Harry Morgan was born on April 10, 1915 in Detroit as Harry Bratsberg (some sites spell it as ‘Bratsburg’). Not long afterward, his family moved to Muskegon, where Harry spent his childhood and teen years. Harry and his siblings grew up during the Depression and were affected by the economic pinch, having to attend school in shoes and clothes that were lined with holes.
Once in high school, Harry became a school debate champion at Muskegon High, and played varsity football. He graduated in 1933.
After graduation he took on the job of a salesman and attended the University of Chicago. He was studying to become a Doctor of Law, but his desire to perform got in the way. He began acting at the University in 1935, followed by joining the Group Theatre in New York in 1937.
Harry appeared in a good handful of stage plays and it was only a matter of time until the movies tempted him west.
His first film role was in the the 1942 movie “To The Shores Of Tripoli” and it snowballed from there. He appeared in over 100 films, some of the most notable being “The Ox-Bow Incident”, “High Noon”, and “Inherit The Wind”.
Harry’s numerous TV appearances included “Gunsmoke”, “Night Gallery”, “The Partridge Family”, “The Untouchables”, and “Have Gun-Will Travel”. He was also a regular cast member of the programs “December Bride”, “Pete and Gladys”, and “Dragnet”.
With such an impressive catalog of film and TV appearances, he will most likely be remembered for his role as Colonel Sherman T. Potter on “M*A*S*H”. He reprised that role in the spinoff series, “AfterM*A*S*H”.
Not bad for a Michigan boy who grew up during the Great Depression.
Harry Morgan passed away on December 7, 2011 at the age of 96.
John Robinson, ” Which Cast Member of M*A*S*H Was the Only One From Michigan? “, 99.1 WFMK, May 4, 2021.
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James Vernor, Sr. was an American pharmacist, druggist, and American Civil War Lieutenant who became famous for the invention of Vernor’s Ginger Ale. Born on April 11, 1843 in Albany, New York, Vernor moved to Detroit, Michigan with his parents during his youth. As an employee at Higby and Sterns’ Drug Store in Detroit, Vernor began to experiment with flavors in an attempt to create a new recipe for ginger ale. With the onset of the American Civil War, he enlisted and served with the 4th Michigan Cavalry in 1862. Serving in the military until 1865, Vernor became a Second Lieutenant before being discharged.
According to Vernors company legend, before Vernor left to serve in the Civil War, he stored some of his experimental ginger ale in an oak cask. When he returned to Detroit four years later, he opened the cask and found that the drink had been changed by the aging process, tasting even better than it had before. He declared the ginger ale to be “Deliciously Different,” which became one of the many slogans for the drink. However, in a 1936 interview, son James Vernor, Jr. suggested that his father did not develop the formula until after the war, a theory confirmed by former company president James Vernor Davis in a 1962 interview. Around 1880, Vernor opened his own drug store on Woodward Avenue at the corner of Clifford Street, where he sold “Vernor’s Ginger Ale” at the store’s soda fountain. He closed the drug store in 1896, opening a soda fountain closer to the center of the city on Woodward Avenue, south of Jefferson near the riverfront ferry docks, so that he could concentrate solely on his soda business.
Vernor’s Ginger Ale was originally a local drink that was only available in Detroit. However, Vernor quickly opened a manufacturing and bottling plant, which soon made his famous beverage available across the Midwestern United States. Vernors was bottled in Detroit for more than one hundred years, finally ending production in 1985. Today, the soda is made by the Dr. Pepper Corporation, so it has a much larger realm of distribution than ever before. Vernors has become one of the best known brands of ginger ale throughout the world but remains the most popular in the Midwestern United States.
Although he will always be most well known for creating Vernors Ginger Ale, James Vernor was also one of the original members of the Michigan Board of Pharmacy, which was formed in 1887, and he held License No. 1 throughout his career. In addition, he served on the Detroit City Council for 25 years. On October 29, 1927, at the age of 84, James Vernor died in Grosse Ile, Michigan from pneumonia and influenza.
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| A view of the the original store that was opened in 1866 by James Vernor at 235 Woodward Avenue at the corner of Clifford Street. The view shows the front and side of a 3-story brick building with the address and name, “235 James Vernor 235,” shown over the front door. It was in this store that the pharmacist developed Vernors Ginger Ale. Photo courtesy of the Detroit Historical Society. |
Source : Julia Teran, Encyclopedia of Detroit
Wunderlich, Keith (2008). Vernors Ginger Ale. Arcadia Publishing
Visit the MSU Special Collections Rare Books and consult Vernor’s ginger ale recipes : invigorating ; easy to make… deliciously different (1953) to come up with a special concoction!
