Vanished Rochester: Neely Roller Mill

The Neely mill on Paint Creek in 1907

The Neely Roller Mill stood on the banks of Paint Creek at the north end of Main Street, near the site of today's Rochester Athletic Club.  According to a Detroit Free Press account, the mill was built in the fall of 1868. Doctors Jesse and Jeremiah Wilson were the proprietors for the first eight years, during which the enterprise was known as the Eureka Mills.  The Wilsons then sold the mill, and it was acquired in 1896 by Thomas Edward Neely, who improved the machinery and produced the Vigilant brand of flour there.

Trouble erupted after the Detroit Sugar Company built a large sugar beet processing plant upstream on Paint Creek in 1899. In 1903, Neely sued Detroit Sugar for damages, claiming that the beet pulp discharged by the plant impeded the supply of water to his mill. The Free Press reported on May 17, 1903:

Neeley asks $15,000 alleging that the sugar company has thrown lime, dirt, sand, refuse, beets and beet tops into Paint Creek until his mill pond is diminished in size fully one-half and his race is filled from three to five feet deep.  Neeley sets up that his loss has been from $3,000 to $5,000 per year since the sugar factory was erected and says the value of the flour mill is $10,000.

Neely was awarded slightly more than $2,000 in damages, and Detroit Sugar soon thereafter closed its Rochester facility due to a perfect storm of economic woes.  A few years later, in 1908, there was more litigation revolving around water rights on Paint Creek. This time, Neely sued Western Knitting Mills, claiming that when WKM built its new dam, the water level in Neely's tail race had been raised, destroying his water power.  Neely was awarded $2,800 by the jury, but WKM appealed. In 1909, the appeals court required WKM to accept a lower award of $1,800 or opt for a new trial, but by that time Neely had already sold the property and moved to Armada in northern Macomb County. The mill building and equipment was sold to Lapeer men, who dismantled the mill in late 1908. Neely continued in the milling business in Armada and died there in 1931.

In 1997, when construction crews were working on the pedestrian walk along Paint Creek, they discovered remnants of the Neely mill, including some of the wood from the foundation of the water wheel.

This Month in Rochester History

This month in 1962, the citizens of Rochester were marking the retirement of Fire Chief George J. Ross, Sr. Chief Ross had come to the close of a 39-year career with the department; the last 28 of those years were served as chief.  When Ross joined the RFD in 1923, it was an all-volunteer force, but in 1951, the Village Council made the fire chief a full-time employee of the village.  Upon Chief Ross's retirement, assistant chief Lyle O. Buchanan was named fire chief, and served in that capacity for the next 20 years.  Chief Ross told the Rochester Clarion that he planned to spend his retirement relaxing around the house, but didn't rule out the possibility that when he heard the siren blowing, he might just go out to "take a look" at the fire.

The Day the World Came to Rochester

Early 20th century view of a track gang at work on the MCRR

Yesterday, August 24, was the 140th anniversary of the day that the world came to Rochester. For it was on that very date in the year 1872 that the first locomotive rolled into town on the newly laid tracks of the Detroit and Bay City Railway.

Before the D. & B.C. (later Michigan Central - or M.C.R.R.) came to town, the village of Rochester was isolated from the outside world. No telephone or telegraph lines existed to link the town to other communities. There was no local newspaper. The mail came by stage or horse and rider. Travel to any outside destination was accomplished on foot or by horse-drawn vehicle over plank roads or dirt wagon traces and was usually a multi-day excursion.  The arrival of the first railroad to serve the village and surrounding township was, therefore, a game-changer. Citizens of Rochester and Avon could now travel easily to major transportation hubs, ship farm products to market, and receive the world's news in a timely fashion.  They were no longer residents of an isolated outpost.

The excitement of the townspeople as the locomotive approached was palpable. We know this because we are fortunate to have preserved in our history an eyewitness account of the event.  The story was related by Olive Hamlin Burbank, a pioneer resident of Avon Township, whose recollections were recorded for us by Fidelia Wooley Gillette, a well-known Universalist minister and prolific writer.  From Fidelia Gillette's pen, we have this account of the watershed day as told by Olive Burbank just days before her death:

On the 24th of August, 1872, there sounded through Olive Burbank's house a strange unknown cry, - the voice of one of her children calling, "Mother, Father, the locomotive will soon be here," and then the aged couple hurried out with their children, and sitting side by side in the pleasant yard, kept watch amid the ringing of bells and the roar of cannon, and the shouts of the rejoicing villagers; for the first train of cars on the Detroit & Bay City railroad, down the hill and beyond the creek, slowly, slowly up the glen, and on the border of what was once to have been  "the great raging canal," slowly along the valley and between the hills came the new engine, drawing after it the construction train; slowly, slowly over the new track, and the yet unballasted road, where once this aged pair had seen only the unbroken forest, with its Indian trail. And now, at the last Olive Burbank knew that the home of her adoption, the little wild-wood village, dear to her heart for fifty years, was linked to the great, surging outside world.

Imagine the wonder of the aged Olive Burbank, who had come to the Rochester area with the earliest settlers and carved a home out of the wilderness, to see that locomotive engine coming through town!

Rochester On The Road: Bockscar

(National Museum of the Air Force, Dayton OH)

This installment of Rochester on the Road takes us to the National Museum of the Air Force at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.  One of the historic aircraft on display there is this B-29 Superfortress, nicknamed Bockscar. The airplane is well known as the one used in the atomic bomb strike on Nagasaki, Japan in August 1945, and it has a connection to Rochester, Michigan through one of its crew members.

In August of 1945, a Rochester man named Roderick F. Arnold was serving in the U.S. Army Air Forces as a B-29 flight engineer, and was stationed on the Pacific island of Tinian where preparations were underway for the atomic strikes against Japan. Rod Arnold was assigned as a crew member aboard this aircraft, which had been named Bockscar for its pilot, Capt. Fred Bock. When the Hiroshima raid failed to force the immediate surrender of Japan and a second raid was ordered a few days later, it was determined that the Great Artiste, the airplane normally assigned to the second strike commander, Maj. Charles Sweeney, could not be made ready to carry a weapon in time for the second mission because the bomber was still fitted out with the scientific monitoring instruments it had carried on the Hiroshima mission.  The problem was solved by switching aircraft: Maj. Sweeney and his crew would fly Bockscar as the bomber and Capt. Bock and his crew would fly the Great Artiste with the monitoring instrumentation.  That decision placed Rod Arnold on the Great Artiste, flying a chase mission behind Bockscar as the other airplane dropped the Nagasaki bomb.

