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Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 76-21179

Published by Bloomfield Township Bicentennial Commission
4200 N. Telegraph Road, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan 48013

Graphic Design: John W. Cooper, Unigraphics, Troy
Typography: Alpha 21, Detroit
Color Separations and Printing: Alden Press, Inc.

and American Printers and Lithographers, Inc.
Divisions of John Blair & Company, Chicago

Bloomfield Blossoms

Glimpses Into the History of Bloomfield Township
and Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

by Kay Smith

 

Copyright © 1976 Bloomfield Township Bicentennial Commission

With affection and respect,
this first book of history
of Bloomfield Township

1s dedicated to

HOMER CASE
Chief Administrative Officer

Born on Wing Lake Road, one half mile north of 14 Mile

Road, in one of the few remaining authentic farmhouses,
Homer and his family are today the only direct descendents of
two pioneer families still living in Bloomfield. His ancestor
Leman Case bought land in 1822 and his other ancestor
Wilkes Durkee in 1823. Jesse Case and Viola Durkee Case were
Homer’s grandparents,

Homer has been supervisor for the past 13 years and was
treasurer. for the six years previous to that.

\
He’s dedicated to the principles of good and proper management
of the Township and the welfare of its citizens.

DELORIS V. LITTLE
Township Clerk

While Deloris wasn’t born in Bloomfield, she’s adopted it as no
one else has. In addition to having been Township Clerk

for 20 years she serves on the Board of Trustees

and Planning Commission.

Seeing to it that residents are well taken care of and their
interests protected is Deloris’ specialty, a double duty as night
meetings follow full workdays.

She sums up her efforts to keep Bloomfield the residential
community its people have overwhelmingly demonstrated they
want: “You simply learn to say no to all those whose private
interests are not in the public interest.’

It’s largely through the efforts of these two dedicated people
that the beauty of Bloomfield as you will see it in the
following pages has been carefully preserved for the
enjoyment of all who call it home.

2

 

 

 

 

 

 

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP
BOARD OF TRUSTEES:
Homer Case, Supervisor
Deloris V. Little, Clerk
Fred Korzon, Treasurer
Trustees:

Carter A. Chamberlain
Charles S. Low

Jerry Tobias

Robert A. Reid

 

 

 

 

FOREWORD

When the Bloomfield Township Board of Trustees appointed the
Bicentennial Commission in October of 1974, they noted that no history
of the Township had ever been published, nor archives assembled,
although its population was nearing 50,000. The board therefore
instructed the newly-formed commission to place top priority on the
research and publication of a Township history, a Bicentennial project to
be completed by July 4, 1976.

The work commenced immediately. The 150-year-old original records
were removed from the safe as a starting point, and work on an oral
history was begun with a group of our native-born residents, descendents
of Founding or Centennial families, chatting informally. The tapes
provided many delightful sidelights and comments used throughout the
book. This same group gave us family histories, diaries and other
documents for copying to supply our archives. In some cases, as many
as forty pages of material back up just one page of the book. At the
same time, county records were scrutinized and all area libraries combed
for information.

In December of 1975, the Bloomfield Hills City Commission moved to
join us in our publication, and the City of Bloomfield Hills Historical
Committee carefully researched the Hills area and chose the subjects
they wanted depicted.

Then, from across the barriers of time, shadowy hands plucked the pen
from present-day historians, and wrote many pages from the viewpoint
of an on-the-scene observer. The great French writer and statesman
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote fully and beautifully of life in Bloomfield

in 1831. Even before that, Captain Hervey C. Parke and. Miss Fannie
Fish gave us much material from the 1820s to light up the pages of
history like the firelight of the pioneers’ hearths.

It became evident early on that there was not enough time to prepare
an exhaustive, footnoted history, so this informal one was decided
upon. A “proper” history will be completed soon.

This little book would never have been published if it weren't for the
cooperation and effort of more than fifty people. The thanks of the
Board and the Commission go to each of them. They contributed to our
Bicentennial celebration in what we hope the future will consider the
most meaningful way possible—the preservation of our past.

Bloomfield Township, Michigan Kay Smith
July 4, 1976

 

BLOOMFIELD IS ONE OF THE OLDEST
TOWNSHIPS IN MICHIGAN

A certificate was received by the board of trustees this
Bicentennial year noting that Bloomfield is one of the
oldest remaining townships in the whole state of Michigan.

Originally it was part of a much larger piece of land known
as Oakland, but on June 28, 1820, Territorial Governor
Lewis Cass designated the southern part of Oakland as
Bloomfield. It continued to embrace West Bloomfield,
Royal Oak and Southfield Townships until April 12, 1827,
when it received its new designation as a 36 Square mile
area by act of the legislative council. |

On May 25, 1827, therefore, the first Township meeting oy
was held at the house of John Hamilton on the Saginaw 7
Trail, a board of inspectors and clerk of the day were

named, and the first Township officers were elected.

They were Lemuel Castle, Supervisor, Ezra S. Parke, clerk,
John Todd, Joseph Park and Abraham Crawford,
assessors. Other residents were named commissioners of
highways, poor masters, tax collector and constables.
Fifteen road overseers, nine fence-viewers and three
pound-masters were elected, and a bounty of $5.00 was
offered for each wolf killed within the Township. Another
$50 was raised for the poor.

This was the beginning of a long line of public servants
who in the early days included almost every resident of
the Township. At first, there were not enough people here
to appoint one road overseer to each section, so as new
families settled, the first job a man held in public life was
that of road overseer. It can be seen that almost every
original family contributed time to local government.

 

 

 

BLOOMFIELD REDISCOVERED

The census of 1830 showed about 30 families living within
the Township’s 36 square miles. In 1874, another census
indicated a population of 1,912. In 1940, after Bloomfield
Hills had incorporated as a separate city in 1932 and
Birmingham in 1933, the resultant 25 square miles left in
the Township boasted only 1,771 residents. Ten years
later, in 1950, the population had doubled to 3,851. Six
people ran the government, all of it.

Then came the population explosion! Between 1950 and
this Bicentennial Year of 1976, the population has increased
to 48,425, twelve times its half century level. Today it takes
more than 200 employees to run government operations.

The major story of Bloomfield therefore is not in the
shadowy past when the pioneers discovered its gentle hills
and fair lakes, but in the rediscovery by bright young
families of what it has to offer as a beautiful place to live.

The natural setting provides a backdrop for its homes and
its residents’ activities, but only careful planning and a
watchful eye have allowed Bloomfield to absorb this influx
of new residents without destroying the way of life which
attracted them in the first place.

Step inside our boundaries and take a look at Beautiful
Bloomfield.

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THE RISING, THE IMPORTANT, THE FAMOUS

Bloomfield Township, Bloomfield Hills and Birmingham
run an entire gamut in terms of one-family residences.
Pleasant little houses in quiet neighborhoods are very
much in demand. Larger homes in thoughtfully developed
subdivisions ring the boundaries, and in the center of the
Township, in a long band stretching from Adams Road on
the east to Inkster on the west live two groups of people
whose homes and style of living are as important to them
as are their achievements.

One segment is the upward moving young executive
whose progress up the “stepping stones’ referred to in a
1960's article in Fortune magazine, from one community
and one type of house to another, better one, parallels
his progress from responsibility to responsibility in his
corporation.

The other is the group who've reached their goals and can
afford not only the best land, the best architects and superb
construction, but those elusive commodities the very great
and the very rich cherish—privacy and anonimity.

Both sets of people set high standards for themselves,
reflected in their homes.

Examples of the work of six world-famous architects and
many good local ones are found in this center section.
One of the six, Minoru Yamasaki, has recently built his
own home in the Township.

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TWO GOVERNORS, SENATORS, A CABINET MEMBER

In 1846, the Michigan State Legislature decided to look
into a new location for the state capitol. Thomas McCraw,
Bloomfield Township’s representative, put forward
Bloomfield Center as an excellent place to locate the
capitol.

He was asked rather sarcastically to describe the place he
so highly recommended, and all he could come up with
was “It’s three-fourths of a mile north of Morris’ Mill?

While he was laughed down and his suggestion turned
down, some atmosphere of potential political prominence
must have been present in his proposal, because in the
last fifty years Bloomfield has been the home of many
people who have wielded great power in state, national
and international affairs.

Former Governor Murray D. (“Pat”) Van Wagoner, who
served in 1941 and 1942, has lived in the Township for the
last twenty years. Former Governor George Romney
makes his home in Bloomfield Hills. He was president of
American Motors Company in the 1954-62 period and
served several times as Governor in the years from 1963
to 1969. In 1969 President Richard M. Nixon appointed
him to the cabinet post of Secretary of Housing and

Urban Development.

Among the names of Senators and Representatives from
this area, two stand out—Senator Philip A. Hart and
Senator James S. Couzens. While he was in office, Senator
Couzens bought his estate Wabeek and used it as a
summer residence until in 1924 work was begun on a
mansion. Albert Kahn was the architect, and no effort
was spared on the construction or the detail. Marble was
imported from all over the world so that each fireplace is
a different type, and for the intricate woodcarvings, three
master cabinet makers were brought from Germany and
Switzerland for three years to do the finish work.

12

The mansion at “Wabeek’’

 

 

POLITICAL ACTIVITY ON ALL LEVELS

Charles Erwin Wilson was called C. E. when he was
serving as president of General Motors (1941-1953) and
“Engine Charlie” when he was Secretary of Defense under
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1953-1957.

He was one of many corporation presidents and board
chairmen whose homes are in Bloomfield who used their
know-how for the good of our whole country by serving on
boards and in government posts in Washington and
elsewhere.

There is more to political life than being a cabinet member
or running for president. Countless Bloomfield citizens
have served on local government commissions, such as
planning commissions and boards of appeal. Others have
worked for election committees and carried on a tradition
established early of contributing time and effort to the
control of their destiny. The government of our area is

of, for and by the people. And it shows.

14

The former C. E. Wilson residence, “Meadowlake”
presently owned by Mr. and Mrs. Sheldon W. Hayes

 

 

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GIANTS OF INDUSTRY CHOOSE BLOOMFIELD FOR
THEIR HOMES

Up until about 1960, most of the rising and the rich chose
the Grosse Pointes as places to live. In Bloomfield there
were estates, but most board chairmen and presidents of
the large corporations which have headquarters in
Southeastern Michigan lived elsewhere.

Beginning late in the Fifties, Bloomfield began to attract
the attention of the executives moving into Detroit in the
great post-war automotive boom. By the early Sixties, all
four presidents of the large automobile companies lived
here—John Dykstra of Ford, John Gordon of General
Motors, Lynn Townsend, of Chrysler and George Romney
of American Motors.

In this present year of 1976, board chairmen and
presidents of most of Detroit’s large companies live here.
They include Chairman Thomas A. Murphy and President
Eliot M. Estes of General Motors; President Lee A. Iacocca,
of Ford; Chairman John J. Riccardo and President Hugh
Cafiero, of Chrysler; President Paul S. Mirabito, of
Burroughs; President Edward J. Giblin, of Ex-Cell-O;
President Gilbert F. Richards, of The Budd Company;

and President Joseph D. Williams, of Parke-Davis.

An interesting point about Parke-Davis is that the pharma-
ceutical company was co-founded by Hervey Parke, son

of Dr. Ezra Parke and nephew of Captain Hervey Parke of

our founding families. His grandson, Dr. Hervey C. Parke,

is with the company today.

To round out our list of captains of industry whose homes
are here it’s necessary to note that since the early Sixties,
every board chariman and every president of General
Motors has lived here. The distinguished list includes John
Gordon, James M. Roche, Edward D. Cole and Richard
Gerstenberg as well as the present executives Messrs.
Murphy and Estes mentioned above.

Countless vice presidents and other executives also call
Bloomfield home. Grosse Point, good-bye!

16

Bloomfield’s only house designed by architect Alden Dow

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PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN
ATTRACTED TO BLOOMFIELD

In the 1820s, when the first settlers came to build new
lives in the uncharted regions of our Township, almost
every pioneer among the first ten to buy land was a
professional man.

In the strip along the one roadway in existence at the time,
the Saginaw Trail, these men settled: Dr. Ezra Parke and
Dr. Ziba Swan, both physicians and educators; Judge
Amasa Bagley, a first associate judge of the Territory who
kept the position through and after Michigan became a
state in 1837; Deacon Elijah Fish was a strong churchman
and Bloomfield’s first ecologist with his grove of maples
and apple orchards; Captain Chesley Blake, who
commanded the steamer “Michigan”; William Morris, a
builder of enterprises such as our original gristmill,
sawmill and brickworks; Captain Hervey Parke, a surveyor
and teacher; Lemuel Castle, well-versed in the techinques
of running the government and our first township super-
visor, and many others.

The fact that each of these men pioneering along the one
three-mile strip along the trail and building the same log

house which sheltered every first family, should so blaze

a trail of distinguished service through this area’s history
is scarcely to be believed, yet it’s true.

In terms of residents who are professional people, only

the numbers have changed since that decade 150 years
ago. Today thousands of physicians, attorneys, architects,
judges, engineers and businessmen gravitate to Bloomfield
as a place to live, even though their work is done
elsewhere.

18

The Theodore O. Yntema house,
a traditional Wallace Frost

 

The house of Dr. Howard H. McNeill,
a contemporary Wallace Frost

 

A RENOWNED PUBLISHER AND A DREAM CALLED
CRANBROOK

No history of this area could be conceived without a
discussion early on of Cranbrook, the outstanding contri-
bution of the Booth family to all that the name Bloomfield
Hills means around the world. People in many places
know our area only through the pictures they've seen of
Cranbrook.

Its six institutions are a symbol of private collections and
ideas put in the public domain in four areas including art,
science, education and the practice of religious tenets.

George and Ellen Booth purchased the 300 acres which is
now Cranbrook in 1904, having come out for a picnic.
With deep enthusiasm and care they laid out their plans
for its development and even set up a foundation so their
dream could become reality even if they didn’t live to see
it. It’s heartening to know that both lived to be 84 and
saw the whole development come to fruition with Christ
Church, the Art Academy and Art Museum, the Science
Institute and the three private schools, Brookside,
Cranbrook and Kingswood.

More on the glories of Cranbrook later.

20

The Triton Fountain at Cranbrook

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THE EARLIEST BLOOMFIELD HOUSE
STILL IN EXISTENCE

This is our Bicentennial year. It’s acceptable this year to
take a great interest in all our heritage, and in our old
houses. Carry on a love affair with one if you want to.

This rosy brick house may well be the oldest brick building
still standing in the State of Michigan. The brick houses
and businesses of old Detroit are long gone, but this relic
of our pioneer past is visible to anyone traveling on
Woodward Avenue as it stands on the east side between
Lone Pine and Long Lake Roads.

For years it’s been called simply “The Benedict Farm, as
the Benedict family owned and occupied it for almost a
century. Previous to that, Deacon Elijah S. Fish was the
pioneer settler of the land, having erected the log house
which is now a portion of the back of the house in 1819.
The brick part was built in 1836. Probably, since the bricks
are small, they came from the brickworks William Morris
started across the road.