On April 11, 1884 the first effort in the country to introduce brown trout took place in Lake County.
The 4,900 fry came from Germany, and took hold in Michigan’s waters.
Source: Michigan Every Day
On this day in 1888, 24-year-old Henry Ford marries Clara Jane Bryant on her 22nd birthday at her parent’s home in Greenfield Township, Michigan. Clara Ford would prove to be a big supporter of her husband’s business ideas: Fifty years later, Henry Ford–who by then had founded the Ford Motor Company, invented the top-selling Model T car and revolutionized the auto industry with his mass-production technology–was quoted in a 1938 New York Times Magazine article as saying, “The greatest day of my life is when I married Mrs. Ford.”
The couple, both of whom came from farm families, first met at a New Year’s dance in Michigan in 1885. During their courtship, they enjoyed such activities as dancing, corn-husking parties and boating excursions. According to “Clara: Mrs. Henry Ford,” a biography by Ford R. Bryan: “The two were impressed by each other, Clara with Henry’s unique mechanical talents and Henry with Clara’s serious and appreciative disposition.” They were engaged in April 1886, but the future bride’s mother thought she was too young to wed and made them wait another two years.
After their marriage, the Fords lived on farm land given to Henry by his father. By 1891, however, the couple moved to Detroit, where Henry Ford began working as an engineer for Edison Illuminating Company. The couple’s only child, Edsel, was born in November 1893. In 1896, Ford completed a four-wheel, self-propelled vehicle with a gasoline engine called the Quadricycle. During the early years of their marriage, the couple lived in 10 different rental homes while Henry worked to develop an automobile. After incorporating the Ford Motor Company in 1903, Henry launched the Model T in 1908. The car, which was in production until 1927, held the record for the world’s top-selling vehicle until it was surpassed by the Volkswagen Beetle in 1972.
In 1915, the Fords moved into a mansion built on land they owned in Dearborn, Michigan. The home, named Fair Lane, included an indoor swimming pool, billiard room, bowling alley and dance floor, as the Fords had always liked to dance. Clara Ford managed the estate staff, pursued such interests as gardening and traveled around the world on business trips with Henry.
Henry Ford died at the age of 83 on April 7, 1947; Clara Ford died three years later, on September 29, 1950, at the age of 84. Their son Edsel, who worked for the family business, preceded both his parents in death, dying at the age of 49 from cancer on May 26, 1943.
Source : “Henry Ford Marries”, This Day in History, History Channel, April 2010.
“Clara Bryant Ford: Henry’s “Great Believer“, Ford Motor Company.
On 11, 1936, the Detroit Red Wings defeated Toronto and won their first Stanley Cup.
A huge crowd gathered at Michigan Central Station to welcome the team home from Toronto the day after it won Lord Stanley’s cup for the Motor City.
Source :
Historical Society of Michigan.
Zlati Meyer, “This week in Michigan history: Red Wings win first Stanley Cup”, Detroit Free Press, April 6, 2014
The World War Two era saw some of the largest civil rights protests in Michigan history focused on ending discrimination in area hiring and segregation in housing, notably at Willow Run. Here, Detroit demonstrators called by the NAACP and the UAW-CIO march down Theodore St. to Cadillac Square to end Jim Crow in Michigan. April 11, 1943.
The tornado outbreak on Palm Sunday 1965 was the deadliest in Michigan’s recorded history.
The series of storms April 11 killed 53 people and injured at least 100 more, according to the National Weather Service.
Twelve tornadoes were reported that day, including two F4s that followed almost the exact same path eastward through Branch, Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe counties. The first one hit at 7p.m., the second 40 minutes later.
Spinning columns of air devastated parts of the Midwest that day, including Indiana and Ohio. In 12 hours, 47 tornadoes killed 271 people, injured approximately 3,400 others and caused more than $200 million in damage ($1.4 billion in today’s dollars).
The violent weather ripped the roof off a fire station in Unionville in Tuscola County; killed most of the 20,000 scattered chickens at a farm in Burnips in Allegan County; knocked down 72 telephone poles between Grand Rapids and Big Rapids; ripped the chimney off Milan Junior High School and destroyed the roof, and made six new homes in the Westgate subdivision north of Grand Rapids vanish.
Sources :
This Week in Michigan History, Detroit Free Press, April 8, 2012.
Andrew Krietz, “Deadly Palm Sunday tornado survivors recall ‘end of the world’ 50 years later”, MLive, April 12, 2015.
On April 11, 2000, the first home opener at Comerica Park took place, with the Tigers defeating the Seattle Mariners 5-2 before a crowd of 39,168 that braved sleet and temperatures in the 30s to be a part of history.
Source : Detroit Historical Society Facebook page
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.