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Detroit has a Hubbard Street. A dormitory at Michigan State is called Hubbard Hall. On Six Mile and Schaefer is the Hubbard branch of the Detroit Public Library. There’s a small neighborhood on Detroit’s southwest side called Hubbard Farms.

All of them honor Bela Hubbard, a 19th century Detroiter of many occupations, but most people have no idea who he was.

Hubbard arrived in Detroit as a young man from Hamilton, N.Y., in 1835. He settled in Springwells Township – a sprawling area that ran from southwest Detroit to the Rouge River and included Dearborn. While in his twenties, Hubbard explored northern Michigan and the Upper Peninsula as an assistant geologist to state geologist Douglass Houghton (for whom the city of Houghton is named). When the geology survey was finished Hubbard became a land agent and used his newly acquired knowledge of the northern wilderness to buy timbered land for contacts in New York and for himself. In turn he made a fortune selling the pine lumber.

Hubbard also was a lawyer, farmer, historian, writer and civic leader. He had an interest in Native Americans and prehistoric mounds. He traveled to Europe. It was Hubbard’s days in Paris with its wide, tree-lined avenues that inspired him to push forward the concept of Grand Boulevard in Detroit; he donated a large chunk of his own land for the boulevard.

Note : Not only did Hubbard fund Hubbard Hall but in 1855 he was instrumental in establishing Michigan State University, originally called State Agricultural College and Model Farm.

Source : Bill Loomis, “The Renaissance man who envisioned Grand Boulevard”, Detroit Free Press, May 11, 2014.

On April 23, 1859, the Michigan Asylum for the Insane in Kalamazoo, Michigan’s first state institution for the treatment of the mentally ill, admitted its first patient. For many years, however, most families, rather than suffer the social disgrace of committing a relative, continued to confine mentally ill family members in attics, sheds or even backyard iron cages.

Source: Mich-again’s Day

George Richmond, a young Lansing dentist, developed a working telephone in 1873, three years before Alexander Graham Bell.

According to a 1983 article by Manuel Castro in Lansing Metropolitan Quarterly, Richmond set up a telephone connection between his home and his office on which he called his wife “hundreds of times” from 1873 to 1875, making careful note of the phone’s performance with each modification.

While perfectionist Richmond tinkered, Bell beat him in the patent race, filing his application in February 1876. However, Richmond’s telephone outperformed Bell’s in long-distance communication. In 1878, a test call from Richmond’s North Lansing office to Detroit came through loud and clear to the man at the other end, Alfred Beamer, a Lansing telegraph agent.

“Beamer, Beamer, do you hear me?” Richmond hollered. “I will sing.” When Richmond launched into “Marching On,” the words were audible 20 feet from the receiver in Detroit.

On April 23, 1878, at age 28, Richmond was granted a patent for his “speaking-telephone transmitter.” He got a lucrative employment offer from the Bell Telephone Co., but declined, counting on local business owners who promised to help him start his own company. Their support never materialized, and Richmond became a historical footnote.

Richmond was also working on a phonograph, naively divulging his materials and methods in journals of the day, when he was shocked to learn that Thomas Edison patented a similar device in 1877.

According to Castro’s article, Richmond died in 1898, at age 48, with “melancholia” listed as the cause of death.

Source : “I Will Sing”, Lansing City Pulse, May 28-June 3, 2014, p.35

Photo of Henry Ford and a farmer driving the Fordson Tractor

Luther Burbank (who developed the Idaho potato!) was an American plant breeder, naturalist, and author who was well-known for his experiments with plants, fruits, and vegetables. On April 23, 1918 Burbank received a gift from his friend and fellow innovator, Henry Ford. It was the first Fordson tractor produced at Ford’s assembly plant.    Henry Ford Blog Post, April 23, 2018.

A Cleaner Version of the Fordson Tractor.  Fenders became available for the Fordson tractor in 1924. The long rear skirts were said to help prevent the tractors from rolling over backward, a trait for which the Fordson was notorious.

Fordson is certainly a curious name for a tractor, but what a tractor it was. Its introduction in 1917 helped change the American farm tractor from the hulking, steam engine-like prairie breakers to what we think of as ‘normal’ farm machines today. In fact, the tractors were so popular that almost a million Fordsons were built by Ford Motor Co. before the name was finally dropped in 1964.

Why the name Fordson? The answer is found in the tractor’s fascinating history. The Ford Motor Co., founded in 1903, was originally a stock-based company with several hundred stockholders. It was actually the third company founded on Henry Ford’s automotive genius, and the same firm still exists.

The other two companies were also stock-based businesses, but Henry always chaffed under the control and limitations imposed by stockholders. In fact, stockholders suspected Henry withheld his best efforts in order to extort a bigger share of the profits.

Ford was actually fired from the second Ford firm, which then changed its name to Cadillac Motor Co. Meanwhile, the third Ford incarnation – called Ford Motor Co. and its stockholders did quite well making the famous Model T automobile.

