Peter Dow curling on Orchard Lake. Circa 1915. Note the small stones. Perhaps they are “irons.
According to legend, the Orchard Lake Scotsmen formed Michigan’s first curling club in 1831 and played their first match on January 7, 1832.
The Detroit Curling Club, founded in 1840 and now located just north of the city in Ferndale, is one of the oldest clubs in the U.S.
Undated photo from the Detroit Curling Club Archives.
Grand Rapids lays claim to having birthed the first women’s curling club in the country (founded 1908).
Source : Pasty Central Day in History.
The Connecticut-born lawyer, who was a Whig, moved to Ohio, where he was a state representative, a county prosecutor and a state senator. After moving to Detroit, he served as Michigan Territory’s first congressional delegate, a territory Supreme Court judge, state constitutional convention delegate and state senator.
As governor, Woodbridge replaced Democrat Stevens T. Mason. He served for fewer than 14 months, resigning to become a U.S. senator on Feb. 24, 1841.
When he left for Washington, his lieutenant governor, James Wright Gordon, a fellow lawyer who was born in Connecticut, replaced him.
Woodbridge died in 1861 and is buried in Detroit’s Elmwood Cemetery.
Posthumously, Woodbridge has significance to sports fans in two ways. First, he used to own the land Tiger Stadium was built on and the second part of the Corner’s address at Michigan and Trumbull was named for Woodbridge’s father-in-law, John Trumbull, of American Revolution fame. Second, his great-granddaughter, Margaret Presley, won two medals in swimming at the 1920 Olympics, one gold and one silver.
Sources:
Amy Elliott Bragg, “One constant succession of amusements“, Night Train, May 17, 2010.
Zlati Meyer, “Michigan history: 2nd governor took office in 1840”, Detroit Free Press, January 4, 2015.
Zlati Meyer, “Territory gets to send delegate to House of Representatives”, Detroit Free Press, February 16, 2014.
Detroit businessman Edward F. Schlee and his co-pilot, William S. Brock made the first nonstop Detroit-to-Miami flight on January 7, 1929, finishing in nine hours and 20 minutes.
As Schlee and Brock were winging their way south, the Ford Motor Company continued to expand its involvement in the nation’s fledgling passenger airplane industry. Ford’s Tri-Motor airplane, which became a staple in the nation’s commercial airplane industry during the early 1930s, provided many Americans with their first airplane ride. According to one observer, “If not for a Ford Tri-Motor, there might not be a United States airline industry.”
Source: Michigan is Amazing
On January 7, 1936, across the street from Flint’s Chevrolet’s Plant 9 at West Kearsley and Asylum streets, police arrested two men after what The Flint Journal reported was a “pitched battle” there.
For more information, see Ron Fonger, “75 years ago, violence, police became factors in Sit-Down Strike of 1936-37”, MLive, January 7, 2011.
On January 7, 1950, Chevrolet introduced the “Powerglide”, the first automatic transmission available in an affordably-priced car. Although many drivers clung to their beloved manual transmissions, much of the public greeted the new ” Powerglide” with enthusiasm. 300,000 Chevrolet cars equipped with ” Powerglide” models were sold the first year.
Source : Michigan Historical Calendar, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
On January 7, 1971, an unarmed B52 bomber narrowly missed the Big Rock Park nuclear plant near Charlevoix when it crashed into Lake Michigan.
Source : Pasty Central Day in History.
President Barack Obama on Wednesday hailed the resurgence of the auto industry and Detroit’s comeback from bankruptcy in a speech that paid tribute to the Motor City and offered a preview to his upcoming State of the Union address.
“Because of you, manufacturing has a future in this country,” Obama told a crowd of auto industry workers at a Ford Plant in Wayne. “The middle class has a future in this country. The auto industry has proved that any comeback is possible, and by the way, so has the Motor City.”
For the full article, see Tanya Moutzalias, “Obama: Detroit, auto industry resurgence prove ‘any comeback is possible'”, MLive, January 8, 2015.
Perles was born July 16, 1934, on Detroit’s west side and was a football and baseball star at Detroit Western. He earned all-state football honors as a junior and senior and graduated in 1953, then briefly attended the University of Tennessee before returning to Detroit and joining the Army with a number of his friends.
He served in the Army from 1954-56 and was stationed in Hawaii, where he continued to play football. After returning from active duty, Perles joined Duffy Daugherty’s football team at MSU as an offensive and defensive tackle in the fall of 1956. Perles lettered for the Spartans in 1958 before a knee injury ended his playing career.