Mercifully, the Nagasaki mission was the last atomic bomb strike by Allied forces; only a handful of men were eyewitnesses to this terrifying moment in history, and Rochester's Rod Arnold was one of them.

Bygone Business: Schoolcraft Drug Store

Photo courtesy of Swords Family Archive

A pharmacy business has been located in the Opera House block on the southeast corner of Fourth and Main streets continuously since the building was opened in 1890. One of those pharmacies was the Schoolcraft Drug Store, operated by Zeno Schoolcraft from 1928 to 1948.  The photo shown here was taken in 1947, just a year before Schoolcraft sold the business to T. Kenneth Fetters.

The Schoolcraft Drug Store featured a soda fountain, as was common at the time.  A story in the Rochester Clarion from the issue of June 1, 1928 tells us that Schoolcraft's fountain offered a superior malted milk concoction that was far better than what could be had elsewhere; the newspaper reported that visitors from across the region were stopping in at the Rochester store in hopes of discovering the secret recipe of Zeno Schoolcraft's malted milk beverage.

In addition to developing a popular malted milk recipe, Zeno Schoolcraft invented two devices that were granted United States patents. Both item were designed to be of interest to merchants: one was a shelf label holder, and the other was a display box for confectionary products.

Rochester On The Road: Deats Gravesite

Deats monument in Church Hill Cemetery, PA

This new occasional series, Rochester On The Road, will look at connections to the history of the Rochester area that may be found in other cities and states across the country.  Today's inaugural post in the series is a visit to the gravesite of Harriet "Hattie" Sprague and her husband, Dr. William Deats.

William and Hattie Deats are buried in Church Hill Cemetery in Martin's Creek, Northampton County, Pennsylvania.  Dr. Deats was born in Northampton County in 1847 and earned degrees from nearby Lafayette College and Jefferson Medical College before coming to Rochester in 1878 to establish a medical practice. While in Rochester, he married Harriet "Hattie" Sprague, the daughter of Rollin Sprague, who built the Home Bakery building.  Dr. Deats then built the beautiful Eastlake Victorian house at 302 W. University as the couple's marital home.  Only a few years later, Dr. Deats decided to move back to his native Pennsylvania, where he practiced medicine for the remainder of his life.  Hattie Deats died of typhoid fever in 1889, not long after the Deats family returned to Northampton County.  Dr. Deats himself died of kidney disease in 1891, leaving the couple's only daughter, Grace, an orphan.  Grace Deats then returned to Michigan to live with family members.

Church Hill Cemetery in Northampton County has other associations to Rochester history as well.  A number of families from the Northampton area migrated to Rochester in the mid-19th century, so other Rochester surnames are represented in the cemetery, including the Butz/Butts, Fangboner and Ross families.

This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, a party in the Brooklands area of Avon Township made the pages of the local newspaper. Esther and Abel Jablway, fondly known to their customers as "Mom and Pop," invited all of their customers to a party at their neighborhood grocery store at 1744 East Auburn in the Brooklands subdivision. Grateful for the warm reception they had received when they had relocated from Detroit four years earlier, the couple wanted to do something to thank their customers, so they gave away 2,500 hot dogs and almost 3,000 bottles of pop to all of the neighborhood kids and their families and friends. So many people came out to celebrate with the Jablways that the firefighters from the Brooklands fire station across the street helped with the hot dogs and the Oakland County Sheriff's Department was needed to direct traffic in the area.

The Jablway neighborhood store was an institution in Brooklands for a generation.  Abel Jablway died in 1971 and his wife, Esther, died a decade later in 1981.

Subdivision Stories: Campbell Addition

The Campbell Addition to the village of Rochester was platted in the spring of 1900 on land formerly owned by Alexander F. Campbell, lying south of First Street and north of the Clinton River. His apparent widow, Esther J. Atkinson Campbell, who had married William J. Fraser in 1897, divided the seven-acre parcel into lots and placed them on the market through the local real estate office of E. R. Frank.  The streets in the Campbell addition all bear family names connected to Esther J. Campbell-Fraser; they are Campbell, after her first husband; Fraser, after her second husband; and Hiel, after her son born during her first marriage, whose name was Hiel R. Campbell.

Bygone Business: Selma's Smart Shoppe

Fifty years ago, the "go-to" place for exclusive ladies' fashions was Selma's Smart Shoppe, located in the Morse  Block at 323 S. Main. Selma's opened in the fall of 1956, after Earl and Selma Atkinson, formerly of Pontiac, purchased Shueller's store from Robert Shueller, the son of store founder and long-time Rochester merchant Louis S. Shueller.  Earl Atkinson was an employee of the Borden Dairy, and took a leave of absence from his job to help his wife launch the new business that would bear her name.  Selma's was a retail mainstay in Rochester for almost three decades; it closed in the early 1970s, and the Mole Hole gift shop succeeded Selma's at the 323 S. Main location in 1973.

Bygone Business: Yates Machine Shop

A business that anchored the foot of Main Street, Rochester for more than three decades was the Yates Machine Shop. The advertisement shown here ran in the Rochester Era on June 4, 1920 announcing that A. W. Yates had purchased the former Jackson Foundry on South Main Street and planned to expand the business. The Jackson Foundry had been operated by John F. and Samuel B. Jackson and originated with the brothers' father, W.H. Jackson, who had come to Rochester in 1877 and purchased the old Jennings Foundry. The Jennings Foundry, in turn, had been one of Rochester's pioneer industries.

The original foundry building had burned in 1884 while being operated by the Jacksons, and had been immediately rebuilt. It was substantially rebuilt yet again by A. W. Yates in the 1920s and was expanded more than once over the decades of Yates ownership.  Yates Machine Shop was a defense contractor during World War II and won the coveted Army-Navy E Award for excellence in production of war equipment.  The business closed in the late 1950s.

After the machine shop closed, several small industrial concerns occupied the former Yates building at 115 S. Main.  In 1970, the building was remodeled and redeveloped as the Gateway Center, and now houses a mixture of retailers, restaurants and professional offices.

Appreciating Rochester and Rochester Hills

From time to time it is a good idea to stop, take a breath, and appreciate the beauty of our surroundings.  Those of us who live in the greater Rochester area are richly blessed; our natural environment is lush and welcoming.  I recently ran across a poem published in the Rochester Clarion on February 23, 1934, in which a former Rochester resident named David Reid took the time to admire what he saw around him.  I'll let the poem speak for itself:

ROCHESTER HILLS

by David Reid

I've seen the Blue Ridge Mountains

And the Rockies in the west

But when compared for beauty

The Rochester Hills are best.

