Happy birthday to Charles-Ange Collet! A native of Niles, he was the first Michigan-born person to become a priest.
Son of Claude Collet, a soldier with the French colonial regular troops and Marguerite Fauche. In 1726 or 1727 he traveled with his parents to Montreal to begin his schooling, and would later attend a seminary in Quebec.
Source : Charles-Ange Colle entry, Dictionary of Canadian Biography, Volume 5
Artist’s depiction of an early Erie & Kalamazoo train.
On October 1, 1836 the Erie & Kalamazoo, to great fanfare, provided the first train service from Port Lawrence (Toledo’s original name) to Adrian, the first train west of Schenectady. It consisted of one coach, much like a stagecoach, pulled by a team of horses inside the rails. No regular service was maintained that winter. The rails ran through a boggy cottonwood swamp that was underwater much of the year, and the mud made the rails almost impassable. The 40-mile journey could take up to two days one way!
Regular operations began in the spring of 1837 and in July, the E&K announced that they would put into operation the first locomotive west of the Alleghenies. The first locomotive had a wooden framework and was nicknamed the “Adrian”. The boiler was seven feet long; the firebox stood upright and the smokestack was the most prominent feature of the wood-burning engine.
Early rails were of oak, cut from trees along the right of way and flattened on two sides. These were replaced with iron “strap rails, 5/8 inches thick and 2 1/2 inches wide, laid along the old wooden rails. These frequently loosened, curled up above the rails and alarmingly penetrated the floor of the coach, earning the nickname “snake heads.” The four passenger cars that came to be standard on the line were four-wheel carts with 24-passenger capacity. Twenty freight cars completed the holdings of the line.
By 1838, the journey took three hours; freight and passengers traveled together at speeds up to 15 miles per hour. The trip from Port Lawrence to Adrian cost $1.50 (4.5 cents per mile). Shorter distances were five cents per mile. The Erie & Kalamazoo line ran until its last journey on Nov. 19, 1956, when 31 train buffs, nostalgia seekers and sentimentalists rode the historic line for the last time.
For more information, see Jenny Nolan, “When Michigan rode the rails”, Detroit News, February 24, 2001.
For more information about the lure of railroads, see Bill Loomis, “Riding the first rails brought excitement, danger”, Detroit News, July 8, 2012.
Michigan’s Railroad History, 1825-2014
Erie & Kalamazoo Rail Road. Ohio History Central website.
On October 1, 1839, Michigan’s first agricultural fair was scheduled to take place in Ann Arbor. But, the man in charge made no preparations and forgot to show up, only two exhibitors arrived, and Ann Arbor residents totally ignored the event.
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Detroit’s first black school teacher, Fannie Richards was born on October 1, 1840 in Fredericksburg, Virginia of free parents. From an early age, Richards realized the necessity of an education and the fight it would take for her to gain it. As a child, she moved to Toronto, Canada with her parents where she received her education. She continued her studies in Germany where she worked with the educational team headed by Wilhelm Forebel who was developing the concept of kindergarten.
After permanently settling in Detroit, she was allowed to teach in Detroit because of her brilliant scholastic record. In 1863, she opened a private school for black children and in 1868 was appointed Instructor of Colored School No. 2.
In 1870, under the leadership of John Bagley, Richards and several of her relatives protested against Detroit’s segregated school system and in 1871, the Michigan Supreme Court ordered the Detroit Board of Education to abolish separate schools for black and white students. That same year, Richards was transferred to the newly-integrated Everett Elementary School where she taught for 44 years. It was there that she established the first kindergarten class in Michigan.
Richards’ achievements were not limited to education. She helped to found, finance and became president of the Phyllis Wheatly Home for Aged Colored Ladies, an institution organized in Detroit in 1898 to meet the needs of poor and elderly. She was also one of the founders of the Michigan State Association of Colored Women. Richards taught Sunday School at the historic Second Baptist Church for over 50 years.
In 1915, after more than 50 years of service, she retired from teaching. She died seven years later on February 13, 1922 at the age of 81. She is buried next to her brother, John D. Richards, in Section N, Lot 150.
Richards was inducted into the Michigan Women’s Hall of Fame in 1990 for her contributions to education. She was the chief catalyst for the desegregation of Detroit’s schools. A Michigan Historical Marker is placed at her homesite in Detroit.
Sources :
Kim Kisner, “Fannie Mea Richards, Detroit’s First Black Female Teacher”, Detroit Is It, March 8, 2022.
On October 2, 1853, the Detroit Free Press became the first Michigan paper to be issued regularly on Sunday mornings.
Wilbur Storey, the paper’s new owner, says it’s no sacrilege because the workers involved are carriers distributing the product well before dawn.
Source : Peter Gavrilovich, “178 fun facts for the Detroit Free Press’ 178th birthday”, Detroit Free Press, September 22, 2013.
The current Detroit Yacht Club traces its beginnings back to 1868. In addition there is a record of a Detroit Boat Club tracing its beginnings back to 1839, but it went out of existence in the 1990s.
Searching the word yacht in the Detroit Free Press turns up a September 22, 1868 announcement of a local regatta to be held on October 1, 1868, consisting of five yachts (The Coral, Humming Bird, Collins, Norma, and Ripple) which would race from a point off Woodward Avenue ten miles North of Grosse Point on Lake St. Clair and then back, so we will use that date. A year later the Detroit Free Press also reports in some detail on a second regatta between the Barker, Collins, The Coral, and Humming Bird, with the Humming Bird winning. In the latter article, the editor comments that it would seem like Detroit would sponsor more yacht races and aquatic contests of various locations given its location on the Detroit River.