After getting his bachelor’s degree from MSU in 1960, Perles joined Daugherty’s staff as a graduate assistant. He received his master’s in educational administration in 1961 and went on to coach high school football at St. Rita’s in Chicago and St. Ambrose High in Grosse Pointe Park, which went 23-2 in three seasons and won the 1962 City League championship with Perles as head coach.
After a two-year stint as an assistant coach at the University of Dayton, Perles returned to MSU and Daugherty’s staff, coaching the defensive line from 1967-71.
Chuck Noll, the legendary NFL coach, poached Perles in 1972 to coach the Pittsburgh Steelers’ budding defensive line. Perles became one of the architects of the Steelers’ vaunted Steel Curtain defense that dominated the decade, with his innovative stunt 4-3 formation helping Pittsburgh win four Super Bowls. He became Noll’s defensive coordinator in 1978 and assistant head coach from 1979-82.
That led Perles to a head coaching job with the Philadelphia Stars of the upstart United States Football League. He helped build the team throughout 1982 but never coached a game when the league began in the spring of 1983 because his alma mater came calling for the job he coveted most.
MSU hired Perles to replace Muddy Waters on Dec. 3, 1982, giving the 48-year-old a five-year contract three years after he was bypassed for the job by Waters. He also applied for the job in 1976, after Denny Stolz was forced out and the school was placed on probation.
He guided the Spartans to the 1988 Rose Bowl, their first since 1966, along with the 1987 Big Ten title that was their first since 1978. They also won a share of the 1990 conference championship, which would be MSU’s last until Mark Dantonio earned a share in 2010.
Perles parlayed the Jets offer into a 10-year deal as football coach and athletic director that did not last. His stint as athletic director ended in 1992 after friction with then-president John DiBiaggio, who demanded Perles pick one job or the other. Perles then was fired as football coach by ensuing president Peter McPherson near the end of the 1994 season.
In 2006, Perles ran and won a seat on the MSU Board of Trustees as a Democrat, and was reelected in 2014. He served from 2007 until November 2018, when he resigned and cited health concerns following a year which included fallout from the Larry Nassar conviction, the resignation of president Lou Anna K. Simon and athletic director Mark Hollis, and scrutiny into sexual assault allegations surrounding the school’s football and basketball programs.
Following his stint as MSU coach, Perles helped create the Motor City Bowl in 1997, which reintroduced a college football bowl to Detroit (MSU had played in the 1984 Cherry Bowl under Perles, a game that existed for just two years).
Perles also was a staunch supporter of the Special Olympics. He joined with former attorney general Frank Kelley and Peter Secchia, a former ambassador to Italy and another MSU alum, to create the annual Kelley-Perles-Secchia Special Olympics Golf Classic in Lansing that began in 1987 and continued through 2018.
Among his other activities, Perles served on the board for Blue Cross Blue Shield, was a member of the selection committee for the Hula Bowl and was a contributor to the Harris Interactive College Football Poll. He was inducted into the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame in 2006.
Sources:
Chris Solari, “George Perles, former Michigan State football coach and board member, dies at 85“, Detroit Free Press, January 8, 2020.
On January 8, 1831, mail started arriving in Detroit from the East on a daily basis but it still took fourteen days and nights to receive a letter from New York.
The arrival of daily mail in Detroit marked the beginning of what became the “Michigan Decade.” According to one observer, “It appeared that everyone was coming to Michigan.” Through the 1830s, immigrants, many traveling along New York’s Erie Canal, arrived in Detroit before heading inland. Michigan’s population in 1830 grew to more than 212,000 by 1840.
Sources:
Mich-Again’s Day.
Michigan History magazine
Governor Stevens T. Mason called out the state militia to keep the Patriots, Canadian rebels, from using Michigan as a base to attack the British government in Canada. Patriot sympathizers had raided the arsenal in Detroit and seized the schooner Anne for an invasion of Canada.
Source : Pasty Central Day in History
For more information, see :
Patriot War and wikipedia entry
To free upper Canada : Michigan and the Patriot War, 1837-1839 / by Roger L. Rosentreter. Thesis (Ph.D)–Michigan State University. Dept. of History, 1983. 237pp. 123 767 THS Also available online to the MSU Community.
The Patriot War along the Michigan-Canada border : raiders and rebels / Shaun J. McLaughlin. Charleston, SC : The History Press, 2013.