We seldom if ever realize

And we sometimes have to roam

Before we can fully appreciate

The beauties we have at home.

I've stood on the bridge in summer

Where many hills are seen

And admired the beautiful scenery

When most everything was green.

I've seen their hills in winter

All covered with ice and snow

I stood in admiration

Till my face was all aglow.

I've watched the sun shining

Many times during the day

On these hills so brightly

That it drove all cares away.

I've seen the sun go down
Behind these hills at night

With colors so impressive

It sure was a beautiful sight.

To Rochester, Nature has been good

And as kind as it could be

It made these hills with beauty

So all that would, could see.

I don't have any further information about the poet, but he did publish several other pieces in the Rochester Clarion around the same time period.  Whoever he was, he clearly appreciated where he lived; 78 years later, his words still ring true.

This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, Rochester area residents were talking about traffic problems. Sound familiar? In July 1962, the issue at hand was congestion in the area of the Tienken and Rochester Road intersection, caused during the afternoon shift change at National Twist Drill.  At the time, Twist Drill was the community's major employer, and the outflow of employee vehicles from its parking lots between 3:30 and 4:00 in the afternoon each weekday caused tremendous traffic backups in the area.

In response to the problem, local official petitioned the state highway department to install a traffic signal at the intersection of Tienken and Rochester, but the state's traffic study revealed that the intersection was only handling 11,855 vehicles in a 24-hour period, which was not enough traffic to qualify for a traffic light. The state suggested that Twist Drill rearrange its parking lots so that employees living north of town parked in the north lot, those living east parked in the east lot, and so forth. Twist Drill responded that 90 percent of its employees lived south of the plant, so such a scheme would have little, if any, effect in remediating the problem.  Instead, the company deployed plant protection personnel equipped with pylons to direct traffic around the plant during the afternoon shift change.

Main Street Stories: Simon Grube Cigar Factory

331 S. Main in 2008 (Photo by Eric Bothwell)

A recently published encyclopedia of Michigan history and culture entitled The Michigan Companion (Detroit: OmniGraphics, 2011). tells us that Detroit was once known for cigar manufacturing. In that narrative we find this information:

During the last half of the 19th century, Detroit became a center for the tobacco industry in the United States and by the 1890s was one of the largest centers of cigar manufacturing in as well. ... At its height [in the late nineteenth century], the cigar industry employed about 12,000 workers who produced 205 million cigars a year.

Not far from Detroit, the village of Rochester had its own cigar factory right here on Main Street. The small, one-story building at 331 S. Main was built by Simon Grube in the fall of 1891 to house his cigar factory and tobacconist business, as noted by the Rochester correspondent to the Utica Sentinel on October 10, 1891, when the paper told its readers: "'Sim' Grube broke ground today for his new brick cigar factory. The new building is to be situated on the west side of Main street, between Harrison's shoe shop and the Barger lot,  Mr. Grube having purchased the site from Ben Harrison."

331 S. Main in 1961 (Photo by the late Walter Dernier)

Although Grube operated his tobacco business in the building until 1920, it is his successor who is better known  and associated with that location.  Grube, who was born in Northampton County, Pennsylvania in 1845 and emigrated to Rochester along with a large number of other families from his native county, sold the business to Frank Butts, who continued in the cigar and tobacco business there for another two decades.  Butts was also a native of Northampton County, Pennsylvania.

After Frank Butts retired from business, the building which had served as a cigar factory and tobacco shop for the first half-century of its existence became the home of Avon Cleaners. In the 1960s and 1970s it was the home of Cam and Phyllis Soule's appliance store, and in recent years has housed a number of specialty shops including the Cose di Lusso wine shoppe and the Simply the Best $10 Boutique.

The Simon Grube cigar factory celebrates its 121st birthday this fall.

At Home in Rochester: Hiram L. Lintz/A.R. Dillman Residence

The large home now serving as an apartment house on the southeast corner of Second and Walnut streets has a historical association with several well-known names from Rochester history.  The house was built as a private home by Hiram L. Lintz in 1901, and the details of its construction were noted by the Rochester Era during the summer of that year. Lintz was a well-known farmer in Shelby Township before he came to Rochester in 1892 to join P. M. Woodworth in a furniture and undertaking business. The firm of Woodworth & Lintz was located in the store at 311 S. Main, where Haig's Jewelry is today.  P. M. Woodworth died in 1896, and Hiram Lintz continued the business in partnership with Woodworth's widow until 1899, when the two sold the business to Thomas C. Severance.

As an aside, it is interesting to note that the funeral portion of this business has survived to this day. It was originally established in 1882 by W. Harvey Greene, who sold it to P. M. Woodworth in 1886. Woodworth, in turn, took Hiram L. Lintz as a partner, and Woodworth & Lintz was sold to Thomas C. Severance in 1899.  Edward R. Metcalf bought the business from Severance in 1903 and sold it around 1911, to Vernor Spaulding.  Spaulding moved it to a location off Main Street and sold it to Alanson  C. Hobart. In 1950, Hobart sold it to Potere & Winkel, and not long after that William R. Potere became the sole proprietor.  In 1986, Potere sold to John Modetz, and today we know the business that was started by W. Harvey Greene in 1882 as Potere-Modetz Funeral Home.

Returning to the subject of the Lintz home on Walnut Street, it was sold to Rochester lumber dealer Arthur R. Dillman (of Dillman and Upton), who occupied it as his family home until about 1927, at which time the Dillmans built a new home on North Main. Silas B. Wattles bought the house from the Dillmans at that time and sold it to Elizabeth Butts Casey Case in 1939. In 1940, Case had the house partitioned into four apartments and operated it as an income property for a number of years, as she did with several other large houses in Rochester.

The Lintz house celebrates its 111th birthday this summer.

Main Street Stories: Amariah Trowbridge/Julian S. Peters House

Trowbridge/Peters house ca. 1904 (before addition)

Earlier in Rochester's history, their were numerous dwellings interspersed among the commercial buildings in Main Street's business district.  In 2012, only one of those houses remains standing, and that is the Amariah Trowbridge/Julian S. Peters house at 200 S. Main, occupied today by the Chomp Deli & Grille.

The exact date that Amariah Trowbridge built his house at the south end of Main Street is not known, and deeds for the property are somewhat murky, but we do know that the first year that Trowbridge appears on the tax rolls as owner of this property is 1864. Trowbridge was born in Steuben County, New York in 1830, and came to Oakland County with his parents. When the Civil War erupted, he enlisted in Company G, 22nd Michigan Infantry, and was later transferred to Company G, 29th Michigan Infantry.  He lived in Rochester from his return from the Civil War until his death in 1886, and was an employee of the Barnes Brothers Paper Mill during that entire time.