The first white child born in Bloomfield was the Fishes’
daughter, who lived to be eight years old. Deacon Fish
held the first Presbyterian Church services on his land and
worked indefatigably for the church all his life. He

planted the first grove of maple trees in the Township.

He was also active as an abolitionist.

The reminiscences of Fannie Fish, the Deacon’s daughter,
are not only charming, they light up portions of the old
pages of our history as no other chronicles have done.
Through Fannie’s eyes we see the joys and terrors, the
worries, sorrows, drudgeries and festivities of pioneer life.
Later we'll read her description of life in the log house.

22

 

 

 

BEAUTY AND MYSTERY IN STILL WATERS

Sodon Lake between Long Lake and Lone Pine Roads
near Franklin looks so peaceful and pleasant on an autumn
day. The diving board suggests the swimming and boating
which make it such a pleasant place to be in summer.

How sinister that it has a darker side, a deep secret vault
where prehistoric mysteries are hidden. Words like
dyothermic and meromictic apply to it. Sheltered from the
wind, and just 5.7 acres in surface area, it is still 60 feet
deep, and surface winds and variations of temperature
don't affect that lower cavern where is stored the evidence
of vegetation of each interim between glacial periods.

The water at the lower level does not mix with the upper
water, making the lake a rare phenomenon.

It was this peculiar characteristic which prompted Dr.
Curtis L. Newcombe, of Cranbrook Institute of Science,
who tested the secrets of the little lake in the 1940s, to
suggest before the American Association for the Advance-
ment of Science that Sodon Lake be used as a depository
for nuclear waste. The suggestion was not accepted.

Sodon is one of 32 lakes and ponds in the original
Township area, most left as the glaciers retreated, some
man-made or at least deepened to drain off water.

24


WORLD FAMOUS ARCHITECTS DESIGN
BLOOMFIELD’S HOMES

Many architects renowned all over the world for their
buildings and others nationally known are represented in
the Bloomfield area. In other places they have designed
airports, government buildings, hospitals, museums,
industrial buildings and art centers. In Bloomfield the same
master architects have drawn plans for houses, homes for
their owners to enjoy and for other residents to see and
admire.

The trend toward excellence was begun by Albert Kahn,
who was the architect for several of the early mansions.
The Couzens house, “Wabeek’ pictured on page 13 is
an example of his work. In the Twenties and Thirties,
Eliel Saarinen conceived and executed his plans for the
Cranbrook complex. Many of his buildings are illustrated
on page 135.

Frank Lloyd Wright was the architect in the Forties for both
the Melvin Maxwell Smith house on page 29 and the
Gregor Affleck house pictured on pages 140 and 160.

Three greatly admired contemporary architects have built
here since the Fifties. Minoru Yamasaki has several
examples of his work in the area, the latest of which, his
own home in the Township, is pictured on page 11. Alden
Dow, a Michigan architect with an international reputation,
designed the Lynn Townsend house on page 17 and
Edward Durrell Stone did the original Matheson house
which is on page 141.

Michigan architect Wallace Frost has many many houses in
our area to his credit. An early Frost house is the Yntema
French Provincial house on page 18 and a later Frost, in
his contemporary period, is that of Dr. Howard H. McNeill
on page 19.

Eero Saarinen, when he lived in Bloomfield, occupied the
historic century-old Vaughan house on Vaughan Road.
Beside it he built the only house he designed for the
Bloomfield area, a small one for his mother. Both houses
are pictured here.

26

 

 

 

TWO FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT HOUSES

Frank Lloyd Wright designed two houses in Bloomfield.
The Melvyn Maxwell Smith house is in the Township and
the Gregor Affleck house in the Hills.

“An Usonic House; Wright called the Smith house, pictured
here. “CUsonia” was the name English novelist Samuel
Butler gave to America when he thought it might represent
an Utopian ideal place.

“This Usonian house is a companion to the horizon” Smith
says of his home. ‘loving the ground with the new sense of
space, light and freedom to which our U.S.A. is entitled?”

Wright’s own home, “Taliesin” was fashioned as one in
harmony with nature. Both prospective owners had seen
pictures of “Taliesin” and each was determined to have a
Wright house. In each instance the men approached Wright

_and said they were not interested in basements or attics

and wanted a certain type of living experience.

The primary building materials in both houses are fired
brick and cyprus wood from the tidewaters of Florida.
Both utilize skylights, both have heated floors; neither
uses plaster, paint or wallpaper.

The Smith house was designed in 1946 and built in
1949-50, the Affleck house was built in 1941. Wright

- visited both houses several times. Just before his death

in 1959 at age 90, he came to the Smith house and told
Mrs. Smith, “My dear, your delights are just beginning:

The Affleck house is pictured on pages 140 and 160.

28

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BLOOMFIELD’S CLIMATE, AND
A BICENTENNIAL ICE STORM

The climate of our area, as the climate of all Michigan, can
be summed up in one word—changeable. Few citizens
reading this book will ever forget the ice storm of March,
1976, or the tornado which touched down just west of our
border in our sister Township of West Bloomfield.

An experience all shared was the terror of standing by
the window watching and hearing great trees crack under
the weight of the ice and come crashing down in all
directions.

In 1821 Captain Hervey Parke underwent a similar terror,
although in that case it was the wind which created the
same scene. “During the sub-division of town 9 north,
range 6 east;’ he wrote, “we encountered the most
terrible gale of wind | ever witnessed in the woods of
Michigan. The trees cracked and fell in all directions
close around us. It was the same night the ‘Walk-in-the-
Water” lay off Buffalo, deeply laden for Detroit. The captain,
after discovering the opening seams of the steamer, and
realizing the impending danger, very properly gave the
order to slip the cable, releasing her, and she went on
shore?

The “Walk-in-the-Water” was the first steamship to ply
the waters of the Great Lakes, and some of our pioneer
families were on her when she beached that stormy

night of November 21, 1821, just three years after the
342-ton vessel was launched. Many sister ships carried
passengers and cargo to Michigan, notably “The Superior”
and “The Michigan’

The captain of “The Michigan; Chesley Blake, who had
been among the crew of the “Walk-in-the-Water”’ later
settled in Bloomfield, buying property next to Amasa
Bagley on the Saginaw Trail on May 26, 1823. The great
large man, over 6’3” and possessing a deep voice and
commanding manner, was a familiar figure in early

Bloomfield until his untimely death in the cholera epidemic
of 1854.

30

 

 

 

 

 

SUPERVISOR HOMER CASE TALKS
ABOUT HIS TOWNSHIP

“It’s rather a pleasure to reminisce over the twenty years
that I’ve worked for Bloomfield Township, and watched it
grow from a rural farmland area to an urbanized
community of more than 48,000 people.

“Twenty years ago land developers paid approximately
$1,000 per acre for land. Although the zoning laws in those
days permitted one-half acre development per lot, land
developers chose to plan two or three acre sites because
the property was inexpensive. When they were required to
pave roads, they reduced the size of lots to about one

acre. When sewer and water were added, and the land
began to cost ten thousand dollars per acre, they went to
the smallest lots permitted under the ordinance—

one half an acre.

“The early subdivisions—Wards Acres, Bloomfield Village,
Westchester Village—underwent difficult times during the
Depression, but the land didn’t revert back to acreage.
Starting in the Fifties, the old farms were subdivided one by
one, until today, in 1976, there are only a few undeveloped
areas left, and only one or two small farms still exist.

32

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THE PHILOSOPHY WHICH HAS KEPT
BLOOMFIELD RESIDENTIAL

“The people who moved to Bloomfield in the last 25 years
wanted to move to a bedroom community. To avoid other
locations where zoning might permit a smokestack on one
side of them and some type of commercial business on the
other, they were willing to come here and pay a higher

tax rate to build and maintain new school systems. In the
Township, 94% of the tax revenue comes from residential
home owners, and only 6% from commercial and other
types of zoning.

“| see no other future here except to continue as a
residential community. As land values become greater and
greater, we may increase our density, but | don’t believe
the citizens of this Township will ever be willing to allow
other kinds of zoning to be introduced here. Most people
come here with their life savings, ready to make the biggest
investment they will ever make—building or buying their
home. To add zoning other than residential would do
nothing but depreciate their property.

“Holding the line has been difficult in a legal and financial
sense, however. There have been years in the past when
we've had to spend as much as $40,000 in litigation costs.
Requests are tapering off and we haven't had to spend
those large amounts for several years now’

34

The Adams Woods Development,
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DELORIS LITTLE— |
THE TOWNSHIP’S FIRST ACTING CLERK

Deloris V. Little first came to the Township offices in 1954.
At that time the population was 3,200 and five people ran
the government. “In those days all five of us did every-
thing; Deloris recalls. “We worked as clerks, did building
department jobs and even operated the police and fire
radio:

Up to the time Deloris became clerk, the position had been
a rubber stamp one, with the clerk coming in now and then
to sign papers. In 1960, it became obvious that the
expansion was going to continue and the Township needed
a full-time acting clerk. Realizing this, Clerk Robert Dudley
resigned so that Deloris could be appointed, and she’s

run in every election since that time.

Deloris was also immediately appointed to the planning
commission, the first woman ever to serve on any board in
the Township. She feels she was always accepted as an
equal, and because she was involved in the day-by-day
operation of the government, the board needed her
information and opinions.

Deloris and her husband John were co-founders with nine
other couples of the Bloomfield Hills Baptist Church
pictured on page 149. Her strong faith in Christian principles
is at the base of her attitude toward filling the needs of the
residents of the Township. “If you can’t help people, you
have to wonder what it’s all about” she says. “The people
of this area have overwhelmingly indicated that the quality
of their life here is their top priority. We've all worked

to see that this quality is maintained, and our residents
have an area primarily of homes, where they can enjoy
life and bring up their children in the atmosphere they
prefer. They want to live in Bloomfield and we want it
their way too’

36

 

THIS AREA WAS ONCE A WILDERNESS

The carefully landscaped well-tended lawns and solidly
built houses we see in Bloomfield today are far different
from what this land was like as late as 1820. It’s hard to
believe that only a century and a half ago this area was a
total wilderness, the complete antithesis of what it is now.

No need to use our imagination to try to envision what
it was like. We have an on-the-scene description from a
witness with a super-observant eye and a writing skill
which has placed him among the great authors of the
world. What brought this aristocrat from Paris to Bloom-
field Township in 1831 and prompted him to describe
every aspect of it in a treatise called “A Fortnight in the
Wilderness”?

The chronicler was the great French statesman and writer,
Alexis de Tocqueville, whose works, notably “Democracy

in America” are on library shelves everywhere and whose
theories are taught in political history courses around the
world. A little backgroung on him and the times is necessary
to prepare us for a walk into the world he saw that July

day of 1831.

Alexis Charles Henri Clerel de Tocqueville was born in Paris
on July 29, 1805, a descendant on both sides of his

family of the peers of France. At age 21 he was appointed
a magistrate of the Tribunal at Versailles, a post he served
well. He participated in the Revolution and in 1830, with

his friend Gustave de Beaumont persuaded the Tribunal

to send them to America to observe the penal system
which was considered quite advanced for the time. The two
companions reached New York on May 10, 1831, and after
researching their subject on the East Coast, set out across
Lake Erie to Detroit and expressed their determination to
see something of a real wilderness. As we will see in the
following account, they were thwarted at first, but eventually
found their wilderness and their first glimpse of pioneer
settlers in none other than Bloomfield Township.

38

 

 

 

 

TWO FRIENDS SET OUT TO FIND THE LAST REACHES
OF CIVILIZATION

Tocqueville and Beaumont, with their great gift of curiosity,
were determined to see America in its pristine condition.
Having reached Detroit, they felt they were indeed near
their goal, but no one seemed to understand why anyone
in his right mind would want to see a wilderness. Time
after time they were advised to take a well-traveled road,
directed toward a village or told they could see plenty
enough Indians on the streets of Detroit.

“We soon felt it would be impossible to obtain the truth
from them in a straightforward manner, and that we must
manoeuvre’ Tocqueville writes. “We therefore went to the
United States’ Agent for the sale of wild land, of which
there is much in the district of Michigan. We presented
ourselves to him as persons who, without having quite
made up our minds to establish ourselves in the country,
were interested to know the price and situation of the
Government lands.

“Major Biddle, the officer, now understood perfectly what
we wanted, and entered into a number of details, to which
we eagerly listened. ‘This part, he said, ‘seems to be best
suited to your purpose. The land is good, and large villages
are already founded there; the road is so well kept that
public conveyances run every day: ‘Well’ we said to
ourselves, ‘now we know where not to go, unless we intend

yyy

to travel post over the wilderness:

40

MAJOR BIDDLE ADVISES THEM:
THEY SET OFF FOR BLOOMFIELD

“We thanked Major Biddle for his advice, and asked him,
with an air of indifference bordering on contempt, toward
which side of the district the current of emigration had
least tended. “This way, he said, without attaching more
importance to his answer than we had seemed to do to our
question, ‘toward the northwest. About Pontiac and its
neighborhood, some pretty fair establishments have lately
been commenced. But you must not think of fixing your-
selves farther off; the country is covered by an almost
impenetrable forest, which extends uninterruptedly toward
the northwest, full of nothing but wild beasts and Indians.

“We again thanked Major Biddle for his good advice, and
determined to take it in a contrary sense. We were beside
ourselves with joy at the prospect of at length finding a
place which the torrent of European civilization had not
yet invaded.

“On the next day, the 23rd of July, 1831, we hired two
horses, and having bought a compass and some provisions,
we set off with our guns over our shoulders, and our hearts
as light as if we had been two schoolboys going home for
the holidays:

Thus did Tocqueville and Beaumont set out for Bloomfield.
with the advice of Major Biddle.

4)

 

 

 

TOCQUEVILLE FINDS HIS WILDERNESS

While Tocqueville and Beaumont came to Bloomfield
eleven years after it was first settled, and encountered the
thin line of the first homesteads, the wilderness for which
they were searching had only recently been the condition
of Bloomfield. If we take a little poetic license, rolling the
calendar back to 1818, and using the description of an
area somewhat north of us, we'll see Bloomfield exactly as
it was when the first pioneer families came to its virgin
forests and its oak openings. Tocqueville speaks:

“AS we proceeded, we gradually lost sight of the traces of
man. Soon all proofs even of savage life disappeared, and
before us was the scene that we had so long been seeking—
a virgin forest.

“Growing in the middle of the thin brushwood, through
which objects are perceived at a considerable distance,

was a single clump of full-grown trees, almost all pines or
oaks. Confined to so narrow a space, and deprived of
sunshine, each of these trees had run up rapidly, in search
of air and light. As straight as the mast of a ship, the
most rapid grower had overtopped every surrounding
object; only when it had attained a higher region did it
venture to spread out its branches, and clothe itself with
leaves. Others followed quickly in this elevated sphere;
and the whole group, interlacing their boughs, formed a
sort of immense canopy. Underneath this damp, motionless
vault, the scene is different?

