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.
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.