After Trowbridge died, one of his comrades in arms purchased a portion of the property - not including the house -  from his estate. Julian S. Peters,  who had served with Trowbridge in Company G, 22nd Michigan Infantry and later with Company G, 29th Michigan Infantry, bought the north half of the lot on which the house stood and conducted a carriage painting business there. The south half of the lot, on which the house stood (corner of Second Street) was originally sold to other parties, but in 1904, Julian Peters bought that as well.
On November 18, 1904, the Rochester Era carried this item about the house:

J.S. Peters is overhauling the old Trowbridge house. He will raise the roof three feet, drop the building and place a good cellar under it, making a neat tenement house of it.

Later, Peters also built a one-and-a-half story addition to the north side of the house.

Julian Peters served as Avon Township Clerk in 1874-75 and also served 21 years as Justice of the Peace in Rochester. Peters was proud that during his years as Justice of the Peace, not one of the thousands of cases he tried was ever reversed on appeal. After retiring from public service, he conducted a real estate and insurance business. He owned the property at 200 S. Main St. until his death in 1931, when it was sold by his heirs.

In 1945, Rochester automobile dealer C. Lawrence Jerome bought the property and converted the house to office space for the Jerome Insurance Agency. That business was known as the Jerome-Hill Insurance agency in the 1950s, and later as the Hudson G. Hill Agency until the late 1970s. The house has also been occupied, at various times, by Teague Finance, GAC Finance, H&R Block, and Rochester Accounting and Tax Service. The Chomp Deli & Grille opened there in May 2010, following the Beyond Juice restaurant at the location.

The Trowbridge/Peters house is significant as the only remaining example of a mid-19th century dwelling remaining in the business district of Main Street. It serves to remind us what the village's Main Street looked like in those days.

Main Street Stories: Leslie L. Whims Building

(Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier Collection, ca.1961)

Do you know where the bowling alley was on Main Street in downtown Rochester? If you were in town between 1926 and the early 1970s, you may have visited Rochester Lanes at 430-432 S. Main.  The building at 430 S. Main was constructed in 1926 for Rochester businessman Leslie L. Whims, and while the street level of the structure housed an auto garage and showroom, it was the basement that drew the attention of the town as the building neared completion.  The Rochester Clarion told its readers on November 5, 1926:

After this week Rochester can well boast of having one of the finest bowling alleys to be found in the state, the entire basement of the new Whims block, from the main street to alley, a depth of 150 feet, to house four alleys all of the most modern equipment and furnished in keeping with the fine place it now gives promise of being.

(Rod and Susan Wilson Collection, 1960)

Rochester Motor Sales, operated by George Ross, occupied the main floor of Whims building for many years, along with Leslie Whims' insurance office (Whims Insurance, founded in 1917, is still a family business and is now our community's oldest insurance agency). The main action, however, must have been in the basement, because in 1945, Whims added a building next door to the north and doubled the size of his bowling alley from four to eight lanes. War time shortages slowed progress on the building, but the Rochester Era shared the good news of the expanded bowling alley's completion with the town on September 5, 1946:

After bucking a year of shortages of materials and all the other things which go to make a post-war building project a real headache, the new alleys are completed in an excellent manner and the facilities are double the size of the old alleys, there being eight Brunswick Lanes with the maples standing at the other end inviting the hundreds of bowling enthusiasts.

Did you learn to bowl at Rochester Lanes? Did you set pins there?  Tell us in the comments.

Vanished Rochester: The John H. Hawken Residence

John H. Hawken House, 131 E. Fourth St., in 1977

John H. Hawken House, 131 E. Fourth St., in 1897

This large Victorian home stood on the northwest corner of Fourth and East streets, where a municipal parking lot is located today.  It was built in 1895 by John H. Hawken II, as his family residence.  According to the pamphlet Beautiful Rochester, which was published in 1897 and carried an item about Mr. Hawken along with a photograph of his home, Hawken was born in Ontario in 1871. He came to Rochester with his father's family in 1880 and went to work in the woolen mill, rising quickly to the position of assistant superintendent of the Western Knitting Mills after that company moved to Rochester from Detroit.  Beautiful Rochester described John H. Hawken as "one of the rising young men of the village," and that certainly appears to have been an accurate assessment.  Hawken was only 24 years old when he built this house, which he shared with his widowed mother and siblings until 1900, when he married Catherine "Kittie" Cullen. The couple had one child, William Cullen Hawken, who later became a physician in Detroit.  Tragically, John H. Hawken did not live to see his only son; he died of tuberculosis in April 1902 at the age of 31, a few months before the birth of his child.  According to his death certificate, Hawken was superintendent of the Western Knitting Mills at the time of his demise.

Following the death of John Hawken, the house on East Fourth Street was purchased by William O. Brewster;  in the 1930s, Elizabeth Butts Casey (later Case) bought it and converted it to an apartment house. The Hawken house served as an apartment building to the end of its days, which came in late 1977, when it was razed to make way for a municipal parking lot and thus passed into the pages of Vanished Rochester.

This Month in Rochester History

In July 1962, Rochester was observing another fascinating construction project that was underway downtown, and like the Main Street Makeover that we've been watching recently, this one also involved a lot of digging. Ground was broken on June 6, 1962 for a 200-foot tunnel that would connect the National Bank of Detroit building at the corner of Fourth & Main (now Chase Bank) to a brand-new drive-in bank facility that was going up on the east side of Walnut near Fourth.   A tube seven feet in diameter was buried in an excavated trench that ran beneath the West Alley to the site of the new building, located just to the north of the former Methodist church (now Masonic Temple). The underground passageway allowed bank employees to move easily between the two structures without going outside. The new drive-in bank was designed by architect Clarence E. Noetzel (1924-1994) and built by P.H. Williams & Son, contractors. It opened for service in October 1962.

More Musings on the D & C Building Ghost

During a recent historical walking tour conducted by the Rochester Avon Historical Society, the subject of the D & C building's ghost was mentioned.  Over the years, many people have reported encountering evidence of a ghost in the building -  now occupied by the Rojo Mexican Bistro -  and have speculated about the identity of the restless spirit or how it might be connected to the history of the beloved dime store. As the property's history was discussed during the tour, it occurred to me that most of the speculation about the ghost has centered around the D & C building - which was constructed in 1940. But what if the ghost predates the D & C and is connected to an earlier event that took place at the corner of Fourth and Main?