42

 

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MAJESTY AND ORDER; CHAOS AND CONFUSION

“Majesty and order are overhead—near the ground, all is
chaos and confusion: aged trunks, incapable of supporting
any longer their branches, are shattered in the middle, and
present nothing but a sharp jagged point. Others, long
loosened by the wind, have been thrown unbroken on the
ground. Torn up from the earth, their roots form a natural
barricade, behind which several men might easily find
shelter. Huge trees, sustained by the surrounding branches,
hang in mid-air, and fall into dust, without reaching the
ground.

“In the solitude of America all-powerful nature is the only
instrument of ruin, as well as of reproduction. Here, as well
as in the forests over which man rules, death strikes
continually, but there is none to clear away the remains;
they accumulate day by day. They fall, they are heaped
upon one another. Time alone does not work fast enough
to reduce them to dust, so as to make way for their
successors. Side by side lay several generations of the
dead. Some, in the last stages of dissolution, have left on
the grass a long line of red dust as the only trace of their
presence; others, already half consumed by time, still
preserve their outward shape. Others again, fallen only
yesterday, stretch their long branches over the traveler’s
path’

Bloomfield, as it was in 1818.

44

 

 

 

“ARCHES OF THE FOREST”—RELIGION WAS ALWAYS
IMPORTANT IN BLOOMFIELD

“We said to our host in the inn in Pontiac at which we
spent the night after our trek through Bloomfield)’ wrote
Tocqueville, “The soil of the forests left to themselves is
generally marshy and unwholesome; has the settler who
braves the misery of solitude no cause to fear for his life>”

“Cultivation, at first, is always a dangerous undertaking;
replied the American, “and there is scarcely an instance of
a pioneer and his family escaping, during the first year, the
forest fever; sometimes while traveling in the autumn you
find all the occupants of a hut attacked by fever, from the
emigrant himself down to his youngest child” “And what
becomes of these poor creatures when thus struck by
Providence?” “They resign themselves and hope for better
times:

“Do the ministrations of religion ever reach them?”

“Very seldom. As yet we have not been able to set up
public worship in our forest. Almost every summer, indeed,
some Methodist ministers come to visit the new settle-
ments. The news of their arrival spreads rapidly from
dwelling to dwelling: it is the great event of the day. At the
time fixed, the emigrant, with his wife and children, makes
his way through the scarcely cleared paths in the forest
toward the place of meeting. Settlers flock from fifty miles
‘round. The congregation has no church to assemble in,
they meet in the open air under the arches of the forest.

A pulpit of rough logs, great trees cut down to serve as
seats. such are the fittings of this rustic temple. The
pioneers encamp with their families in the surrounding
woods. Here for three days and nights, the people scarcely
intermit their devotional exercises. You should see the
fervent prayers and the deep attention of these men to the
solemn words of the preacher. In the wilderness men are
seized with a hunger for religion’

45

 

 

 

THE KIRK IN THE HILLS

Tocqueville's inquiries into the religious practices of our
pioneer families were made in 1831, the very year the first
Presbyterian church was chartered on the shores of Wing
Lake, to be followed by Dr. Ezra Parke’s Methodist
meetings and Deacon Elijah Fish’s Presbyterian meetings
on the Saginaw Trail.

It's entirely fitting that the aspirations of the first group of
settlers, though their denominations differed, should today
be expressed in a structure at once the best example of
man’s efforts to reach toward the Almighty in the building
of a cathederal, and yet, in its vaulted ceilings and flying
buttresses, a recreation of “the arches of the forest” the
pioneer spoke of. This edifice is the Kirk in the Hills.

The Kirk, one of the largest Presbyterian churches in
Michigan, is built on land donated by Colonel Edwin S.
George. The 30-acre site was the Colonel’s own estate,
“Cedarholme;’ and the house is incorporated into the
overall building. The Gothic structure, designed by
architect Wirt C. Rowland, is a recreation of Scotland’s
Melrose Abbey, a masterpiece built in 1136 and destroyed
in 1570. The Scottish abbey sent the Kirk a stone from the
ruins which is embedded in the wall of the Lady Chapel
and is marked 1246 A.D.

The Presbytery dedicated the church in 1947, the first
Service was held in 1952, but before the complex was
completed, a million dollar fire in 1957 set construction
back for more than a year. During that period services
were held in Bloomfield Hills’ Andover High School.

Returning to Tocqueville’s memoir, it’s interesting to note
that in the ultra-modern St. Regis Church, in Bloomfield,
the tabernacle, lectern and pulpit are reproductions of
cut-off tree trunks, an echo of our first settlers forest
cathedral.

46

 

OLD LAKE MAUMEE COVERED BLOOMFIELD
IN PREHISTORIC TIMES

The geological formation of Michigan and particularly of
Bloomfield presents a complex picture. Beginning several
billion years ago, cataclysm after cataclysm covered our
area with four different advancing and receding glaciers.
In between upheavals, vegetation and animal life slowly
developed, only to disappear with a new earth-shaking
disturbance.

Our major concern is with the retreat of the last great
glacier. As it melted away a huge lake, Lake Maumee,
covered Bloomfield. In its ancestral stage, it was the parent
of Lakes Huron and Erie, and in its middle period, ice
obstructed the natural outlet of the lake to the east and
caused the waters of the two great lakes to extend far
beyond their present boundaries.

In this era, the lake covered only the southern half of the
Township. The shoreline of Middle Lake Maumee ran from
the banks of the Rouge River opposite Franklin Village
northeastward, crossing Woodward Avenue at Charing
Cross Road. The last bits of the beaches of the lake can

be seen in the gravel patches by the stone gateway

columns at Charing Cross. The shoreline ran northward
from there, crossing Adams Road above Wattles, circling
through Troy and entering the Township again midway
between Quarton and Maple Roads, moving southwestward
and around the lower end of Birmingham south of Maple.
The escarps, or steep slopes of the old beaches are visible
on the Oakland Hills Golf Course, on holes 8 and 11 on the
south course, and 10 and 18 on the north course.

Pockets of water or bays from the lake were left as the
water receded, forming not only our 30-odd lakes and
ponds, but the gravel pits in the northeast end of the
Township as well.

48

 

 

CHARLIE COME HOME

' This year, as we're celebrating our 200th birthday as a
Nation, it’s been suggested that we also celebrate our three
billionth year as aland. |

It was about that long ago that the land mass we now call
the United States of America was formed. Over millenia,
as we pointed out, vegetation and animal life alternated
with the grinding, sweeping destruction of such life by
advancing glaciers, one following another.

Our little Sodon Lake shares the secrets of the first plant
life—lichen, hardy Arctic plants, then willows, birches,
pines. The harder woods such as oak, elm, hickory, walnut
and maple which we see all over Bloomfield today came as
the humus became better and better soil.

Along with the warmer climate and better vegetation came
Charlie.

Charlie was just a little fellow when he died some 25,000
years ago. He barely weighed two tons and his long curved
tusks were only half their full growth. He still had some of
his milk teeth. The young mastodon was either sick or
injured when he reached the water hole at Charing Cross
Road about a quarter mile east of Woodward back about
23,000 B.C. Poor Charlie died there. His fur-covered body
fell into the marl bed of the pond and there he remained
as the receding waters deposited more marl and made his
shallow grave into a mastodon mausoleum.

In September of 1934 A.D. a steamshovel operator
deepening the little pond for drainage, uncovered Charlie’s
body and reported his find to Cranbrook Institute of
Science. The bones were carefully excavated and taken

to the Paleontology Museum at the University of Michigan
in Ann Arbor. Here they were scraped of the marl and
reassembled. Charlie’s been on exhibition there since.

Charlie’s only one of about 150 mastodon remains found
in Michigan, but he’s ours. He’s called the Bloomfield Hills
Mastodon, but he was found in Bloomfield Township so
let’s just call him the Bloomfield Mastodon.

Lets just call him home to Cranbrook for the Bicentennial.

50

 

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AMERICAN INDIAN INHABITANTS

Fannie Fish, in 1888, presented a paper before the
Oakland County Pioneer Society in which she described
the hundreds of Indians who came past their house on
Woodward north of Lone Pine (now the old red brick
Benedict farm) each week. They had been to Detroit to
get their bounty, the money paid them for the land, which
they spent on food and whiskey before moving up the
Saginaw Trail.

These Indians were members of the Chippewa or Ojibwa,
Potawatomi, Ottawa, Miami, Saulk, Fox and Mascouten
tribes. Some may even have been Wyandots or Hurons
who had been driven out of Ontario by the fierce and
feared Iroquois.

In any case, they were known as the Younge Tradition
Indians, named after the first site where their occupation,
traced back to about 700 A.D., was found. They were
preceeded in this area by four other groups, the mastodon-
hunting Paleo-Indians, known for their fluted arrowheads;
the Old Copper Indians, first to mine that metal; the
Woodland Indians who first made pottery; and the
Hopewell who took to farming in addition to hunting and
fishing.

At the time about which Fannie Fish wrote, there were only
an estimated 7,737 Indians in all of Michigan! Those from
this area moved northward, and little trace but graves
today indicates their presence here. Yet in the early days
many white settlers were saved when a compassionate
Squaw shared her succotash with them, among them
Captain Hervey Parke who lived in Birmingham for some
time. In 1940 there were only 6,282 Indians in the state,
but the number has been on the increase since then.

The Indians of this area were distinguished from others
by the round bark huts they built, as opposed to the
longhouses built by other Indian groups.

52

 

 

——S

 

 

 

 

THE GREAT BATTLE BETWEEN
THE FOX AND THE CHIPPEWA

Cinder the heading, “A Good Many Dead Indians) a 1912
history of Oakland County sketches the story told by a
French fur trapper named Michaud or Micheau to an early
settler, Edwin Baldwin, of a great battle between the
Chippewa and the Fox Indian tribes before the coming of
the white man.

Michaud, a centenarian when Bloomfield was settled, told
of coming upon a Chippewa village on “Swan's Plains,’ the
tableland later settled by Dr. Ziba Swan. In the late 1700s,
Michaud was camped along the Rouge River where
“Manresa” is today at Quarton and Woodward, and was
startled to see Indian feathers passing silently by the rocks.
He knew instantly that the Fox were about to attack their
ancient enemies, the Chippewa. In the bloody battle which
ensued, the Chippewa village, braves, squaws and children,
were wiped out. The battling braves followed those trying
to escape down the Saginaw Trail which, with the plains,
was littered with dead bodies. Michaud described them as
numbering 1500.

Farly settlers felt he exaggerated, yet history is on
Michaud’s side. “Swan’s Plains” might have been so named
because the Indians had cleared the land to build their
village with its vegetable gardens. When the Oakland
County Road Commission dug down just a short distance
to put in the wires for a traffic signal at Quarton and
Woodward (the Saginaw Trail) in 1961, they encountered
the bones of two young braves, just in the three-foot
radius and 42” depth of the hole.

Hinsdale’s “Archeological Atlas of Michigan” also located a
probable Indian village and burial site within the
boundaries of what is now Birmingham.

54

 

eee i

 

REPORTS OF THE INTERMINABLE SWAMP

While Detroit had been founded in 1701, the first

white settler didn’t get to Bloomfield until over a century
later. Early reports of the nature of the interior beyond
Detroit were discouraging. Surveyor-General for the North-
west Territory, Edward Tiffin, filed a report to General
Meigs, Commissioner of the Land Office in Washington,
D.C., on November 30, 1815, which read in part: “not one
acre out of a hundred, if there be one in a thousand, would
in any case admit of cultivation or it is worth the expense
of surveying. It is an area of swamp and lakes in between
stretches of sandy loam on which scarcely any vegetation
grows, except small scrubby oaks’

This report was circulated so widely in the East, where
veterans of the War of 1812 were being given bounty lands
as compensation, that in the school geography books the
words “Interminable Swamp” were written across maps of
the interior of Michigan.

In all fairness to Tiffin, he didn’t survey the land himself,
but had others do it, and as far as Royal Oak, there was

a swamp, well known for its impassability and its clouds

of mosquitoes which made passage through it almost
impossible. Every writer of the period mentions the terrible
mosquitoes which could so drain men and animals of
blood that they would drop from weakness.

56

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SHOUTS OF JOY

In the early part of the fall of 1818, two groups of men
from Detroit decided to see for themselves if the lands in
the interior really were “irreclaimable and unfit for culture
or occupation, and their obvious destiny must be to remain
in possession of wild beasts;’ as Tiffin’s report concluded.

One group mentioned in an article published in the Nov.
13, 1818 issue of the Detroit Gazette, was composed of
Governor Lewis Cass, the Rev. John Monteith, David C.
McKinstry, Austin E. Wing and Benjamin Stead. The fact
that they named Wing, Cass and Elizabeth Lakes after
themselves and Mrs. Cass is proof that they did indeed
explore this area.

The second group has Major Oliver Williams, Calvin
Baker, Jacob Eileet and “other prominent Detroit men”
setting out, turning back, and setting out once again. In
any case, they passed through the swamps of Royal Oak,
traveled along the log road being built by Army Troops ~
under the command of Colonel Leavenworth, and
eventually reached the tableland which would soon be
called Bloomfield.

The account of their journey was written in 1872 by
Thomas Drake for the Oakland Pioneer Society. He tells of
their reaction when they first caught sight of Beautiful
Bloomfield: “We will not undertake to describe the shouts
of joy which burst from their lips as they looked upon the
lovely landscapes which were presented to their view.
They were enraptured with the scenery. The plains and
openings were covered with new and brilliant flowers.
After making as full an investigation as their means would
allow, having gathered as many flowers and shrubs as
they could carry as evidences of the fertility of the soil,
they returned to Detroit, after an absence of three or four
days.

“The exploration made by this party was the theme of
conversation and it undoubtedly led to the formation of
the Pontiac Company which held its first meeting
November 5, 1818, with the purpose of selling land.”

58

 

 

 

 

 

THE FIRST WHITE SETTLERS COME TO BLOOMFIELD

Countless articles have been written about the families who
first settled Bloomfield Township. Everyone knows that
John W. Hunter and his brother Daniel left their home in
Auburn, Cayuga County, New York, in the winter of 1818.
They crossed Canada by sleigh and the Detroit River on
ice, arriving in Detroit in March. The following July Elisha
Hunter, their father, and the rest of the family came on a
21-day trip across Lake Erie on the Schooner “Neptune”
The sons, meanwhile, had undoubtedly been looking for
the best land available. By the time they found it, two other
prospective settlers had also discovered its beauty.

So, to Elijah Willits goes the gold medal for being the first
to buy land in Bloomfield Township. He bought his 160
acres on December 1, 1818, as did the second buyer, John
Hamilton, but since Willits’ certificate bears the number
212 while Hamilton’s is 216, presumably Willits received
his first.

Meanwhile, back in Detroit, John W. Hunter bought his
160 acres on the following day, December 2. However, it
was Hunter who has the title “First Settler of Bloomfield
Township” as he erected his log house early in January.

It took about ten days to build. Imagine his chagrin when
he found out he’d put it up on Hamilton’s land! Undaunted,
he built another.

The deal was that they were to pay $2.00 an acre, with $80
down and three annual installments of $80 each for the full
price of $320. Actually, each decided against paying the
second installment and eventually they paid $230, or $1.44
an acre, after renegotiation.

