Detroit was incorporated as a town by the legislature of the Northwest Territory at Chillicothe, Ohio, and approved by Territorial Governor Arthur St. Clair on January 18, 1802, effective February 1, 1802. Government was administered by a five-person board of trustees and there was no office of mayor.
Shortly thereafter, on February 23rd, the board of trustees for the newly created city of Detroit adopts a fire code that requires all residents and business owners to sweep their chimneys often. It also provides buckets and ladders to residents, who are required to turn out to fight any fires.
Apparently the fear of fire was genuine. On June 11, 1805, Detroit was destroyed by fire when baker John Harvey allegedly sets his barn ablaze with ashes from his pipe.
At the time of its incorporation as a city Detroit was about a third of a square mile, or 213 acres.
Source:
After Detroit was captured in War of 1812, Colonel Henry Proctor, the British commander, declared martial law and ordered prominent Americans to leave Detroit.
Source : Historical Society of Michigan.
Letter from 29 Detroit Citizens protesting the order that they depart, February 1, 1813 from History of Monroe County.
On February 1, 1832, The Western Immigrant, an Ann Arbor newspaper, printed the first published proposal for a transcontinental railroad.
Source: Michigan History
Or was it February 6, 1832? See John Debo Galloway, The Transcontinental Railroad, Chapter 3, Simmons-Boardman, New York, 1950.
For a related article, see “Dr. Hartwell Carver’s Proposal to Build a Railroad from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean”
Asa Whitney Pitches Transcontinental Railroad to Congress, from Lake Michigan to the Pacific, January 17, 1848.
On Sunday — Feb. 1, 1902 — the Michigan Agricultural College (MAC) Aggies hosted Alma College in East Lansing. It was George Denman’s debut as MAC’s coach and what an opener it was, a 102-3 clobbering of the Scots. In 1902, the rules stated the each field goal was worth three points, and, that day, the Aggies tallied 34 baskets to Alma’s one. Still today, MAC’s 99-point victory margin stands as the all-time record.
Source : Lansing State Journal, Spartifacts, Lansing State Journal, July 31, 2015.
On February 1, 1942, 300 mothers met in the Durant Hotel in Flint, Michigan to form the Blue Star Mothers of America, a patriotic service organization of women who had loved ones serving overseas.
On February 6, the organization was mentioned in the Congressional Record.
Chapters then quickly formed throughout the country.
During World War II, Blue Star Mothers worked in hospitals and train stations, put together care packages for soldiers, and contributed to homeland security efforts in their communities. In June 1960, the organization was chartered by Congress. And it still exists today.
Sources :
Michigan History, July/August 2011.
Blue Star Mothers of America Facebook Page
The last link of I-94 was completed, making Michigan the first state to have a border-to-border interstate highway.
The seven-mile section of I-94 that opened through St. Clair Shores and Roseville completed the 275-mile highway that runs from New Buffalo on the west to Port Huron on the east.
Source : Historical Society of Michigan, Michigan History Calendar
On February 2, 1704, Marie Therese Cadillac, daughter of the city’s founder, became the first child baptized in Detroit. She is born 9 months to the day that her mother arrived in Detroit from Montreal to join her husband on the frontier.
Source : Detroit Historical Society Facebook Page and the Detroit Almanac.
Bonus: Younger readers might want to pursue First Lady of Detroit: The Story of Marie-Thérèse Guyon, Mme Cadillac (Detroit Biography Series for Young Readers), a book about Marie Therese Cadillac’s mom. First Lady of Detroit is a spirited tale of an adventurous girl who grew up to commission and equip her own expedition to le Detroit, joining her husband there in the fall of 1701-less than a dozen weeks after Fort Pontchartrain was carved out of the wilderness.
On February 2, 1870, Elizabeth (Madelon) Stockwell from Kalamazoo was the first female admitted to the University of Michigan.
She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in June 1872. Stockwell came to the University to pursue advanced worked in Greek.
Eary photo of University of Michigan students and faculty, including women students, courtesy of Bentley Historical Library
The University opened a dormitory for women in her honor, which by 1954 accommodated 426 female students in single, double and triple rooms.
Source : Michigan History.
For more information, visit Diversity at the University of Michigan
The First Women, University of Michigan.
Photo courtesy of WAKV, The Memory Station Facebook Page, Plainwell, Michigan
According to the book Wicked Women of Detroit, Nellie Pope was a good-sized woman: 6’4” and 250 pounds. Likened to the structure of an Amazonian woman, this is what attracted local barber William Brusseau. The two began a relationship, but the problem was – Nellie was already married to one of Detroit’s prominent doctors, Horace Pope. Whether Nellie actually had true feelings for Brusseau is questionable, as it appears in retrospect that she gave him sex in exchange for certain favors…..including murdering her husband. She fueled the fire by making up stories about how cruel her husband was, but what she really wanted was to collect on his insurance policy.
Dr. Pope had recently upped his life insurance. How convenient.
Since both Nellie and Brusseau had different versions about the murder and who was responsible, the actual act itself was pretty clear.
On February 2, 1895, Dr. Pope was home sitting in a chair when Brusseau came up from behind and swung an axe toward his head. The first swing sliced off the scalp of the doctor’s head; the second was a direct whack into the skull – so deep, that it was difficult to pull the blade out. The body fell to the floor, and the axe was swung a few more times, turning the doctor’s head into “nothing more than a bag of skin containing shattered shards of skull”.
After his arrest, Brusseau claimed he acted in self-defense after being attacked by the doctor. Trouble was, it was proven the doc was attacked with an axe from behind. Admitting his guilt, Brusseau also claimed he was under the hypnotic spell of Nellie – so enraptured, along with being mentally and physically addicted to her sexual favors.
The court decided both Nellie and Brusseau were guilty – he was given 25 years, she was given life at hard labor. Nellie was sent to Jackson State Prison for processing, and that’s where her reputation as a mentally unhinged, troublemaker began.
After being sent to the Detroit House of Corrections, she would occasionally go into hysterics, pretend to be insane, constantly get into fights with other inmates, and pretend to see ghosts. In particular, the ghost of her murdered husband. She wailed to the guards that the ghost of her husband “came every night and stood and looked at her until she nearly died of fright”. But they weren’t buying it.
Twenty years later, on New Year’s Day 1917, Michigan Governor Woodbridge Ferris gave Nellie Pope a parole. But where would she go? What would she do? How would she survive? She ended up living at the Salvation Army for twelve years until she passed away.
Nellie Pope – one of Michigan’s most infamous murderesses – claimed until her dying day she was innocent. She was given a full pardon in 1928 and died in 1929 at the age of 69.
Source : John Robinson, “Nellie Pope, the Detroit Axe Murderess of 1895“, 99.1 WFMK Blog, August 13, 2021.
On February 2, 1921, electric streetcars began operation in Detroit.
Sources :
Historical Society of Michigan.
19 pictures showing the history of Detroit’s streetcar system, Detroit Metro Times.
Before the QLine: Detroit’s streetcar history, Detroit News. May 11, 2017.