The Lambertson block stood on the location where the D &C (now Rojo) building is today.  Built in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, it housed George C. Dennis's drug store for nearly three decades, and Dennis, a bachelor who lived alone, occupied the rooms above the business, as was common for merchants in those days.  In 1911, with his business failing and about to be seized by his creditors, George C. Dennis committed suicide by swallowing poison.  The shocking news was carried in newspapers around the state, and the Flint Journal reported the sad story on August 25, 1911:

Facing financial ruin after a lifetime of toil proved too much for George C. Dennis, Rochester's pioneer business man, and rather than confront the creditors who were to meet yesterday morning to take over his drug business, he ended his life in the rooms over the store where for 25 years he had lived alone.

Mr. Dennis swallowed a large amount of opium and corrosive sublimate and slashed his left wrist repeatedly with a razor.

The owner of the store building heard moaning in the druggist's apartments when he opened his place of business. On investigation he found Mr. Dennis unconscious but writhing on the floor of his room. Physicians were called, but the man died at 9:30.

The Journal's reporter went on to speculate that times had passed George Dennis by, and that he had become marginalized as a business man:

For many years the drug business was profitable, but of late the old methods employed by Mr. Dennis proved too slow. Little by little, business dropped off until only a few of the older residents and close friends patronized the quiet old man. He became more deeply involved financially each year, and finally yesterday was set for a meeting of the creditors to take over the stock and fixtures in an effort to satisfy their claims. Mr. Dennis had provised to attend the meeting, but evidently during the night decided he could not face the ordeal.

Perhaps it is the tortured spirit of the late Rochester druggist that still haunts the corner of Fourth and Main, where he worked for so many years and tragically died. Is George C. Dennis the D & C ghost?

This portrait of George C. Dennis is from an 1907 promotional booklet entitled Rochester: A Sketch of One of the Best Towns on the Map.

At Home in Rochester: Louis Stanley Shueller Residence

This beautiful Tudor revival home on the corner of University Drive and Castell was built in 1926 for Rochester merchant Louis S. Shueller and his wife, Laura Stadelman Shueller. The Shuellers purchased the lot in the Oakdale subdivision from Robert H. and Mary Wilson in 1921, but did not build on the property until 1926. The Rochester Clarion announced in July 1926 that the Shuellers were preparing to build a residence on their lot, and on November 19, 1926,  told its readers that "L.S. Shueller and family will move into their beautiful new house on West Fifth street the coming week, vacating the G. S. Axford house on South Walnut street." Then, on December 10, the Clarion remarked: "L. S. Shueller and family on Wednesday moved into their new home on West Fifth st."

Louis Shueller had come to Rochester in 1910 when, in partnership with a man named Batdorff, he had started the Batdorff & Shueller dry goods store in the Morse Block on Main Street. Not long after, Shueller became the sole proprietor and the business name was changed to Shueller's. In 1926, the same year in which he built this house as his personal residence, Shueller also bought the Morse Block building and remodeled it. Shueller's store closed in 1956 after 46 years in the same location on Main Street.

Louis Stanley Shueller was born April 20, 1877 in Clinton County, Michigan, the son of German immigrants Michael Shueller and Rosalia George. He died in Detroit, Michigan on November 5, 1953. He married Laura R. Stadelman on September 5, 1910 in Monroe County, Michigan.
 

Bygone Business: E. R. Metcalf Ford Agency

If you were in the market for a new automobile in Rochester in 1910, you could order one from the local Ford agent, Edward R. Metcalf, who was located in the building at 311 S. Main St. Metcalf operated a furniture and undertaking parlor in the store, which he had purchased from Mrs. Thomas C. Severance in 1903. Customers interested in the newfangled horseless carriage could call upon Mr. Metcalf at his store and arrange a demonstration of a new Ford vehicle.

Metcalf was Rochester's Ford dealer until 1911, when he sold his business and moved to California.  The advertisement shown here ran in the local newspapers in April, 1910.

At Home in Rochester: Edward S. Barnes Residence

Edward S. Barnes built this house at the corner of Second and Pine streets as his personal residence in 1906.  Oral history says that this house, along with the Clinton G. Griffey house on University Drive and the Burton McCafferty house on Fourth Street, were all constructed with brick reclaimed from the demolition of the Detroit Sugar Company mill. The mill was dismantled in the spring and summer of 1906, and brick were salvaged and sold locally. The Barnes house, as well as the Griffey and McCafferty houses, were all built during this time.

Ed Barnes at Rochester Junction (Courtesy of Rod and Susan Wilson)

Edward S. Barnes was born in Hope, New Jersey in 1857 and migrated to Avon Township with his parents. In his youth, he was employed in the old Barnes Brothers paper mill, and then spent two decades as station agent and telegrapher at Rochester Junction on the Michigan Central Railroad line. During this time, he built a steam inspection car of his own design and used it as a personal vehicle to travel up and down the railroad line. The little car drew considerable attention, and a story about it was featured in several national magazines (click here to read one of them).

In 1903, Barnes decided to retire from the railroad and enter the jewelry business in Rochester. He built a store at 309 S. Main street, and three years later, built this house at Second and Pine. He sold his business around 1925 and died in his home in Rochester in 1931, at the age of 74.

This view of the Edward S. Barnes house was published in the 1907 Rochester directory.

This Month in Rochester History

In May 1962, Rochester area residents were looking forward to checking out the community's newest recreation venue - the North Hill Lanes bowling center, located at 150 W. Tienken. Lou Koprince was the proprietor of the brand-new, 32-lane facility, which is still operating in the same building today.  Grand opening festivities for North Hill Lanes were held on May 17, 1962, and in honor of the event, family bowling passes were offered allowing 40 lines of bowling for four dollars.

Known today as Avon North Hill Lanes, the bowling center deserves hearty golden anniversary congratulations!

The newspaper advertisement seen here is from May 1962. Notice that the telephone number is still the same.

Main Street Stories: Palmer's Rink

The buildings at 409, 411 and 413 South Main Street are part of a structure built in 1884 that was originally known as Palmer's Palace Rink.  Rochester merchant Louis Eugene Palmer broke ground for a roller skating rink on this site in November 1884.  The Rochester Era described the project:

L.E. Palmer has broken ground for a brick skating rink on Main st. adjoining his new store on the north [his new store was the building at 405-407 S. Main, which he had built in 1883]. The skating floor will be 45x110 ft. in the clear, with truss-roof, so that nothing will interfere with the skaters. In addition there will be an office and spectators gallery 15x50 ft. and a barber shop of the same dimensions.