Anyone for the four corners of Woodward and Maple at
$1.44 an acre?

The fact that each family opened a tavern might have been
simple good business. The only route through the wilder-
ness to the Pontiac Company’s settlement and on to
Saginaw was the Saginaw Trail, now Woodward Avenue.
Settlers moving north had to stop and rest, so the word
tavern meant the hospitality offered was on a paying basis.

60

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP

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61

HEIGH-HO FOR A LONG SLEIGH RIDE

If it seems strange that the early settlers arrived in the
middle of winter, the most difficult time in which to survive,
the answer lies in the fact that transportation by sleigh was
the easiest mode of travel.

The swamps around Royal Oak, with their clouds of
stinging mosquitoes, made summer travel almost
impossible. Our first residents, all emigrating from New
York and the New England states, came via the Erie Canal
to Buffalo and there took the steamer “Walk-in-the-Water”
or one of its successors such as the “Superior” the 400
miles across Lake Erie. From Detroit they traveled to
Bloomfield via Mount Clemens and up the Clinton River.

Land and rivers could be far more easily traversed by
sleigh in January than by ox-cart and boat the remainder
of the year.

From the memoirs of Hervey Parke and Amasa Bagley we
can put together this description of the journey:

“We started from home in the winter of 1818. First we
disposed of all of our furniture, as it would not do to
transport it so great a distance, and there remained two
large chests and several trunks in which our bedding and
clothing were packed, including also a large strong cask,
in which, after removing the chime hoops, | had placed
one large seven-pail kettle, inside that a smaller one, then
several still smaller until it was quite filled. A log chain and
some other iron articles added, made this cask a weighty
affair, and caused many a tough fellow to say hard words
when attempting to move it.

We started on runners with wheels and running gear
lashed on the sleigh, with box and seat, so if the snow left,
we could still proceed upon our journey. With a last look at
our eastern home, we set out and came all the way with
that rig, changing to wheels as occasion required, arriving,
after many weeks, at Detroit, and commencing thence to
Bloomfield”

Now that was a long sleigh ride.

62

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THE LOG HOUSE

The first thing the settler had to do was build shelter for his
family. This meant felling trees and piling them up at right
angles, sealing the cracks with mud or some lime com-
pound if it were at hand, and raising a roof with enough
pitch to it to allow the water to run off. The wooden fire-
place occupied the entire back wall and the precious copper
pans were placed by it.

As we Saw in the case of the Hunter family, it took about
ten days to build such a log house. The words “log house”
occur constantly in early histories, and the words “log
cabin” rarely if ever. The settlers did not consider them-
selves untutored hillbillies, but educated people out to
carve a new life for themselves. They didn't live in log
cabins, they lived in log houses, albeit both had the same
materials and the same dimensions.

The floor was earthen at first, and later hand hewn logs
made the base more livable. The main room was on the
ground floor, and the children slept in the loft, entering it
from an outside crude ladder and waking on winter
mornings to find a drift of snow across their homespun
quilts. An early history tells that boys and girls went
barefoot until a shoemaker came along. On those cold
winter mornings, barefoot boys raced from the log house
to the edge of the woods, where the cows bedded over-
night, and stood where the cows had laid until their feet
were warm enough to drive the cows to the barn for
milking. Each house had its bible and its box of tea,
brewed only on Sundays as it cost $2.00 a pound, equal
to perhaps one third the family’s store of cash. Sugar
and salt were expensive luxuries.

The basic shelter provided for, the entire family turned to
hacking away at the trees to allow the sun to reach the

little garden. Bark was cut from other trees above the roots,
preventing the sap from rising so the foliage would die and
let in more sun. The race against time for the first crop of
potatoes and corn meant survival, as did shooting game in
the forest such as wild turkeys and passenger pigeons
whose breasts could be dried and stored in the cracks of
the house against winter.

64

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INSIDE THE LOG HOUSE,
A CHEERFUL FIRE, A HAPPY FAMILY

We owe most of our glimpses into life in early days here to
two chroniclers—Captain Hervey Parke and Miss Fannie
Fish. Fannie lived in the house pictured on page 23,

first in the original log part and later in the brick addition.
She wrote this reminiscence of her mother’s life for the
'Oakland Pioneer Society.

“The small house was not a pretentious affair; my father
used to say he measured the few articles of furniture they
possessed and built his house to fit them. | do not know
its dimensions, but will venture to say it afforded them a
comfortable shelter. What if the walls were composed of
unhewn logs, and the floor of the same, split and hewn as
smoothly as might be. The great stone fireplace may not
have been beautiful in itself, but when filled with a cheerful
blaze that shone out upon a spotless floor, and lit up the
farthest corners of the little room, it must have been a
pleasant sight. A muslin curtain, dainty white, | imagine,
shaded the one little window.

“The year of 1820 my mother always spoke of as the very
happiest of many happy years. The two little boys played
about the door, the fair babe smiled in her cradle, and the
mother, with heart full to overflowing with hope and
happiness, went about her household cares.

“There were hard places, no doubt, days of discouragement
and nights of weariness. One day’s work of man and team
must be paid for with four days of hard labor, and yet
these days were referred to by both of my parents as very
happy ones, and the impression left on my mind by the
story so often told was not of a time of great hardship,

but of keen enjoyment, and | believe, when at the close of
day they bowed their heads at their humble hearth stone
and my father returned unfeigned thanks for the goodness
and mercy that had followed them this far, they both

truly felt that their lives had fallen unto them in pleasant
places; yea, that theirs was a goodly heritage’

The room pictured here is a recreation of an early house in
the Township, done in authentic detail by Mr. and Mrs. A.
David Pottinger in their home on Quarton Road.

66

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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FAMILY GROUPS EMIGRATED IN THE EARLY DAYS

We can easily trace the next settlers as they bought land
and built log houses along the Saginaw Trail going north.
Rarely did a man or a couple arrive alone. They were
accompanied by relatives ranging from parents, sisters and
brothers and their husbands and wives to nephews and
neices. Three generations was a usual group.

Since women in this era were rarely referred to in legal or
even historical annals, the relationship of the men to one
another was the customary phrase. “Dr. Ziba Swan and his
son-in-law Sidney Dole” the accounts say. When the Swans
arrived in 1821 and settled near the Rouge at Quarton and
Woodward today, they also had other local connections.
Daniel Ball, who lived in Birmingham, was the father of
Horatio Ball of the famous and infamous Ball Line Road,
and Horatio was Dr. Swan’s brother-in-law. Daniel's friend,
Captain Hervey Parke sent for his brother, Dr. Ezra Parke,
and the Dr. Parkes’ built their house on the west side of
Woodward at Lone Pine Road. Another resident, Harry

O. Bronson, was Hervey Parke’s brother-in-law. Opposite
them. were the Fishes, Deacon Elijah and his demented
brother, Juni. Juni escaped one night and committed the
Township's first two murders, doing in a Mrs. Utter and her
daughter with an axe. The Fishes’ daughter was the first
white child born in Bloomfield. Typically, we don’t know
her first name although we know she lived just eight years.

The next family north was Judge Amasa Bagley and his
son-in-law, William Morris, near Long Lake Road. Father
and son Asa and Lemuel Castle lived to the northeast and
Daniel Ferguson, Major Joseph Todd, Asa B. Hadsell and
Colonel David Stanard were the other residents to the
north.

To complete the story of the nameless women who were
our pioneers, when their husbands died they were listed on
later tax rolls as Widow Chafee, or simply Mrs. Dole.

If there were other settlers in 1821 in the wilderness
beyond the trail, history hasn't told us of them, but shortly
these forested lands and clear lakes would ring with the
sound of the axe as well.

68

 

 

 

 

 

TATTERED AND WELL-THUMBED, THE OLD
TOWNSHIP MINUTES AND “THE BOOK OF ESTRAYS”
REVEAL OUR HISTORY

Verifying the arrival dates of our pioneer families becomes a
fascinating preoccupation. County tract records tell us who
bought each parcel of land from the government, but

they don’t reveal whether the purchaser settled or merely
bought for speculation.

There are several sure ways to determine who was here
when.

Our most valuable record is the old hand-written book of
minutes of each annual Township meeting beginning in
1827. There were more than 50 posts to fill, from super-
visor and clerk through pound masters and poor masters,
to road overseers and fence viewers. There were not
enough men in the Township to fill all these
responsibilities, but as the population increased, more
names were entered until in 1833 the docket was at full
strength. Obviously, anyone whose name appears in this
book in any given year was actually here in that year.

Next, imagine how valuable a cow, horse or hog was to

a pioneer. In spite of the little bell around its neck to
locate it in the dense forest, animals strayed away. If they
were lucky enough to escape the wolves and wind up in
someone else's enclosure, it was incumbent upon the
finder to record a description of the animal in the “Book
of Estrays” at the pound master’s house. The signed
descriptions are another permanent record of our first
settlers.

Determining the age of a house is another matter. Building
permits were not issued until the 1930s, early taxation

was not on dwellings but only on personal property, so
only word-of-mouth will give you even a clue as to the
date on which an old house was erected. In our search

for the oldest house still standing in the Township proper,
we had to rely on architectural features and the use of
certain building materials to determine which was the
earliest of the houses still standing. The contestants and
the winner follow shortly.

69

 

 

 

OUR FIRST POSTAL ADDRESS WAS
“BLOOMFIELD, MICHIGAN”

Contact with relatives and friends must have been kept up,
in spite of the difficulties of sending and receiving mail,
since we see the relatives of the first settlers following
them out to Michigan.

Actually, it was very early that we had our first official post
office, just two years after the Hunters had built their
original log house. On March 24, 1821, President James
Monroe established the first post office with a charter to
Dr. Ezra Parke and the designation “Bloomfield” A carrier
on horseback brought the mail from Detroit and local
families saddled up the mare, hitched the horse to the
buggy or walked to Dr. Parke’s house on the northwest
corner of Lone Pine and Woodward to pick it up. The
house is still there.

Earliest reports seem to agree that Sidney Dole was post-
master, but Dr. Parke was named in the charter.

Today, there is no “Bloomfield, Michigan” as we have no
official post office any more. While the Township's popu-
lation is now sixteen times larger than that of Bloomfield
Hills and double that of Birmingham, all residents

use one or the other as their postal address. Rarely does
anyone say “I’m from Bloomfield Township’ It’s “Bloom-

field Hills” or “Birmingham” Similarly, other records suffer.

In the prestigious Burton Historical Collection at the main
library in Detroit, there is not a single card in the index
file for Bloomfield Township, although there are many for
the two cities within our boundaries.

70

The Dr. Ezra Parke house at Woodward
Avenue and Lone Pine Road

 

THE HUNTER HOUSE —THE EARLIEST FRAME HOUSE
IN BLOOMFIELD

John West Hunter replaced his original (second) log house
with a frame house in 1822. We know from history that
Hunter possessed that much-in-demand commodity, a
team of oxen and a wagon. We also know that one of the
first activities of the Pontiac Company was to erect a
sawmill.

These facts, along with the appearance at Hunter’s of an
itinerant carpenter named George Taylor who had a
reputation for being the best in the business, allow us to
picture the circumstances under which the house was
built on the southeast corner of Maple and Woodward.

Taylor never bought land here nor settled, so we conjecture
that in 1822 it was now or never for the frame house to be
built. We can see Hunter, on an off day when his team was
not rented to plow a field or carry some produce into
Detroit, taking the Saginaw Trail northwest to Pontiac and
returning with a load of lumber cut with the mill’s bandsaw.

Houses in the East, where the Hunters had come from four
years before, were built with vertical siding of random
widths, fastened as precisely as possible to one another
with wooden dowels and then affixed to a sill at the
bottom, and a girt, also with wooden dowels. Fireplaces

at that time generally covered almost one whole wall.

In the original house it must have been the north wall

at the gable end of the house.

Over the years the house underwent not only many alter-
ations, but three moves. From its original location on the
Saginaw Trail it was moved in 1893 to 264 West Brown
Street, then known as Freemont, and then on July 24,

1970, it was moved to its present location in the Birmingham
Historical Park on Maple near Southfield.

The house was restored in one of its later periods, about
the 1849-1850 era. The horizontal wood siding of that
period covered the old vertical planking in the front portion
of the house, there was a wing or “ell” added, as was a
“Michigan Porch’ and the fireplace is now on the west wall.

72

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THE SEARCH FOR THE TOWNSHIP’S
OLDEST HOUSE STILL STANDING

CANDIDATE #3—THE LOG CABIN
“FEATHERS PASS BY THE WINDOW”

This little log cabin has been sitting on Lone Pine Road
near Tully Court for 137 years. Dubliner William Craig
claimed the land as a grant from the government and built
the cabin for himself and his wife Sara in 1839. In its one
room, 16 feet by 22 feet, their thirteen children, including
two sets of twins, were born.

In 1958, the Craigs’ granddaughter, Mrs. Bessie M.
Bogardus, then 73 years old, told of life in the little cabin
as her mother had told her. The children slept in the tiny
loft under homespun blankets while their parents slept
downstairs. Uninvited guests in the form of a band of
Indians who camped across the road, would push open the
door, glide in, and without a word, sleep for the night on
the floor in front of the banked fire.

Sara Craig, brought up in Boston, was terrified of the
Indians until one day two hunters tried to hassle her for
money while her husband was away in Detroit. Just as
she turned to get the money, she saw two Indian feathers
pass by the cabin’s window. In a moment the Indians
had entered and run off the maurauders, establishing
themselves from then on as Mrs. Craig's protector. She,
in turn, often baked bread for them.

Life in the little cabin was hard. At the age of 12 or at

the most 13, William Craig turned out each child, son

and daughter alike, to make his or her own way in the
world. Mrs. Bogardus’ mother went to live with the George
H. Mitchell family, co-founders with Almeron Whitehead,
of “The Eccentric.’ The Mitchells were very kind to her and
she later married Andrew Quick of Pontiac and remained
there until her death at age 90 in 1951.

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CANDIDATE #2—THE ELIJAH BULL HOUSE “OLD OAK”

On the southeast shore of Wing Lake, on land originally
owned by Sheriff Austin E. Wing, possibly on a land grant,
Flijah Bull bought 160 acres on a patent signed by
President Andrew Jackson October 1, 1829, as the assignee
of Austin E. Wing.

Here he built first a log house, and then, in 1833, a frame
house to shelter his bride Melinda and later their ten
children. He fashioned a wrought-iron doorknocker shaped
like an oak leaf with an acorn clapper and called his house
“Old Oak’

Bull was a religious man, and as assistant to the Rev.
Hornell received the first charter of a Presbyterian church
in this area on June 1, 1831. He built a church on his
property and was active in it until his death August 9,
1871. The church didn’t long survive him, and the
abandoned building was eventually moved to a site across
the road on the Pickering Farm and used as a barn. It

was struck by lightening and burned down in 1922.

“How do you turn a church into a barn?” Homer Case
once asked Helen Pickering. “Well, | guess you don’t”
Mrs. Pickering replied mildly, “It was struck by lightning,
wasn't it?”