In July 1917, Henry Ford organized another corporation under the name Henry Ford & Son Inc. The company’s mission was to manufacture tractors, equipment and ‘self-propelling vehicles of every description.’ Stockholders of this corporation were limited to Henry, his wife, Clara, and their son, Edsel, then only 24 years old.

While Henry intended to manufacture tractors under the new firm and had worked on developing a farm machine for some time, the new company was part of his gambit to encourage Ford Motor Co. stockholders to sell out to him at reasonable prices. The trump card that Henry held was the fact that stockholders feared Henry Ford & Son would begin building cars and directly compete with Ford Motor Co.

With the British Ministry of Munitions order, Ford also agreed to manufacture the tractor in Cork, Ireland, from which the Ford family had emigrated years before. In the ensuing transatlantic telegraph communications among the Ministry, British Ford and Henry’s Detroit headquarters, telegraph operators shortened the name Henry Ford & Son to merely ‘Fordson.’ Henry liked it and thought it a suitable encouragement to young Edsel, whom Henry wanted meaningfully involved in the tractor company.

The first tractors built to fill the British government order didn’t carry the ‘Fordson’ identification, but the name Fordson was later cast into the radiator tank when production started for the American market in 1918. The same was later done for tractors produced in Ireland.

In 1928, all Fordson production lines in the U.S. were transferred to Britain. Apparently, Ford needed the factory space in Detroit for his newly-designed Model A automobile. Fordson tractor production continued through 1964 with both major and minor changes.

For example, the original flywheel magneto was replaced with a high-tension impulse variety, which greatly improved its starting ability. Other changes included an improved air cleaner, while engine displacement was increased from 251 cubic inches to 267 cubic inches, providing more power.

Cast iron front wheels and a heavier front axle improved the machine’s balance, and some late-model Fordsons were pioneering diesel-burning tractors.

The final Fordson tractor rolled off the line in 1964, but the Fordson legacy lingers in the hearts (and sheds) of old iron collectors across the globe.

Sources:

Sam Moore, “Henry Ford’s Revolutionary Farm Tractor“, August 2011.

Robert N. Pripps, “Birth of the Fordson Tractor“, March 2004.

Lee Majors, who starred in such television series as “The Big Valley”, “The Six-Million Dollar Man”, and “The Fall Guy” was born in Wyandotte.

“My dad passed away there when mom was eight months’ pregnant with me,” explains iconic actor Lee Majors, who is best known — depending upon your generation — as nuclear-powered ex-test pilot Col. Steve Austin in the classic ’70s action series, hunky illegitimate heir Heath Barkley in the ’60s western The Big Valley, or Hollywood stuntman-slash-bounty hunter Colt Seavers in the ’80s hit The Fall Guy. “Then when I was 16 months old, my mom was hit by a drunk driver and killed while she was waiting to go to work as a nurse. So I was immediately kind of shipped away to distant relatives in Kentucky.

“The only time I went back [to Detroit] was three, four years ago, because I never knew where they were buried and we found them. But they didn’t have markers so I came back and had some markers put in,” Majors says. “It brought a little closure. So those are the only Detroit stories I have. I’ve been twice, and neither of them were too happy times.”

His third visit is almost guaranteed to be the charm — or at least considerably more charming. This time Majors is venturing into the wide-open spaces of the Suburban Collection Showplace in Novi between May 16-18 (2014) to help Detroit celebrate the 25th anniversary of the most illustrious of our pop culture traditions: the Motor City Comic Con.

Sources :

Michigan Magazine, March/April 2014

Jim McFarlin, “Star-Powered Celebration; The Six Million Dollar Man, the Bionic Woman, and even Captain Kirk are coming to Motor City Comic Con’s 25th anniversary”, Hour Detroit, May 2014

On April 23, 1954, filmmaker Michael Moore was born in Davison. In his career, he’s directed and/or produced many documentaries including:

Bowling for Columbine, which examines the causes of the Columbine High School massacre and overall gun culture of the United States, won the Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Roger & Me, a film detailing how a General Motors factory was shutdown in Flint and its work sent to Mexico

Fahrenheit 9/11, which explored life in the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks,

War on Terror, which became the highest-grossing documentary at the American box office of all time and winner of a Palme d’Or

Sicko, which critiques the American health care system, focusing especially on the HMOs, drug companies, and congressmen who profit from the status quo.

Slacker Uprising,  which documented his personal quest to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections

Moore was also instrumental in restoring the State Theater in Traverse City and founded the Traverse City Film Festival.

Sources :

Michigan Historical Calendar, courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.

Michael Moore wikipedia entry

For more information see

Here comes trouble : stories from my life / Michael Moore. New York : Grand Central, c2011.

Michael Moore : filmmaker, newsmaker, cultural icon / Matthew H. Bernstein, editor. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2010.

Michael Moore : a biography / by Emily Schultz. Toronto : ECW Press, c2005.