April 12, when Colegrove and a friend were bowfishing.
The previous state-record black buffalo was caught by Joshua Teunis on Bear Lake June 15, 2014. That fish weighed 41.25 pounds and measured 38.25 inches.
State records are recognized by weight only. To qualify for a state record, fish must exceed the current listed state record weight and identification must be verified by a DNR fisheries biologist.
For the full article, see Stephen Kloosterman, “State record white perch caught by Muskegon woman”, MLive, June 22, 2015.
Michigan State University is no longer burning coal at the power plant on its East Lansing campus.
The school is now using only natural gas and says Tuesday that all of its remaining coal reserves have been burned at the T.B. Simon Power Plant, which generates steam for heating and electrical power.
Emissions from the plant are expected to be reduced by about 32 percent.
The move is part of the university’s Energy Transition Plan which provides a framework for Michigan State’s energy decisions.
The university announced plans last year to phase out coal use at the plant on the south end of campus
. About 8,000 tons of remaining coal has been exhausted.
Upward of 250,000 tons of coal had been burned there annually.