The house has had six owners since the Bulls, and has
undergone many renovations and updatings. Today the
six-inch planks of white pine on the floors and the old
huge fireplace with its brick oven are about the only
portions of the original house remaining.

Still, it does qualify as one of our oldest houses.

76

 

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CANDIDATE #1 THE WINNER!
THE GILBERT LAKE HOUSE

Joseph Gilbert bought his 160 acres on Gilbert Lake on
June 24th, 1823. While he’s not mentioned in any of our
early county histories, his name does appear in 1829 in
the Bloomfield Township annual meeting records as an
overseer of highways. He held this position for four years
until 1833 when his name disappears from the records.

Later the farm changed hands many times, eventually
becoming part of the Peabody Farms, but in 1898 it was
still known as “Gilbert Lake Farm’

Three rooms remain from the original farmhouse, which
has been added to many times. In the room pictured here
we can see the hand-carved beams. The original fireplace
was made smaller in succeeding renovations, but still
retained for a long time its wooden ancestry. In the early
days, fireplaces were of wood with a heavy clay cover,
but had to be watched carefully so they would not catch
fire and burn down the log house.

The family fire had to be tended carefully, as if it went out,
there was no way to start it again except to go to the
nearest neighbor’s house and beg a few hot coals. The
children were often dispatched on this errand and brought
back the coals in a brass pan to rekindle the fire.

An interesting point about the Gilbert Lake Farm is the
existence of two large stones, one with the inscription
1864 and one 1867. The 1877 County History notes the
existence of a private cemetery on the southwestern side
of Gilbert Lake. It notes that the first interment was that of
Joseph Gilbert’s wife, Nancy. “From being a cluster of
family graves it came to be used as a place of interment
by the inhabitants of the vicinity, until in this, as in the
other old graveyards of Bloomfield, the number of silent
occupants has become very large:

78

 

 

BLOOMFIELD’S CENTENNIAL FARM CANDIDATE

Depicting the charm of the long farming era, the Russell
Pickering house on Franklin Road south of Maple reminds
us of other, quieter days, of apples and cider and long
winters and blossom-scented springs.

“Why I used to go there to buy apples” people comment in
surprise when they see this picture of the house. The farm
has been in the Pickering family for 96 years, and in three
years it will be officially designated a Centennial Farm.

It’s the only one left in the whole of Bloomfield which can
qualify for this distinction.

Some years ago the state of Michigan began to identify
and certify Centennial Farms. In order to qualify, the farm
must have been in the same family for over 100 years,
and while it isn’t essential that an actual house be on the
land, it is mandatory that the farm continues to sell
produce. For a ten-acre farm, at least $50 worth must

be sold, and $250 for any lesser acreage. This auto-
matically rules out all other Bloomfield candidates as there
are no other 100-year old properties which still farm to
sell. Others which might have qualified are now purely
residential.

Russell Pickering didn’t live to receive his certificate
carrying the Great Seal of Michigan and signed by the
governor, or affix his metal plaque to the house, as he
died last year. Mrs. Pickering and their children plan to
continue to operate the farm, now 50 acres, and they'll
receive the designation in 1979.

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FOUNDING FAMILIES AND CENTENNIAL FAMILIES

While we have only one Centennial Farm candidate, we
have many families in the Township who can qualify for
the designation “Centennial Family”

Last November the Michigan Genealogical Council
inaugurated a program under which families whose
forebears have lived in Michigan continuously for 100
years or more can apply for a Centennial certificate.

Here in the Township we also have families which we
categorize ;

“se

Founding Families; present-day citizens who
trace their origins back to pioneers or founders. The criteria
is that the ancestor must have bought his land directly
from the government, not from a previous owner, even a
non-resident owner. In short, he must have bought his
land, settled on it and remained here.

Several families are eligible for this honor, with their
ancestors going back in an unbroken line to pioneer families
such as that of Polly and John Vaughan, who first bought
land in 1824, and Wilkes Durkee and Nathaniel Case, who
were also here in the early 1820s.

We have one Founding Family who can trace their ancestry
back not only to one pioneer but two. This is the Case
family who go back in a direct line to both Cases and
Durkees.

It’s interesting to note that all through these families there
is a record of public service, with almost every generation
active in Bloomfield Township government, school boards,

and other matters of importance to a good community.
From Wilkes Durkee, who was named to office in the very
first Township board meeting May 25, 1827, we trace
active participation of many Durkees, Cases and Vaughans,
to Perry Vaughan, who was supervisor of the Township

for twenty years from 1931 to 1950, and to the present
supervisor Homer Case who's been active in the Township
for twenty years.

 

The Beardslee house gardens

82

The 1872 Oakland County Atlas map

 

 

THE INTERTWINING OF CENTENNIAL FAMILIES

If we trace just four of our many Centennial families we
immediately see that there were many intermarriages
among them when the Township was sparsely settled. For
instance:

William Forman sailed from England with his wife Harriet
and six children in 1854, and after two years in Ohio settled
in Bloomfield where another six children were born. Samuel
Gaylord Forman’s birth occured on September 15, 1858,

in the house now occupied by Mrs. Leland Forman and her
son Gaylor at Franklin and Quarton Roads.

Cooper Pickering and his wife Elizabeth arrived in Michigan
also from Lincolnshire, England, as did Thomas and
Rosanna Allen. Each family had a number of children, and
eventually all three families settled in sections 30 and 31

in Bloomfield, all before 1860.

Nathaniel Higby came to West Bloomfield in the late 1830s
and his son Elmore was born there and moved later to
Bloomfield.

Henry C. Beardslee was born in Independence Township
August 28, 1846, and came to Bloomfield Township in
1879, settling on 88 acres in Section 9 south of Hickory
Grove between Lahser and Franklin Roads.

Samuel G. Forman married Jennie Pickering.
Sarah Pickering married Elmore Higby.
Charlotte Forman married George Pickering.
Floyd Beardslee married Aurilla Higby.
Ermina H. Forman married Robert Allen.

The Beardslee daughters, Mrs. Donald S. Brownlee and
Mrs. John Malcolm, still own the Beardslee house on
Square Lake Road, although they live elsewhere.

The Centennial families, branching in all directions with
double Centennial ancestry, are a tiny percentage of our
48,000 families today, but they represent the best of early
Bloomfield.

84

The Forman house at Franklin and Quarton Roads

 

THE CASE FAMILY— DIRECT DESCENDANTS
OF TWO EARLY PIONEERS

Nathaniel Case bought his land on the northeast corner of
Maple and Lahser October 12, 1822. We're not exactly sure
when he and his son Leman settled, but both their names
appear first in the Township records of 1831 and 1832 as
road overseers.

Of the Cases other pioneer ancestor, Wilkes Durkee, we

know a great deal more. He was a most interesting man. His
Welsh ancestors left the home country in 1715 and his
grandfather settled in New York State. It was there, in

Scipio, Cayuga County, that Wilkes was born in 1762, and
from there, at age 57 he and his family came to Michigan

to buy property and settle.

While most of our pioneer founders were almost penniless—
Hervey Parke had exactly $8.50 when he was age 33, and
others had literally only pennies left after buying their
land—Wilkes was wealthy. He brought $1,000 in silver

and proceeded to buy good land and become the richest .
man in the Township. He soon had over 100 acres in wheat

and the largest herds of cattle and sheep in Bloomfield.

 

At first he built a conventional log house, lived in it with
his large family for eight years, then built a big double
house of oak logs, one and one half stories high at one end
and two and a half stories at the other, as the ground was
not flat. He lived there until his death on December 22,
1844, of a stroke, at age 78.

His several sons continued the development of the farm,
and sometime after 1850 both Stephen and William, as
well as the Vaughans, Bassetts and Slys, had stone houses
built for them. An interesting question is who built these
houses, all which bear the mark of one stonemason.

Pictured here is the Farm of Phillip Durkee, Homer Case’s
great-grandfather, built by Phillip’s father Stephen, some
time after 1850. It’s an illustration from the 1877 Durant
History of Oakland County. Also pictured here is the house
as it is today, completely unchanged and serene amidst

a landscape entirely altered.

86

 

ANOTHER FOUNDING FAMILY —
~ VAUGHANS AND WICKHAMS

John and Polly Vaughan bought land from the government
beginning in 1824, the forerunner of many hundreds of
acres the Vaughan family would own in Bloomfield. They
had ten children, three sons and seven daughters, and on
John’s death in 1833 the sons, Richard, Andrew and
Abraham, inherited the property with the exception of
bequests of eight acres each to the seven daughters,

who also were to recieve $100 each on reaching the age

Or Zl.

Abraham went to California in the gold rush of 1848, but
returned in the early 1850s and acquired more land. Of

his four sons and one daughter, most continued to live in
this area. His son Clark was the father of Perry Vaughan,
who was Township supervisor from 1931 to 1950. Perry's
daughter, Mrs. John B. Hammond, lives in Bloomfield Hills.

Caty Ann, Polly and John’s oldest daughter, married

Calvin Wickham, who, while not a founder, bought land in be
the early 1850s, and his line is therefore also a Centennial

family. Their great-great grandaughter is Mrs. Harold

R. Roehm, who lives in the Township on the same eight

acres Caty Ann Vaughan Wickham inherited in 1833.

Many other Vaughan descendents still live in the

Bloomfield area.

The Vaughan-Vernor house on Lahser Road
88

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A STONEMASON NAMED PURDY BUILT HOUSES
FOR FOUNDING FAMILIES

Dating the stone houses, five of which still stand in our
Township, has become a fascinating mystery. There exists
no proof positive of the creator of these sturdy houses
which have so easily withstood the ravages of time.

However, clues come along which lead to conjecture. In the
Oakland County Portrait and Biographical Album of 1891,
there is mention of an Irish stonemason, Hugh Purdy, who
came from County Armagh in 1850 with his wife Margaret
and several sons, and settled in Southfield. Hugh Purdy
was Mrs. Leland Forman’s great-grandfather. The Purdys
and the Hannas of Birmingham intermarried in several
generations.

Mrs. Forman thinks Hugh Purdy was the builder of these
houses, but George Purdy, one of the original Hugh Purdy’s
sons, was also a stonemason, and other members of the
family think perhaps it was he who built the houses. Since
he was born about 1850, this would date the houses later.

The buildings can still be seen today. The one pictured

is on Echo Road. One stands at Lahser and 14 Mile, the
Wing Lake School is on Maple at Wing Lake and the
Vaughan house is on Lahser north of Lone Pine. The latter
two houses are pictured in the book in different
connections.

90

 

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THE VAN EVERY GRISTMILL, ALIAS THE CIDER MILL

In the fall of each year, thousands of people jam into the
intersection of 14 Mile and Franklin Roads to buy cider and
eat hot doughnuts at the Franklin Cider Mill. If you asked
them where the cider mill was located, they'd be sure to
say “Why in the village of Franklin, of course” but

actually, the Cider Mill is just across the line in Bloomfield
Township.

It was in 1832 that Edward Matthews, son of an Irish
refugee, making plans to invest his capital in lots and
enterprises, as the jargon of the day went, bought land
from Scriba Blakeslee and Edward Ellerby and started
building a flouring mill on the stream the land boasted. He
employed Joseph Gilbert, of Gilbert Lake fame, to get out
the timber for him, and Gilbert apparantly got out the finest
timber possible for the mill. Matthews ran out of steam,
out of funds, and out of Bloomfield, and in 1837 Colonel
Peter Van Every, of Detroit, exhanged his holdings of land
in the city for the Matthews property and the plans for the
mill. Within a year, with the help of a millwright named
William A. Pratt, the mill was operable.

In the late 1830's it was the only mill operating in its
vicinity and it was quite profitable.

Also profitable, ah yes! was the distillery built on the east
side of the road, still in the Township. This place of
business sold a gallon of good whiskey for 25 cents, and
this history wouldn’t dream of relating stories of how
patrons of the distillery who had imbibed a bit much on the
premises, were unceremoniously rolled out of the window
and into the Franklin stream to regain a cool head.

Homer Case tells another story about the Van Every mill
and the day “Dude” Van Every saw a young lad in the mill
pond going down for the third time. A strong, powerful
man, Dude reached in and pulled out the boy. Homer had
been warned countless times not to play near the mill
pond, but he didn’t learn his lesson until the day Dude
saved his life. He never played there again.

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THE RAILROAD COMES TO BLOOMFIELD

The first train entered Bloomfield Township in 1839. It was
horse drawn, with open boxes instead of railroad cars. A
colorful character named Alfred “Old Sault” Williams with
his partner Sherman Stevens of Pontiac controlled the line,
called the Detroit and Pontiac Railroad. Old Sault was well
known as a practical joker although the joke was on the
early residents when they discovered he'd cornered the
entire salt market and charged outrageous prices for the
commodity. This is why he was called Old Sault.

Williams decided that a thriving little town like Birmingham
should have a regular steam locomotive in keeping with
the community’s progressive spirit. He advertised in the
papers that beginning June 1, 1839, two steam trains a day
would operate between Detroit and Birmingham. People
made a picnic out of the great day, and stood in open-
mouthed wonder as a sure-enough steam locomotive
chugged into town. It was quite a sight in the parade in
1840, decorated with evergreens and flowers. This was the
first railroad chartered in the Northwest Territory. Since this
was only a decade after the first trains had been imported
from England to this country in 1829, it was quite a marvel
for this rural area, and greatly increased the citizens’ ability
to get their produce to the market in Detroit.

94

 

 

 

 

OLD SAULT RACES THE HUCKLEBERRY LINE

Many tales revolve around Old Sault. The favorite one
describes his frequent races with the train. The train was
extremely slow, so slow that people joked about the young
man who boarded in Detroit and was old and feeble by the
time he got to Pontiac. The nickname “The Huckleberry
Line” comes from the same idea. You could jump off the
first car, pick your fill of huckleberries and jump back on
the last car with no difficulty.

A favorite trick of Old Sault’s, much as he loved his loco-
motive and regarded it as human, was to load up the train
in Pontiac, hitch up his horse and wagon and race the train
to Detroit. What’s more, he always won!

The last legend of Old Sault describes how he’d conceived
the idea of building the station over the tracks with large
swinging doors at each end which were closed at night.
One night, someone forgot to open the doors as the train
was approaching with Old Sault himself at the throttle.
Folklore has it that Williams thought the train would have
sense enough to stop on its own and wait for admittance;
sad but true his beloved locomotive failed to live up to his
expectations and the resultant crash as it went through
both sets of doors made a complete wreckage of the
whole building.

Old Sault lost the railroad in 1840. For the next century it
had a series of owners and a series of names until it
became part of the Grand Trunk system as it is today.

96

 

 

DARK CLOUDS AMASS.
THE WAR OF THE REBELLION BEGINS

Into the stabilizing economy and flourishing farm develop-
ment of Bloomfield was fired, in 1860, the bullet which
would shatter the peace of its countryside. It was called
The War of the Rebellion here and the Civil War elsewhere,
but under any name it culled from the families of our
pioneers the cream of the young manhood.

From Oakland County, men streamed into the conflict.

In all, 3,700 county men were mustered into service, with
almost 90 of these from Bloomfield Township. The county
and its townships also raised $586,556.98, an incredible
sum in proportion to its population and wealth at that time.