The grand opening of Palmer's Palace Rink was held in February 1885, with the eighteen-piece Rochester Cornet Band providing the music.  Palmer had caught the tail-end of the the roller skating craze that was sweeping the nation at the time, however; within five years he was using the rink as a dance hall instead, and had partitioned the front part of the building, along Main Street, into storefronts. According to newspaper accounts in the Rochester Era, Palmer enclosed the southeast corner of the rink for his jewelry store in 1886, and the northeast corner was enclosed for a barber shop in 1887.  The center section, on the Main Street side, had been a barber shop from the beginning.  By 1919, the rear portion of the rink building was gone, and the only part that remained of Palmer's Palace Rink was the three small, one-story storefronts along Main Street, which we know today as 409, 411 and 413 S. Main.

Over the years, 409 S. Main was occupied by jewelry stores for much of the time. Louis Palmer had his jewelry business there in 1886, and his daughter, Pauline Palmer, had her own jewelry there in the 1950s.  In the late 1950s, Lamoreaux Jewelry was there, and Lamoreaux was followed by Heller's Jewelry in 1961. The center section of the rink, known today as 411 S. Main and currently occupied by the Spy Shop, was originally John Hartwell's barber shop. Around 1900 it was George Axford's tobacco shop, then Miller's Bakery in the 1920s and 1930s. It was Rochester Refrigeration and Clarence's Appliances in the 1950s and early 1960s, and Symar Locksmiths from the late 1960s to the early 1990s. The north section of the building, at 413 S. Main, has housed the Arnold & Schultz meat market around 1900, the LeBlond & Tietz Butcher Shop in 1915, Stackhouse Brothers meats in the 1920s and 1930s, Fred S. Palmer Jewelry and Optometry in the 1950s, and Marvin Weisman Optometry from the late 1950s to the late 1980s.

The photo shown here was taken in front of a portion of the Palmer's Palace Rink building some time after the three storefronts had been enclosed. It is used here with permission from Dorene Dobat Whitbey and is part of her family photo collection. The man shown with the cow in the foreground is Christopher Dobat.  Notice the condition of the Main Street road bed at the time, as well as the reflection of the Masonic Block building, which stood across the street from this location, seen in the store windows.

My thanks to Dorene Dobat Whitbey for permission to publish this historic photograph.

Rochester Elevator is Michigan Milestone Business

The Rochester Elevator has just been recognized by the Historical Society of Michigan with a Michigan Milestone Business award for its 132 years of continuous service to the community.  Established in 1880 by Charles K. Griggs and his brother, Albert G. Griggs, the elevator is the oldest continuously operating business within the city limits of Rochester.  Michigan Milestone award plaques are granted to businesses and organizations that have passed milestones of fifty, one hundred, or one hundred fifty years of service, and the elevator has been granted a centennial business award for having passed the century milestone. (This is not the first award for the venerable elevator, as it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in December 2010.)  Shown here is the elevator's owner and operator, Lawrence Smith, with his Michigan Centennial Business marker.

Vanished Rochester: Abram Horn Building

Rochester is fortunate that many of the brick business blocks that were built along Main Street during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and early part of the twentieth century are still standing for us to appreciate and enjoy.  One such building that has vanished from the landscape, however, is the Abram Horn Building, which stood at 426-428 S. Main Street from 1886 to 1962. The Victorian-style block was built in the summer of 1886 by merchant Abram Horn and his wife, Esther Mariah Hayes Horn, to house their respective grocery and millinery businesses.  Esther Horn was a native of Michigan, but her husband was born in Upper Mt. Bethel, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, and was one of a large number of people from that area who migrated to Rochester and Avon Township in the first half of the nineteenth century. (Among the former Northampton County, Pennsylvania residents who also settled in Rochester were the Fox, Butts, Immick, Lomason and Reimer families, as well as George Horton and Dr. William Deats.) After Abram Horn died in 1912 and his wife followed him in 1914, their daughter, Belle Horn Hadley, ran a "fancy goods" shop in this location.  In the 1920s, the Horn building housed the Little Blue Style Shop and in the 1940s was the home of the Belle Greene Beauty Shoppe. In the 1950s, the Fashion Beauty Salon, Avon Taxi and the Carmichael Bus Lines were located there. The last tenant in the Horn building was Larry's Pizzeria, which suffered a serious fire in April 1961. The Horn building was torn down soon thereafter.

This photo from the collection of Marjorie and the late Walter Dernier shows the Horn building as it looked in 1961, just before it was razed.

Memory's Eye: Opera House Block

The look of Main Street is changing by the day as the reconstruction project gets underway, but some of our iconic landmarks, like the Opera House block, are recognizable no matter what is going on around them.  This photo, taken yesterday morning, is mashed up with a view of the building taken in the late 1950s, when Schoolcraft's Drug Store and Eggleston's department store occupied the building.  My thanks to the Swords Family Archive for lending the vintage photo of the building.

This Month in Rochester History

In April 1962, the front page of the Rochester Clarion noted the passing of two prominent members of the community.  First reported on April 5 was the death of Dr. Morgan J. Smead, who had left his veterinary practice in Port Huron in 1914 to join the professional staff at the Parkedale Biological Farms east of the village of Rochester. Dr. Smead retired from Parke-Davis in 1950 and remained a resident in his adopted home town of Rochester until his death at age 78 in 1962.

Two weeks later, the Clarion reported the death of Alfred G. Wilson, husband of the former Matilda Rausch Dodge, who with his wife had built the magnificent Meadow Brook Hall on their large stock farm west of Rochester.  Alfred Wilson had made his fortune in lumber and real estate, and together with his wife, left Meadow Brook farms to the state of Michigan for the establishment of the school that is known today as Oakland University.