Source : “Yacht Regatta, Detroit Free Press, September 22, 1868, p.1. via Proquest Historical Newspapers, Detroit Free Press (1858-1922).
“YACHTING: The Race Between the Collins, Barker, Humming Bird and Coral; A CLOSE AND VERY INTERESTING CONTEST; The Humming Bird the Winner, Detroit Free Press, September 29, 1869, p.1 courtesty of Proquest Historical Newspapers (1858-1922).
Detroit Yacht Club History from the Detroit Yacht Club website.
Bill Loomis, Detroit Yacht Club: Home for good times on the river since 1868, Detroit News, August 4, 2013.
The first production Model T Ford was built at the Piquette Avenue Plant in Detroit on October 1, 1908. Over the next nineteen years, Ford would build fifteen million automobiles with the Model T engine. This was the longest run of any single model, with the exception of the Volkswagen Beetle. From 1908-1927, the Model T endured few changes to its design. By producing an affordable and readily available automobile, Henry Ford succeeded in his quest to produce a car for ordinary people.
Michigan Historical Calendar courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University.
A Moment in Time- The Story of Henry Ford’s Piquette Avenue Plant (Stunt Multimedia) available from the MSU Library
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Behold, the birthplace of a revolution. The Ford Piquette Avenue Plant is the site of the production of the first Ford Model T. Visitors today can walk the very same wood plank floors worn smooth by hundreds of workers and thousands of cars!
The University of Michigan’s winged helmet made its successful debut in the 1938 season opener against Michigan State. Sophomore halfback Paul Kromer (83) scored the first touchdown wearing the winged helmet and accounted for 13 of Michigan’s 14 points to gain the Wolverines’ first win over MSU (14-0) in four years.
Fritz Crisler’s first team went on to compile a 6-1-1 record and tie for second in the conference. Whether attributable to the new helmet or not, the passing game improved significantly over 1937′s final statistics; total yardage nearly doubled, interceptions were cut nearly in half and completion percentage was up by nine percent.
Crisler won a national championship in 1947, he changed the game forever with the platoon system in the late 1940s, and he shaped college football by serving on the NCAA rules committee for more than two decades before he retired in 1968. Yet former Michigan football coach and athletic director Fritz Crisler might be best remembered for designing the Wolverines’ distinctive “winged helmet,” the most recognizable headgear in college football.
But here’s a dirty little secret: Crisler first designed the winged helmet at Princeton, not Michigan, and brought it with him.
Crisler’s winged helmet design took advantage of features of a helmet advertised in the 1937 A.G. Spalding & Bros. Company edition of the Official Intercollegiate Football Guide.
Back then the headgear looked like the leather biking helmets favored by today’s Tour de France riders. They typically consisted of a leather bowl with an extra pad to protect the forehead, from which three strips of padding ran to the back—all of it painted black. To help his Princeton quarterback identify his receivers downfield and give his team a little style in the process, Crisler simply painted the extra padding Princeton orange and— voila! — the winged helmet was born.
More trivia : The Michigan-Michigan State game of 1938 had the most fans show up of any game in the 1938 season!
Sources :
John U. Bacon, “Winged victory”, Michigan Today, September 17, 2013.
1938 Michigan Wolverines Football wikipedia entry
University of Michigan Football Michigan’s Winged Helmet courtesy of the Bentley Historical Library
They said it couldn’t be done. Doubters chided Henry Ford for declaring that his Willow Run Bomber Plant could turn out a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber every hour. However, by early 1944 he was delivering as promised.
In December 1940, the federal government asked the Ford Motor Company to build 1,200 B-24 bombers. Ford’s chief engineer, Charles Sorensen, quickly devised a then-untried scheme of mass-producing planes. The government agreed to the plan, and in April 1941, construction began on what would become the world’s largest assembly plant. On October 1, 1942, the first B-24 bomber rolled off the assembly line at the Willow Run Bomber Plant near Ypsilanti. The plant would eventually produced 8,600 planes.
By mid-1944, bombers came off Willow Run’s mile-long assembly line at the rate of one an hour.
Michigan’s other auto companies also produced war materiel. By the end of World War II, Chrysler’s Warren Tank Plant made 25,000 tanks, while in Kingsford, the Ford Motor Company manufactured more than 4,000 gliders. Known as the “Arsenal of Democracy,” Michigan—with only 4 percent of the nation’s population—led all other states in the production of war materiel.
Source : October 1, 1942 by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.
For another article including a picture of the first B24 Liberator bomber rolled off the assembly line on Oct. 1, 1942, see Jenny Nolan, “Willow Run and the Arsenal of Democracy”, Detroit News, January 28, 1997. The first plane completed was christened “The Spirit of Ypsilanti.” Its $300,000 cost was paid for with a fund-raising drive by the townspeople of Ypsilanti, who bought war bonds and stamps. Contributors were issued buttons bearing the bomber’s Winged V insignia, designed by Jean Ohlinger, a 17-year-old junior at Ypsilanti High School.
Samantha L. Quigley, Ford’s Willow Run Factory, Welfare History Notebook.
Tim Trainor, “How Ford’s Willow Run Assembly Plant Helped Win World War II“, Assembly Magazine, January 3, 2019.
On Oct. 1, 1970, The Detroit Free Press reported that state Sen. Charles Youngblood Jr. used a nonprofit foundation he created to help impoverished Native Americans to pay off debts, work out a profitable land deal and cover fundraising fees.
Youngblood was convicted of conspiracy to bribe a public official over a liquor license and resigned from the Senate in 1974.
Source : MIRS Capitol Capsule, October 1, 2020.