Of the county’s men, 400, or almost 11%, died in the
conflict, but Bloomfield gave one third of its men in the
cause.

William Irving, teenaged son of the same Hugh Irving who
later married our narrator, Miss Fannie Fish, was among
the first to enlist and the first to die in the war. He was
sighting a cannon when he was struck in the forehead by
a Confederate bullet and died instantly.

In anguish, his father went to the South to find his body,
and after a long, agonizing search he found William's
remains. Hugh brought his dead son home and buried him
in the family plot in Greenwood Cemetery.

The monument pictured here, erected in 1869, lists the
dead heroes of Troy, Royal Oak and Southfield Townships
as well as those of Bloomfield. It was supposedly financed
by the citizens of the four Townships, but from the records
it appears that only Hugh Irving contributed the money to
build it.

It was placed at the center of Woodward and Maple
intersection (Saginaw and Mill Streets in those days)
and surrounded with a wrought-iron fence. A runaway
team of horses knocked the fence down and it was never
replaced. In 1891 the monument was removed to
Greenwood Cemetery, and in 1964, as part of
Birmingham’s Centennial, it was placed in its present
location.in front of the Birmingham City Hall.

98

 

 

 

 

EARLY SCHOOLS |

The first school in Bloomfield was a private one. It was
begun in 1822 in a log house on the property of Dr. Ziba
Swan near where Woodward crosses Quarton today. The
first teacher was Captain Hervey Parke, who'd followed that
profession when he lived in Camden, Oneida County,

New York.

He taught from December 1, 1822 to February of 1823
when he turned over the teaching to his brother, Dr. Ezra
Parke. A few years later, a second school opened on the
other side of the Township on the property of Jacob Sly
on the southwestern side of Wing Lake. This school later
was the site of the organization of the first Presbyterian
church chartered in Bloomfield.

Other little schools were in operation but all were by
subscription until 1833, when on April 13 an act of the
legislature made it mandatory for Townships to provide
schools.

The first free district school was opened in 1834 in the old
log house on John Hamilton’s property, and the Rev.
|.emuel Partridge was the first teacher.

Of the later period, we have portions of two early schools
left. One is the Tucscarora School which stood near Hickory
Grove and Telegraph Roads and is now incorporated in an
office building, and one on Woodward near Long Lake,

also now a business office. Of this school just the bell
remains with a plaque on the side of the building
commemorating Circle School.

The oldest intact school in the Township is the Wing Lake
School, built in 1859.

As a Bicentennial project, the Bloomfield Hills School
District and Bloomfield Township joined forces to recon-
struct the school in the 1890-1910 era for use as a museum
and library. The school is now in use for groups who want
to see how school was taught long ago.

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THE LONG, QUIET VICTORIAN PERIOD

From the end of the Civil War until the coming of the
automobile permanently changed its visage, Bloomfield
slept quietly on the sidelines while panics, depressions and
wars rumbled in distant places. The founding families had
established large, orderly farms, and the Victorian ethic
settled around its citizens. Propriety and security were
everything.

The older people worked hard, went to church on Sundays
(several times) and kept a sedate pace. The children grew
up, quite happily, kept things lively with their audacious
pranks, grew sedate in their own time and married one
another.

Mrs. Leland Forman has diaries of three young people,

all written in 1881, with both a girl’s and a young man’s
list of daily activities. Household chores, notably doing the
washing, was the girl’s major activity for the week, and
planting and harvesting were the boy's. “I made a shirt this
afternoon’ “Today | made my apron’ “Today we washed
all morning and sewed on Jennie’s rug all afternoon’

“Today we sowed clover’ “Today we went to Pontiac to
buy nails’

Only a wedding seemed to bring people out of their —
work routine.

The prim shadow of a safe and secure way of life was
unsoftened by a measure of the comforts and financial
security so unknown to the pioneers. The Durant Oakland
County History of 1877 and the Seeley history of 1912 are
alike in showing portraits of austere men and women.

If the embryo which was to become Bloomfield in 1976
was restless, it didn’t make its stirrings known.

Bloomfield slept on.

102

A Victorian house on Woodward Avenue

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE AUTOMOBILE AND THE INTERURBAN COME
TO BLOOMFIELD

Within four years of each other, the two modes of trans-
portation which would permanently change life in
Bloomfield arrived on Woodward Avenue.

On June 18, 1896, there was much excitement and a
holiday atmosphere as horse-drawn carriages filled the
street. Everyone was streaming down to Royal Oak to ride
back in the first Interurban electric car. George Hendrie,

its promoter, was the motorman and the man of the day.

It was he who had made the decision to build the line’s
power plant in Birmingham instead of Royal Oak. He didn’t
disappoint his riders as the car clipped along at 40 miles
an hour and came triumphantly into town, linking city and
suburbs and signaling a whole new era.

Four years later, travelers waiting for the Interurban at
Opdyke and Woodward gasped to see a strange new vehicle,
an automobile, drive into town. It was a little French 1899
DeDion-Bouton motorette, the prize possession of

W. J. Moore, of Caro.

Moore had read of the new European fad of driving
horseless carriages and in 1899 dispatched $1,500 to
France for one. Four months later it arrived. The instruc-
tions were in French, and a wild time ensued while Moore
tried to start the car, and, having achieved that, couldn't
get it stopped.

It was early the following summer, 1900, when Mr. and
Mrs. Moore decided to go “Touring” —the first use of the
word in this country—and set off for Detroit. They came to
Bloomfield via Opdyke Road and from there proceeded
down Woodward Avenue beside the tracks of the Inter-
urban. At Birmingham they stopped at the tollgate where
the amazed tollgate keeper, a woman, was unable to find
any rate in the book for a carriage without horses. She
raised the gate and the first automobile to enter Bloomfield
exited free of charge.

104

Opdyke and Woodward, 1900

 

 

THE CENTURY AUTO RACE AND
THE FIRST AUTOMOBILE CLUB

On a June Sunday afternoon in 1906, the farmers of
Bloomfield were treated to an amazing sight. Over the
placid hills came roaring, coughing, purring and snorting
an array of horseless carriages. Through the dirt roads they
careened, frightening the horses, thrilling the children,
heralding the new life.

The autos and their costumed drivers had come from the
first Detroit Automobile Club, forerunner of The Automobile
Club of Michigan, at Pine Lake. They were engaged in a
race to Detroit and back from the clubhouse, a serious
affair with prizes to anyone who could complete the

journey in one day.

The Club was founded June 23, 1902, just three years after
Colonel Jacob Astor had formed the Automobile Club of
America. Its purpose was to interest people in the
automobile, and it succeeded upon the genius of its
members. At the time of the race depicted here, the
members included Russel A. Alger, Jr., Henry B. Joy,
Dexter E. Ferry, Henry Ford, John F. Dodge, Horace E.
Dodge, James Couzens, Horace H. Rackham, N. A.
Hawkins, R. Hupp, E. LeRoy Pelletier and Colonel Edwin
S. George.

Colonel George suggested the club move to a more
appropriate country setting and donated some land around
Pine Lake. There, in 1905, the clubhouse was built which
is today Pine Lake Country Club. A race was organized,
with a prize for anyone who could make the round trip
between Pine Lake and Detroit in one day. This race was
run three consecutive years, 1906, 1907, and 1908.

From a trophy at Pine Lake we chose the first race, 1906, as
the subject of our illustration. Three Packards came in first,
followed by a Peerless, a White and a Welch. Later races
featured such exotic cars as a Pungs Finch, a Wayne, a
Mitchell, a Thomas ’24 and an Oakland as well as an Olds,
Cadillac and Ford. 7

106

 

 

 

 

THE AUTOMOBILE CHANGES LIFE HERE

The history of the automobile and the history of Bloomfield
are as interwoven as the auto and Detroit, although for
different reasons. As the automobile made Detroit the
industrial city it is, the people who build it make Bloomfield
the residential community it is.

The first exclusive auto clubs were here, the new residents
always drove the finest models of the companies they
represented, and a parade of new cars is always the way of
life. In the Sixties and Seventies, the young moving
population of our area drove their cars as symbols of their
achievements. The head of the household had his top of
the line model, Mother drove a station wagon, and it was
quite customary for a young man to be given the latest
sports car brought out by his father’s company for his
16th birthday. Even the houses built here by executives of
the motor companies were used in their advertising
campaigns as backgrounds.

Where did it all start?

108

Woodward Avenue south of Long Lake Road, 1907

601

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“OUTLOOK FARM” BECOMES “OAKLAND HILLS”

No sooner had it been established that the automobile
was no passing fad, than a new and different way of life
was introduced into Bloomfield. Wealthy families from
Detroit, foreseeing that there would soon be good roads
and easy transportation to areas previously just too far
removed to be of interest, began to buy up farms and con-
vert them into estates. Country houses, they were called.
Originally bought for a nostalgia for the simpler bucolic
life, the farms were first just that, and the new owners
lived in the old house in the summer time. It wasn’t until
“the mansion” was built that farms became estates. The
people who owned them brought new tastes in leisure
activities. The advent of the golf club was at hand.

Within a span of 15 years many clubs were begun in the
area. The first in the Township was Oakland Hills Country
Club. In 1916 the first board met, organized, and bought
land from the Millers and the Germans between Lahser and
Telegraph on the south side of Maple. The Millers’ house
was used as the clubhouse, the hen house became the pro
shop, the pro was Walter Hagen, and the course was
designed by Donald Ross.

In quick succession a new Colonial-style clubhouse was
built in 1920, and the first of four meetings of the U. S.
Open was planned for 1924. For the ’51 Open, the course
was redesigned by Robert Trent Jones. Since that time
constant improvements to clubhouse, course, swimming
pool and tennis courts have kept pace with a constantly
increasing membership. The P.G.A. tournament was
played at Oakland Hills in 1972 and is scheduled again
for 1979.

The farmhouse of “Outlook Farm” still stands proudly
on Maple Road and looks over the sandtraps and the
greens where once the apple orchards stood. It’s pictured
here as it was in 1895 when Emily and Frank German
built it, as it is today, and as it sees the Oakland Hills
clubhouse.

110

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FOREST LAKE AND BIRMINGHAM COUNTRY CLUBS,
“THE BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP PARK”
AND OTHER CLUBS

Two other major country clubs in the area are Forest Lake,
begun by the indomitable Colonel Edwin S. George, who
founded so many clubs in the area, and the Birmingham
Country Club. Birmingham was founded in 1921 and
Forest Lake in 1926, but in the Thirties both clubs
foundered and fell into disuse. Birmingham reorganized

in 1942 and is a strong group today. In 1954 some 50
families reorganized Forest Lake Country Club, renovating
the golf course and club house, bringing the club into

the present.

There are no public parks either in the Township or in the
Hills. Most people find recreation in their own properties
with many swimming pools dotting the area as well as
tennis courts and other play areas.

Actually, the Township once had a public park. It was
called, appropriately enough, the Bloomfield Township
Park. Opening day was August 22, 1929, and Supervisor
Robert Y. Moore was there to see the fulfillment of his
dream for his Township. Three thousand people came to
the opening to ooh and aah over the nine-hole public golf
course, the tennis courts, the baseball diamond, picnic
ground and the beautiful clubhouse. Its location? It’s just
north of Big Beaver, and east of Woodward and today it’s
called Springdale Park and it belongs to the City of
Birmingham.

The park was taken over by the city in 1934 under the
terms of an agreement dividing the joint liabilities and
assets of the then-forming cities of Birmingham and
Bloomfield Hills. The Township was left without a park,
and shortly the park was left without a clubhouse as it
burned down after a Hallowe’en party in October of 1944.

The area has many swimming and tennis clubs, the most
notable being the Birmingham Athletic Club and the
Bloomfield Surf Club.

112

 

 

 

THE WINDS OF CHANGE:
BLOOMFIELD VILLAGE IS CONCEIVED

Judson Bradway is always acclaimed as a man of vision in
Bloomfield, and rightly so. His was the 1924 dream that
signaled the change of Bloomfield from a farming
community to a residential community. “What's so great
about that?” you might ask. The answer is that the change
was going to come in any case, and Judson Bradway,
having developed iron-clad rules about what was to be
built and how, stuck to them and made a model for all

the subdivisions which were to come.

From the time in 1924 when he bought the Hupp Farm
and other land on the north and south sides of Maple
between Westwood and Lahser and generally from Quarton
to Lincoln, he kept to the origins of his dream to build a
beautiful little community of houses. Every house plan had
to be approved by his office. Certain stipulations such as
no garage doors opening on to the street were inviolate.
His rigorous standards have paid off as the beauty of the
subdivision—the village is not a governmental unit but a
portion of Bloomfield Township—attests.

Bradway hit on hard times in the Depression. Sixty homes
were here in 1928 and 167 in 1929. By 1931 house building
in the entire area had all but ceased. Bradway almost
plaintively asked residents in a letter if they were glad they
had invested their money in their homes or sorry

because the lots would not sell for a long time at their
former prices. Many sold against Bradway’s pleas not to,
and although he lost one section south of Maple Road, he
hung on, and by 1939 things began to pick up. Several
houses were built before World War II halted all building
until its conclusion. From then on it was clear sailing until
today the Village is almost at saturation with 965 houses.

The Village has its own fire and police protection unit,

a very active local organization which oversees the mainte-
nance of standards, and a reputation for being one of the
best places to live in the whole of Bloomfield.

Judson Bradway, we salute you!

114

iia emma cant i i i i i a ei a a

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Bloomfield Village

 

 

FARMS GIVE WAY TO SUBDIVISIONS

Wherever you live in Bloomfield Township or Bloomfield
Hills or Birmingham, your land was once part of someone's
farm. Most of the farms of the turn-of-the-century period
were large, being 250 to 350 acres. Earlier landholdings
were even larger, with upwards to 500 and 600 acres
representing one holding.

If you would like to know whose farm your house stands
on, the following list will probably tell you. Ward’s Acres,
in the northwest corner of the Township, was one of the
first subdivisions platted, followed closely by Judson
Bradway turning the old Hupp Farm into Bloomfield
Village. He also developed Bloomfield Estates and
Eastover Farms. The Mercer Farm on the south side of
Maple became Westchester Village, and in the northeast
corner of the village several farms became Chapel Hills
when platted into residential lots.

Almost 20 years ago Hickory Heights at Adams and
Wattles Roads became one of the largest subdivisions in
the Township. Some 18 years ago the Broughton Fruit
Farm between Quarton and Walnut Lake Roads on the
west side of the Township became Kirkwood subdivision,
and the Leland Forman farm was subdivided into Knob
Hill. The Forman brothers, Leland, Bill and Bert, were all
fruit growers in the Township for many years. Their
orchards became the Dells of Bloomfield and the Braes
of Bloomfield.

Another fruit farm, the Case farm, became Orchard Valley
and Hilltop subs and a great deal of the Pickering fruit
farm became Franklin Woods sub. The Sly farm became
one of the largest subs, Sly Farms, at the intersection of
Franklin Road and Maple. Birmingham Farms west of
Telegraph between 14 and 15 Mile Roads was developed
20 years ago from the Colby farm. Meadowlake Farm was
from a pioneer settlement of the Grinnell family. The Pope
estate, north of Lone Pine and east of Franklin, became
Bloomfield Heights.