Main Street Paving By The Numbers

1916 Main Street paving, looking south from Fourth (Courtesy of Tom Case)

This coming week, the long-awaited makeover of Main Street in downtown Rochester will commence. The eight month project will include 12 weeks of complete road closure and is expected to cost around $5.6 million. When the excavation work begins in earnest in a few weeks, the layers of pavement will be peeled back to uncover a time capsule, of sorts, of Main Street history.  As the contractors dig, they will reveal Main Street's first pavement, a brick roadway that was laid in 1916.  Here's what the contractor's advertisement in the Rochester Era issue of  October 6, 1916 had to say:

The Williston Construction Company

of Chicago, Illinois

C.A. Williston in charge, have just completed the paving of Main street, Rochester, Michigan.
The brick, Hocking Valley Shale, was laid on a cement filler, with sand cushion and cement filler.
In the job 600,000 brick were used by the Williston Construction Co., and the D.U.R., with 4,500 barrels of cement. Cost of work $40,000 (village $27,000; D.U.R. $18,000)
From Third to Fifth streets the width of paving is 68 feet, from Second to Third and Fifth to R.R. crossing, 63 feet.
A storm sewer was put in the whole length of the job under the D.U.R. tracks. The D.U.R. co-operated with the Williston Construction Co., paving between their two tracks. During the construction of the work a steam shovel and 15-ton cement mixer were well used.
The Williston Construction Co. have been operating for three years in Indiana, Illinois and Michigan and are now engaged on a similar job at Howell, Michigan.
They consider their Rochester job a success in every particular, and think Rochester is to be congratulated.

Paving bricks stacked in front of Masonic Block, Fourth & Main (Courtesy of Tom Case)

An item in the July 26, 1916 issue of the journal Engineering & Contracting noted that Williston's bid for the job came in at $1.92 per square yard. When the brick roadway is uncovered this summer, we'll see how those 600,000 bricks have held up.

Thanks to Tom Case for sharing photos of the 1916 "Main Street Makeover" from his personal collection.

Mount Avon Receiving Vault

Recently, the City of Rochester announced that some restoration work will be done in historic Mount Avon Cemetery this spring and summer. Part of this project will involve the cemetery's receiving vault, a small building located just to the south of the Wilcox gate, which was originally used to store caskets until burial could be made.

In the days before modern excavating equipment was available to cemetery sextons, burial in the winter months when the ground was frozen was not feasible.  In the Rochester area, it was common during the nineteenth century for bodies to be stored in the mausolea or vaults of one of the Pontiac cemeteries until spring, when burial at Mount Avon could take place.  In the spring of 1909,  Rochester hardware merchant Harvey J. Taylor filed a petition with the Avon Township board, praying that a ballot question be placed before the voters to approve a three-year tax to fund the construction of a receiving vault at Mount Avon Cemetery. The proposed vault would be capable of storing at least ten caskets. Co-signers of Taylor's petition included J. F. Jackson, John T. Norton, George Newberry, P. J. O'Brien, J. N. McCornac, Erastus S. Letts, William Clark Chapman, and Charles Sherwin Chapman.  The board granted the prayer of the petition, and the Rochester Era issue of March 19, 1909, carried this entreaty:

VOTE YES

On the Proposition to Raise $3,000 to Build a Receiving Vault in Rochester Cemetery

A proposition will be voted upon at the coming township election appropriating $3,000 payable in three yearly installments of $1,000 each, for the building of a receiving vault in Rochester cemetery. This is a step which is most laudable and should carry by a large majority.  The need and necessity for a receiving vault in Rochester cemetery has long been apparent. It is proposed to build a stone or cement vault holding at least ten bodies. Vote "Yes" on the proposition by all means.

The proposition was carried by a vote of 225 to 116, and the receiving vault was built.  As it turned out, however, it was in use for its intending purpose for only about 15 years.  In 1925, when the Flowers Mausoleum Company built a community mausoleum in the cemetery, the township reserved for itself ten of the crypts within the new building for the purpose of storing remains over the winter months, thus rendering the receiving vault obsolete. Over the years, two additions were made to the receiving vault and it was used as an equipment shed.  The City of Rochester now plans to remove the non-sympathetic additions and restore the receiving vault to its original appearance.  Click here to read a recent Rochester Post story about the planned restoration work in the cemetery.

Subdivision Stories: Avondale Park

The city of Rochester includes a tiny subdivision north of Romeo Street and east of North Main that was called Avondale Park when it was platted in 1915. Laid out on a ten-acre parcel on the northern boundary of the Woodward Addition, Avondale Park further subdivided blocks 4,5,6 and 7 of the larger plat.  It was created and offered for sale by Pontiac real estate developers J. B. Mahaffy and Israel E. Terry, whose names are reflected in the subdivision's streets. Most lots in Avondale Park could be had for under $200, as shown in this 1915 advertisement.

At Home in Rochester: Charles Ward and Neva Burr Crissman Residence

This Tudor-revival residence at 607 West University Drive was built in 1926 as the residence of Charles Ward Crissman and his wife, Neva Mae Burr Crissman.  Husband and wife were both members of prominent merchant families in Rochester.  Ward Crissman was born in 1890, the son of Harvey B. and Carrie May Albertson Crissman. He grew up on a farm north of Rochester and was graduated from Rochester High School with the class of 1908. After an early career as a schoolteacher and principal in Waterford, Crissman married Neva Mae Burr, the daughter of Rochester hardware merchant George Burr, and then entered into the hardware business with his father-in-law. Ward and Neva Crissman eventually took over the hardware business from her father, but Ward Crissman died very unexpectedly in 1935 from complications following an appendectomy.  His widow and son-in-law continued to operate Burr's Hardware until 1965, when they closed the business after 64 years on Main Street; Green's Artist Supply moved into the building a few weeks later. Neva Crissman died in 1978.

Bygone Business: Hobart Funeral Home

The Hobart Funeral Home was established in Rochester by Alanson C. Hobart in January 1924, when Hobart bought out the undertaking business of Dr. Vernor M. Spaulding. Spaulding had been the successor of the E. R. Metcalf undertaking business, which was located in the building at 311 S. Main. Metcalf had been preceded by Thomas C. Severance, P. M. Woodworth, and W. Harvey Greene in the same business. In 1929, Hobart moved his funeral home into the former George M. Flumerfelt residence at 339 Walnut Street, where it remained for the next 21 years. Winkel & Potere bought out Hobart in 1950, and soon thereafter William R. Potere became the sole proprietor. John and Mary Modetz, the current owners of this business, purchased the funeral home from Potere in 1986.

This 1934 advertisement for the Hobart Funeral Home is from the collection of Rod and Susan Wilson.

This Month in Rochester History

Fifty years ago this month, Abiding Presence Lutheran Church broke ground for a new facility in Avon Township.  The congregation had been organized in 1958 and spent its first few years holding services at North Hill Elementary School.  By 1962, the parish had grown to more than 360 members and was ready to construct a new building on the north side of  Walton, approximately a half mile west of Livernois. Ralls, Hamill & Becker were the architects for the new church, and Rewold & Son of Rochester was the general contractor for the project.  The groundbreaking ceremony for the new Abiding Presence Lutheran Church was held on March 22, 1962, with Pastor Lloyd Buss officiating.  The new church building was dedicated in October 1962.