116

 

 

 

  

Exterior and Interior of the William Gersensohn house and
the old Saterlee farmhouse at “Five Oaks”

117

 

 

MORE FARMS AND MORE SUBDIVISIONS

Names familiar to old residents and their children
disappear from the farm's origins unless they are
included in the name of the subdivision. The early ones
were often so named, but later subs drop any reference
to the farm family.

The Allen Farm at Telegraph and Maple became Foxcroft,
the Thurber farm became Wing Lake Shores, and the
estate of the Vaughans, later owned by the Vernor family,
south of Long Lake and west of Lahser, is now called
Chelmsleigh.

A little south and west of Chelmsleigh on the south side of
Quarton the Peabody Farm name was incorporated into
Peabody Estates, and out at the Couzens huge farm north
and south of Long Lake to the Township border, the
estate name “Wabeek” became the name for the newest
and most prestigious group of townhouses in the area. On
the east side of that development is Bennington Creen,

a former fruit farm.

On the major thoroughfares, commercial development
began with gasoline service stations and small restaurants,
burgeoned into office and doctors’ complexes and then
came shopping centers and plazas, motels and hotels.
The transition from farming community was almost
complete in just twenty-five years’ time.

Only the Pickering Farm remains to remind us of our
heritage and of more than a century of serious and
successful farming.

118

“Adams Castle” on Adams Road

 

 

FARMS, PLATTED AND SUBDIVIDED,
BECOME LOTS, BECOME “HOME”

A section of the little book published in 1898,
“Birmingham, Its Past, Present and Future” is titled
“Prominent Farms in the Vicinity of Birmingham’

Of the 15 farms pictured, none remains today as a farm
(the Pickering Farm was not included in the book), but
several of the old farm houses are still standing,
surrounded by new homes in subdivisions which usually
bear the farm name.

A fascinating portion of the book describes the Miller farm
near Maple and Telegraph and pictures a Victorian turreted
ark standing on a rise overlooking apple orchards. The
write-up notes that the house has hot water heat, a
telephone, gas lights and a bath with hot and cold water—
not bad for 1898. Then comes a profuse and flowery
description of the reception room and the parlor
“furnished in a most elegant manner: The startled reader
looks at pictures of rooms crowded wall to wall with heavy
horsehair furniture covered with antimacassars. The walls
are hung with heavy mirrors and pictures draped with
fringed swags, runners are on the gate-legged tables, and
in every available corner, aspidistras in huge pots rise
several feet into the air. The reader then gasps to realize
this was the original club house of the Oakland Hills
Country Club, and was used as such for four years before
the new club house was built in 1920.

The development of the condominium complex at
“Wabeek” is an example of the orderly change from an
estate to a subdivision.

120

 

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THE BAGLEY TAVERN—IT RANG WITH GOOD TIMES

Amasa Bagley was a very early Michigan pioneer, coming
to the Territory by sleigh in the winter of 1817-18. He first
bought land and planted crops south of Bloomfield, but

in the summer of 1819 he resettled here and sent for

his wife and five little daughters, as well as an older
daughter and son-in-law, the William Morrises. They
bought a large tract of land south of what is now Long
Lake Road and east and west of the Saginaw Trail,

and put up their log house.

Some time later, probably about 1832 or 33, it was replaced
with a frame house of several rooms, and turned into a
tavern. It became quite popular both for parties and for
local government meetings. The annual Township meeting
was held there in 1835, 36 and 37. The tavern gave the

area its first name, “Bagley’s Corners’’

At the first meeting of the Oakland County Court on July
17, 1820, Amasa Bagley was named as associate judge

of the court, remaining in this position until statehood, and
continuing in the same capacity for the rest of his life.

_ William Morris was named sheriff at the same meeting.

Judge Bagley, a bit of a wag, commented on his judgeship,
inasmuch as he was in no sense a lawyer but a farmer,
businessman and tavern-keeper that he guessed “judge-
timber” was scarce in these parts.

He and Morris went into several ventures such as
setting up a brickworks, a gristmill and a sawmill, but
they're mostly known for Bagley’s Tavern.

The Tavern still exists and in this Bicentennial Year was
designated the first Historical Site in Bloomfield Hills.

122

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BLOOMFILD HILLS’ CLUBS

The first golf and country club in the area north of Detroit
was Bloomfield Hills Country Club. It was organized in
1909 by some of the most influential men of Detroit
industry and included almost every resident of Bloomfield
Hills’ estates of that time. Colonel Edwin S. George, who
was a charter member of every great club in Bloomfield
was a founder, as were William T. Barbour, George G.
Booth, John C. Donnelly, John T. Shaw and Charles
Stinchfield.

The clubhouse was designed by an early member, Albert
Kahn, and built in 1912. While golf was its prime purpose,
the new sport of “automobiling” was also very popular,
which might be expected with members like Henry Ford of
Ford and Roy D. Chapin of the Hudson Motor Car
Company.

An interesting feature of the organization meeting was the
motion to remove the cemetery on the grounds of the club
to Greenwood Cemetery in Birmingham. Older residents
whisper that the headstones were removed, but the actual
graves are covered by greens and tees and there are a lot
of very silent partners to the golfing group.

The Bloomfield Open Hunt was organized by a group of
avid horsemen on March 30, 1917. The first clubhouse was
a small white frame building, probably the residence of Asa
and Lemuel Castle in the 1830s. Its many additions now
include a large indoor horse ring, dining rooms and
clubrooms. The Detroit Horse Show has been held there
for many years.

It was called the Village Woman’s Club originally but
today the Village Club stands for a great deal more in
Bloomfield Hills. The club began in Birmingham and
expanded until it was large enough to buy the estate of
Charles Winningham on Long Lake Road. The word
“Woman's” was dropped from the title when it became
apparent that men also enjoyed what the club offers in

terms of parties and classes.

126

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MORE OF CRANBROOK: THE MEETING HOUSE

The image of Cranbrook rightfully dominates Bloomfield
Hills. Not only is it the center of cultural and educational
life in the area, it’s the symbol of Bloomfield around the
world. The work of artists from 50 countries has gone into
its harmonious beauty.

It really began as a place of worship.

George and Ellen Scripps Booth bought the 300-acre
estate in 1904 and in the summer of 1905 Mr. Booth had
a large tent erected on the hill on the north side of Lone
Pine Road, opposite where Christ Church stands today.
Services were held in various houses and buildings around
the estate until in 1918 Mr. Booth’s great desire to have
the church message reach “the non-church-going people
of this district” culminated in the building of the Meeting
House. The building served many purposes. Often the
same people who attended a movie there Saturday evening
were back Sunday morning for church service, conducted
many times by Mr. Booth himself or his father Henry

Wood Booth.

The house today is part of Brookside School. The
Cranbrook community includes three divisions: The Cran-
brook Academy of Art, with its museum; Cranbrook
Institute of Science with its nature center; and the
Cranbrook schools—Kingswood, Cranbrook and Brookside.
Christ Church, Cranbrook, is affiliated.

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Christ Church, Cranbrook

 

 

 

EARLY SUBURBAN RESIDENCES

Bloomfield Hills, so attractive to our first settlers, spent

its long dormant farm years as did the rest of the area,
safe from industry and pollution alike. Even after the
automobile had made it accessible, it developed in a most
orderly way. The golf and riding clubs also made it a
delightful place to live, and swimming pools and tennis
courts on private estates added to the atmosphere of
affluence and the good life.

The four houses pictured here are examples of varied
architectural styles of what the outside world sees of
Bloomfield Hills. All were built in the Twenties and Thirties
and reflect the secure way of life which existed before the
Depression temporarily halted building throughout the
country.

The upper right picture on the opposite page is the Arts

and Crafts style house built for J. Howard Muzzy in the
Twenties. The first house, built in 1925, was near
completion when it burned to the ground. The fire prompted
residents toward incorporation as a village, since they felt
that if they had their own fire department, instead of
depending on Royal Oak, Farmington and Pontiac, they
could have saved the building. The upper left picture
opposite is the attractive Georgian Colonial home of the
Fred Sanders on Vaughan Road.

Lower left on the opposite page is James A. Beresford’s
house on Lone Pine Road, designed by J. Robert F.
Swanson and Henry S. Booth—the first architects to live
and work in Bloomfield. Mr. Beresford is a former city
commissioner, having served for 20 years, during several
of which he was mayor of the city. He is presently
chairman of the Hills’ Bicentennial Historical Committee.

The Henry S. Booths built their house pictured on this
page in 1926. The Booths still live there. Mr. Booth is no
longer active as an architect but is deeply involved with
Cranbrook which his parents began, and is working on

a book of its history.

132

 

 

 

CRANBROOK JEWELS—ARCHITECTURE AND ART

Families who built estates here had private art collections,
but the first formal collections of art and sculpture open to
the public in Bloomfield were at Cranbrook.

When the Booths first made their plan for the development
of their estate, they asked the Finnish architect Eliel
Saarinen to be the resident architect. The Saarinens, Eliel
and his wife Loja, children Eva-Lisa (“Pipsan’”) and Eero,
arrived in 1925 and work was begun. Both the Booths’
and Saarinens’ idea was to have every form of art and
design combined to produce one total environment. As the
buildings materialized, Cranbrook School in 1926 and
Kingswood in 1931, other artists were asked to join the
effort. In 1931 the eminent Swedish sculptor Car! Milles
became the resident sculptor and in time others came—
Geza Maroti from Hungary, Paul Manship and Oscar Bach.
Most of the wrought-iron work was designed by Saarinen
and executed by Walter Nichols. |

Fliel Saarinen and Carl Milles dominated architecture and
art respectively throughout the Thirties and Forties.
Pictured on this page is Cranbrook School for boys,
designed by Saarinen and built in 1925-26.

Mr. George Booth was greatly taken with the Rodin
sculpture “The Thinker” and asked sculptor Marshall
Fredericks to make him “a monkey statue’ The names
“Sculptured Ape? “Thinker” and “The Ape” have been
variously applied to the black granite statue pictured on the

opposite page, upper right.

The columns at Kingswood School, opposite page, lower
right, indicate the school’s unique design. The Cranbrook
Institute of Science began with the telescope in 1930, and
its museum, exhibits, study classes and observatory
demonstrations have delighted and instructed hundreds of
thousands.

134

 

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CARL MILLES’ ORPHEUS FOUNTAIN

Carl Milles has more than 70 pieces of sculpture on the
grounds at Cranbrook today.

Crowning Cranbrook is the beautiful work of eight spirits
listening to the mystical heavenly music of Orpheus. The
great statue of Orpheus himself is not in its place in the
center of the fountain, but is instead in Stockholm, Sweden,
Carl Milles’ birthplace.

A miniature of Orpheus is in the Crafts Court.

The eight bronze figures were done in 1936. All are
originals, and only the statue with the uplifted fist is a
recognizable figure, being that of Beethoven.

“The eight figures in this fountain group are not symbolic,
they are just people listening to music; Carl Milles stated.

Michael Hall now heads the Cranbrook Academy Sculpture
Department. Examples of his work, academy students’ work
and loan pieces can be seen throughout the grounds of
Cranbrook—visual evidence of the fact that Cranbrook is
continuing to be a leader in its creative endeavors,

not content to rest on the laurels of its early years.

136

 

 

  

 

BLOOMFIELD HILLS GOVERNMENT AND CITY HALL

In 1926, the area of Bloomfield Hills had outgrown its first
two names, “Bagley’s Corners” and “Circle City,’ but it was
still part of Bloomfield Township and consisted almost
entirely of large estates.

In that year, its 1,100 citizens met in September and
organized a charter commission, electing home rule over
general law in order to manage their own destiny. Voters
in 1927 approved the incorporation of the Hills as a village,
elected Luther Allen president and drew up a board of
commissioners.

They surrounded the village with stiff ordinances regulating
zoning, and soon realized they could qualify as a city. In
order to keep from being incorporated into the then-
forming City of Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills electors
voted for cityhood in 1932, a year before Birmingham.

In a settlement with the Township, they kept the hall which
had been built in 1926 as a general maintenance and
highway department unit, with one small office for
Township affairs. The Township moved out and the city
took over.

This Bicentennial year the building is being renovated
completely, following minor alterations over the years.
The city commissioners hope to dedicate it before the end
of 1976. John W. Fauver is the present mayor, Robert D.
Gargaro, mayor pro tem, and commissioners are Joseph
Daiek, Stephen J. Carey and William R. Shaw. Robert J.
Stadler is the city manager.

138

 

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CONTEMPORARY HOUSES IN THE HILLS

By the very nature of the manner in which Bloomfield
Hills made its transition from a pioneer settlement through
a century of farming and into an exclusive residential

area, it had to evolve into an unique community.

Bloomfield’s first large houses after farmhouses were
estate mansions, and were generally done in Georgian
Colonial or “English Manor” style. The English “Arts and
Crafts” movement added its influence during the Twenties,
and a few houses were designed in a style unique to the
Bloomfield area. These “Country Style” houses were not
preconceived designs but grew out of specific need and

the topography of the land.

It was this concern for the land which later led to the
development of truly modern houses. The house Frank
Lloyd Wright designed for Gregor P. Affleck, pictured on
this page, for instance, is cantilevered in form to
accomodate the hilly ground and running stream over
which it is built.

Although it was begun in 1941, the Affleck house was

not the first “modern” house in the Hills. In 1940

J. Robert F. Swanson designed the Charleton Eden House
on Cranbrook Court pictured on the upper half of the
opposite page. The contractor who was about to start work
on the Affleck house came over to see this house and
acquaint himself with the new modern feeling.

In 1953 the work of another world-renowned architect

was added to the Hills’ collection. Edward Durrell Stone
that year designed a house for Carney D. Matheson
overlooking little Vhay Lake. The house, as is evident

from the picture opposite, appears long and low and is
protected from the road by the brick grillwork which is
Stone’s trademark. The entrance is on the second level and
an open staircase descends to the large living room with
its fountain and tropical vegetation, overlooking the lake.

140

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE EDSEL FORD HOUSE ON WING LAKE ROAD

On a promontory overlooking Wing Lake stands an unique
house in Bloomfield. It’s a French manor house on the
order of the Petit Trainon at Versailles, with long French
windows, balustrades and a low roofline.

It was built by Frank Book in the Twenties and in 1930
Edsel Ford bought the house and land. He owned it only a
few years and apparantly never lived there, but the name
“The Edsel Ford House” sticks, possibly because of the
painted mural which circles the entire interior perimeter of
the salon. It depicts the first transcontinental tour in a
Model T.

The house has sixteen rooms, with floors of hand-pegged
planks. Just above the mural in the high-ceilinged main
salon are hand-carved, hand-rubbed beams, with the same
motif repeated in the oblong dining room with its hand-
painted ceiling done in soft, muted colors. A gold

fountain greets the visitor in the entry which is tiled in
Italian terrazzo.

It’s one of many interesting houses, both in terms of
history and architecture, on Wing Lake Road.

142

 

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“OAK OPENINGS” AND A NATURAL BEAUTY ROAD

In several places in our history we read that the pioneers
were first attracted to our area because they had heard of
the “Oak Openings” of Bloomfield.

Trees were both a scourge and a boon to the early settlers.
If they had to be quickly felled to allow in enough sun

for the crops essential to life, they also provided the

only building material.

In our history, the apple tree’s fruit became the basis of
our economy for almost a century. Loading apples for the
Eastern market and selling them in the rapidly conducted
auction there was the most exciting event of each fall.

This year residents of Wing Lake Road worked together
to have the county designate their road as a “natural
beauty road: They researched its history, catalouged every
type of flora and fauna and after several public hearings
succeeded in having the road so designated in January.
The road will be left as much as possible in its present
state.

Among the trees catalogued on Wing Lake Road were a
184’ high black locust and a 129’ high scycamore as well
as huge oaks and many black walnut trees.

Other examples of trees in the Township are a 58’ high
apple tree, 120 inches in girth on Gilbert Lake, and a 96’
red ash, 156” in girth just west of Franklin. A 104’ black
cherry with a girth of 173” stands on Kensington Road and
on the same road a 92’ high weeping willow has a girth of
209” Other Bloomfield trees are white ash, catalpa, sweet
cherry, dogwood, red mulberry and many species of
swamp, red and white oak.

144

 

Trees on Wing Lake Road

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THE OLD BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP HALL
AND THE NEW ONE

The original seat of Township government was in the
houses of its first settlers, notably those of John

Hamilton, James McHenry, Wilkes Durkee, Scriba
Blakeslee and Jacob Baker. Next the annual meetings were
held at the Bagley Tavern at Bagley’s Corners.

The original official township hall was located in
Birmingham and the second at Long Lake just east of
Woodward, and is pictured on page 146 as it’s now the city
hall of Bloomfield Hills. When the two cities of Birmingham
and Bloomfield Hills incorporated out of Bloomfield
Township in 1932 and 1933 respectively, the City of
Bloomfield Hills received the previous township hall,

which was within its boundaries, and the city of
Birmingham got the township park, Springdale.

The Township’s share was a gravel pit and $23,000. They
added enough to it to make $30,000 and built a new
township hall in 1938. The population then was about
2,000. By 1961, a population of 22,103 demanded an
addition to the city hall and last year, with 48,000 residents
and 200 employees, a further addition was added with
expanded public safety and fire department facilities.
Robert Snell is police chief, and Volly Yanuszeski fire
chief.

Through it all, the little cupola which
graced the first brick building has
been kept.

It and the apple blossom are the
symbols of Bloomfield.

146

                    

 

 

Lemuel Castle 1827-1829
John W. Hunter 1830
Lemuel Castle 1831-1835
John W. Hunter 1836
John Davis 1837-1838
Isaac L. Smith 1839
John Davis 1840
Sullivan R. Kelsey 1841
Rial Irish 1842

Ransom R. Belding 1843
James G. Hunter 1844-1845
Peter Dox 1846-1849
James G. Hunter 1850
Harvey Lee 1851

Peter Dox 1852-1853
James Fitzpatrick 1854

Supervisor

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP SUPERVISORS

 

 

 

Perry A. Vaughan

 

 

HOMER CASE —

Rowland E. Trowbridge 1855
James G. Hunter 1856
George Blakslee 1857-1858
Luther Stanley 1859-1862
Robert F. Opdyke 1863-1864

Township Officers—1976

Clerk
DELORIS V. LITTLE

William Satterlee 1865-1868
Charles E. Contine 1869
Alanson Partridge 1870-1875
Luther Stanley 1876-1880
Edward Fosdick 1881-1886
Julius F. Rundel 1887
William Satterlee 1888-1895
Julius F. Rundel 1896-1898
Andrew H. Porter 1899-1907
H. J. Broughton 1908-1917
Luther D. Allen 1923-1924
Robert Y. Moore 1929

R. J. Coryell 1930

Perry A. Vaughan 1931-1951
David E. Anderson 1952-1957
Arno L; Hulet 1958-1963

Treasurer

FRED KORZON
147

 

THE STAUNCHLY RELIGIOUS COMMUNITY
OF “PIETY HILL”

The name “Piety Hill) bestowed on Birmingham in its
infancy, smacks of derision. Perhaps the fact that there
were three competing taverns and three competing
religions in the early days had something to do with it.

Each of our pioneer families brought with them seeds
from farm and garden, and seeds of their deep religious
beliefs.

The history of organized worship here started with the
preaching of an itinerant Methodist minister in Willits’
tavern in 1821. Dr. Ezra Parke, also a Methodist, began
conducting services in his house as early as 1823, with
his wife, who had a beautiful singing voice, assisting.
The Methodists were the first to have a charter, in 1827,
and the first to erect a church building in 1839.

The Presbyterians also got an early start. Deacon Elijah
Fish, across the Saginaw Trail from Dr. Parke, held a
three-day meeting in his barn in July of 1834 and “The
Presbyterian Society of Bloomfield” was organized
December 17, 1835, at the Davis Hotel in Birmingham.
Meetings were often held there although the Presbyterians
later rented the facilities of the Methodist church for

$100 a year.

On the other side of the Township Deacon Elijah Bull

held a meeting of Presbyterians in his barn on June 4th,
1831. His church was chartered that year and flourished in
the Wing Lake area until his death August 9, 1871.

“The Regular Baptist Church of Bloomfield” was recognized
by act of ecceliastical council May 25, 1833. Over the

next century the church went through many changes

and incorporations, and today is a strong denomination

in Bloomfield.

148

Cross of Christ Lutheran Church

Bloomfield Hills Baptist Church

 

 

MORMON CONVERSIONS IN 1834 AND
THE STRONG CHURCHES OF 1976

Joseph Smith, leader of the Mormons, came to Bloomfield
several times. A cousin of his was married to Almon
Mack, of Pontiac, and he visited her often and converted
the family to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter

Day Saints. The fire of his preachings spread quickly
through Bloomfield and many families embraced the new
faith, enduring Baptism by complete immersion in ice cold

lakes where a hole made in the ice was the Baptismal font.

While many families abandoned their land and followed
Joseph Smith to Nauvoo, Illinois, where he met his death
at the hands of an enraged mob, others who stayed in
Bloomfield gradually drifted back to their original faiths.

Today, church involvement is very strong in Bloomfield.
Twelve denominations have 19 churches here, many with
several church buildings in different locations. As the
population grew, so did the number of churches, often
designed by an outstanding architect. Traditional
architecture and ultra-modern design are both visible.

The major denominations in the area today are Baptists,
Episcopalians, Jews, Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians
and Roman Catholics.

150

Temple Beth El

St. Regis Catholic Church

 

 

 

 

BLOOMFIELD TOWNSHIP’S OWN LIBRARY IS BEGUN
IN 1963

In the middle period of its great expansion, the Township's
need for a library of its own became clear. Residents

had been using the Baldwin Library in Birmingham, but

it was obvious that the rapid rate of growth was going to
continue in the Township and the building of more and
more schools alone signaled that a change was necessary.

When Deloris Little was first elected clerk, she campaigned
to have the question of a millage to support a library
placed on the ballot. The voters said yes to a one-mill
operating tax in 1963, and while this money went mainly
to reimburse Baldwin for Township residents’ use of their
facility, it also stretched far enough to rent temporary
quarters in the lower level of a building at Long Lake

and Telegraph Roads, until a request could be made for its
own building. |

In 1966 voters approved a one-half mill levy to build the
new library building at Lone Pine and Telegraph Roads.
Today the library has a collection of over 100,000 books
and many groups have contributed to its facilities. Garden
clubs have provided trees for the grounds, and the Friends
of the Library have been very active in furnishing the
reading room, and putting on programs.

Rose Vainstein was the first librarian. In 1968 H. G.
Johnston became library director at the Township, and
the following year Baldwin was added to his responsi-
bilities so that today he’s director of both libraries.

A Japanese garden was donated by one garden club in
1970, and this Bicentennial year, as a Bicentennial
Horizons project, 21 garden clubs of the area
cooperated to raise enough money to build an outdoor
reading garden.

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CONTEMPORARY SCHOOLS

Most families moving into Bloomfield in the Sixties and
Seventies chose this area because of its good school
systems. Under great pressure from a rapidly rising
population of young students, school administrators and
parents worked to raise tax revenues to build new schools.
In the Sixties, building went on constantly. Then the area
began to approach saturation. The school population
peaked, the trend reversed and in recent years many
schools have been closed to save operating expenses.

Today, the Bloomfield Hills School District and the
Birmingham District serve the Township and the Hills.
There are ten public elementary schools in the Township,
plus the Wing Lake Development Center for special
children, and three junior high schools. Andover and
Lahser are the two public high schools. The Hills’ District
also has a nature center and a farm in the Township

for students’ use. |

In the private sector there are several Roman Catholic
grade schools and three high schools. Marian for girls
and Brother Rice for boys are both on Lahser Road, while
the Convent of the Sacred Heart with 12 grades for girls
and Kensington School for grade-school age boys is on
Kensington Road. Detroit Country Day and Bloomfield
Hills Country Day both have school buildings in the
Township. The Montessori School and Echo Park are
private kindergartens.

In the Hills, in addition to the Cranbrook, Kingswood and
Brookside Schools in the Cranbrook complex, there is
Roeper School which goes through grade 12.

Oakland Community College has its headquarters in the
Hills, but none of its six campuses. The area is well served
both educationally and culturally by the presence of
Oakland University in nearby Rochester.

154

Upper left: Hickory Grove Elementary School
Upper right: Lahser High School

Lower left: George P. Way Elementary School
Lower right: Bloomfield Hills Junior High School

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE FIRST OAKLAND COUNTRY PROBATE COURT
MET IN BLOOMFIELD

When in 1880 Mrs. Nancy G. Davis read a paper before the
Oakland County Pioneer Society, she mentioned the house
of Colonel David Stanard as the oldest she could

remember which was still standing.

Colonel Stanard had purchased his 200 acres on July 3,
1820, in section 4 which is the area where the Miracle Mile
Shopping Center is now located. Mrs. Davis’ father, Judge
Amasa Bagley, had bought his land now on Woodward
Avenue between Lone Pine and Long Lake roads.

Colonel Stanard’s house, described as the earliest, must
have been built soon after the Pontiac Sawmill was
operable. In any case, the first county court was held in
Pontiac on July 17, 1820, and so many of the names of
Bloomfield’s pioneers dot the register we can't dispute the
influence of this Township on early county affairs. Amasa
Bagley and Daniel Bronson were appointed associate
judges with Pontiac resident William Thompson who was
chief justice and later judge of probate. William Morris was
named sheriff and Sidney Dole clerk. On the grand jury sat
Elijah Willits, Ziba Swan, John Hamilton, Elisha Hunter,
Erza Baldwin, Asa Castle, Elijah S. Fish and Harry O.
Bronson. Ziba Swan and Jonathan Perrin were named
county commissioners as well.

The first probate court met at Colonel Stanard’s house on
June 15, 1822, and the first order of business was letters
of administration upon the estate of Eliphalet Harding.

Today the 48th District Court which serves seven districts
in Oakland County, has its base in the Township on
Telegraph Road just south of Square Lake Road. Present
judges are Gus Cifelli, Alice Gilbert and Carl Ingraham.

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A TRIBUTE IN MEMORIAM

 

 

 

 

 

Arno L. Hulet was the beloved supervisor, treasurer
and historian of Bloomfield Township for as long as anyone can remember.
He served the Township for 42 years as a member of the board of trustees, and in his
78 years as a resident of Oakland County, most of them spent in the Township,
he was schoolteacher to thousands of Bloomfield’s children,
starting his teaching duties in the one-room Tuscarora school, and going
on to be director of attendance in Pontiac schools and teaching
math at Dondero High School.
Mr. Hulet was appointed to the Township board in 1933 and served in many capacities
right up to his death which occured at age 81.
If he had been alive, he would have helped write this history, as he was known
throughout the county as the local treasury of historic information.
He is very much missed, but he has left behind a legacy of the statesmanlike qualities
which have helped bring Bloomfield from its infancy
to its present stature and maturity.

158

 

 

 

Selected Bibliography

Abstracts of title contributed by residents of Bloomfield Township and
Bloomfield Hills

Annals of Cranbrook, George Booth, 1904
Atlas of Oakland County, Michigan, 1872
Bloomfield Township Records and Archives
Township Board Minutes, 1827 to the present
“The Book of Estrays” 1830-1899
“The Book of Mortgages” 1847-1864
Tax records—1842 to the present
Population records, 1820 to the present
Minutes, the Detroit Automobile Club
The Detroit Gazette, Detroit, Michigan

Durant, Samuel, “History of Oakland County, Michigan, 1817-1877”
Philadelphia, 1877

The Eccentric, Birmingham, Michigan
Oakland County, Michigan
Tract Records
Documents—Record Retention Room
Oakland County Pioneer Society—Papers
Portrait Biographical Album, Oakland County, Michigan, Chapman Bros., 1891

Seeley, Thaddeus D., “Oakland County History; 2 volumes, 1912, Lewis Publishing
Company, Chicago and New York

Tocqueville, Alexis de, “Memoirs” s
U. S. National Archives—Fourth Census of the United States (1820),
Fifth Census (1830)
Wing, Austin E., clippings, Burton Historical Collection, Detroit Public Library

Woodford, Frank and Arthur M., “All Our Yesterdays, Wayne State University
Press, 1969

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Cover Design by John W. Cooper
Cover photograph by Balthazar Korab

Bloomfield Hills pages researched by Ronald S. Swanson and by James Beresford,
Chairman of The Historical Committee of the City of Bloomfield Hills.

General Research assistants:
Dr. Charles L. Bowers
Lois Merseles
Joseph E. Smith III

Photographs by Balthazar Korab pages 1.9.51, 13, 15, 17, 19, 24. 25, 27.20:
31, 37, 43, 44-45, 47, 51, 53, 59, 68-69, 71, 77, 82, 86, 89, 99, 103, 113, 117, £25,
127, 129, 131, 133, 135, 137, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 145, 149, 151, 153, #57, 160.

Other photographs:
David Belanger 85, 119
Douglas Campbell 67, 79
Homer Case 74

Don Hollums 39, 49, 57
Illustrations:
Max Aletkruse 97 107
Ralph Brackett 33, 13, 75, 61,94, 93. 16]
Fred Cole 98
Jim Crabb 4°55:65
Howard Etter 125
Larry McManus 63; 105, 111
Cecily Smith 3
Robert L. Sutton 23

Permission to photograph diaramas courtesy of

Cranbrook Institute of Science 44-45, 51, 53, 59, 68-69

Text set in Alphatype—11 point Koronna, by Alpha 21, Detroit

Color Separations and Printing: Alden Press, Inc. and American Printers and
Lithographers, Inc. Divisions of John Blair & Company, Chicago

The Bloomfield Township Board wishes to congratulate
and thank Kay Smith, Author and Editor of our first
official Bloomfield Township history book. Her
dedication and efforts have been exemplary during
these months of research and writing.

159