Vanished Rochester: Hubbell School

Hubbell School ca. 1957 (Courtesy of Swords Family Archive)

Long vanished from the Rochester Hills landscape is the Hubbell school house, which stood on the south side of what is today known as Walton Boulevard, near the southeast corner of Walton & Adams.  In the days when Rochester Hills was the rural township of Avon, it was served by not one, but several small school districts.  The Walton & Adams area was known as Avon Township School District #8, or the Hubbell district.  The school district took its name from  pioneer settler Samuel Hubbell, who had purchased the land in that area from the government in 1824. The exact date that the Hubbell school house was built is not known, but the 1872 plat map of Avon Township shows a school house at that location, in the corner of what was by that time known as the Lomason farm.  The Hubbell district existed until 1948, at which time the property owners in the area petitioned that their rural district be dissolved and annexed to the larger Rochester school district.  The reason for their request was that few of the property owners actually resided in the district - they were mostly real estate investors and speculators - and therefore felt ill-qualified to serve as trustees of the Hubbell school. After Hubbell was consolidated with Rochester in 1948, the Rochester school district continued to operate the Hubbell school as an elementary building for a couple of years.  By 1957, Meadow Brook Elementary had been built to serve the children of the area and one room schools like Hubbell were rendered obsolete.  The photo above shows what the building looked like when it being used as a real estate office around 1957. At that time, the Howard Keating real estate company was developing the Spring Hill subdivision at the southeast corner of Walton & Adams.  Those who remember the Hubbell school tell me that it stood approximately where the McDonald's restaurant is located today.

My thanks to the custodians of the Swords Family Archive for lending me this photo of the Hubbell School.

The Spiritualist Movement in Rochester

In the spring of 1905, the Detroit Free Press informed its readers that spiritualism had taken hold in the village of Rochester and that some of the most prominent citizens of the community were participating in seances and meetings that involved alleged contact with the spirit world.  The Free Press writer thought Rochester was an unlikely place for such proceedings, and introduced his report this way:

Nestling snugly down in a valley among green hills, the little village of Rochester presents such a picture of rural repose and idyllic contentment as would inspire the spring poet with a gush of rhapsody.  But the repose is only external. ... Every night the homes of the most respected citizens are the scenes of hair-raising performances. Tables dance around the rooms or are broken to pieces, windows are smashed, chairs overturned, while strange objects float through space and weird sounds fill the air.

The Free Press story went on to say that a group of Rochester citizens including Commodore George Newberry, village president;  Bert Norton, druggist; Charles S. Chapman and his brother, William C. Chapman; and jeweler and optician Louis E. Palmer, Jr. met regularly to conduct seances in an attempt to invite the presence of the spirits of the departed.  According to the newspaper, Newberry had once been the greatest of skeptics and dismissed any stories of communication with the spirits of the dead as "pure humbug," but having been converted now hosted regular meetings of  what the participants called the "Psychic Research Club" in his home.

The newspaper feature, which was headlined "Spooks Galore," recounted a story told by George Newberry of a meeting of the spiritualists conducted at his home and led by Louis E. Palmer, Jr.  "Louie" Palmer was the son of the prominent Rochester merchant Louis E. Palmer, Sr., who built several buildings on Main Street and conducted a jewelry business there for several decades.  The younger Palmer claimed newly-discovered powers as a medium for the spirit of a man named "Quick," who was supposed to have died in North Branch, Michigan in 1903.

According to the account, young Palmer invoked the spirit of "Quick," who made his presence known to the assembled club members:

Seated around a heavy mahogany table, their hands stretched over its polished surface, the "Research club"  awaited the spooks.
A violent lunge of the table announced an arrival from spiritland.
"Is that you, Quick?" asked Mr. Palmer.
Three slight tippings of the table signified "yes."
Quick's convivial nature is not ignored by his friends in the flesh, so he was asked if he wanted them to smoke. He again answered affirmatively and they all lit their cigars.

So, with the club members lighting up and puffing away on their Havanas, the seance continued:

The ponderous table began to gyrate as lightly as a French ballet girl and the chandelier was bent while Mr. Palmer's body was lifted over the table into the lap of one of his vis-a-vis.
Finally, according to the testimony of all present the medium's body was wafted to the top of a cabinet seven feet high while he cried in a dazed condition for someone to stop his uncomfortable ascent.

Once Mr. Palmer was returned to his seat by his fellow spirit-seekers, the spirit of "Quick" resumed his mischief:

Suddenly there was a loud crash of smashing glass and the helpless body of Palmer was seen sprawling limp on the window sill half through the broken pane, half dangling limply on the inner side.
That was too much for the unfortunate medium, and he has refused to call on "Quick" since.

The Spiritualist Movement in the United States emerged in upstate New York in the 1840s, and was fairly prominent through the 1920s, during which time the Ouija board became a popular method of interpreting perceived contacts from the spirit world.  Ray Henry, a local historian and direct descendant of Louis E. Palmer, Sr., gave me the back story to this interesting tale and explained how spiritualism was likely introduced to the village of Rochester.

It seems that the sons of Louis Palmer, Sr., attended a social event at the Rochester Opera House around 1905, at which they met two daughters of a medium named Sarah Barclay. The Barclay family was newly arrived in the Rochester area at the time, having come from Ontario seeking jobs at the Western Knitting Mills. One of the Barclay daughters, May Smith, eventually married Louie Palmer's brother, William. May's mother, Sarah Barclay, was a Spiritualist minister who conducted seances at the family home in Stoney Creek. It is probable that Louie Palmer was introduced to spiritualism through his connection to the Barclay family.

Ray Henry further relates that Sarah Barclay moved to Cleveland, Ohio around 1910, where she operated a tea room, gave readings and continued her work as a medium. She was also a reader in the Unity Church there. Sarah Barclay is buried at Mount Avon Cemetery in Rochester, next to her daughter, May Palmer; click here to view her photo and biography.

My thanks to Ray Henry for sharing part of his family history with me and filling in some of the background on this story.

Building Bridges (Again!)

During this past week, the Avon Road bridge at the Livernois intersection was closed to traffic so that replacement of the decaying structure could begin.  Those of us who live in the area have known this closure was coming for a long time, and we'll be taking creative routes around the construction until some time in June. A couple of years ago, we had a similar experience with the bridge over Stoney Creek on East Tienken Road.

How many readers remember the biggest bridge closure of our recent history?  It happened 23 years ago, when the South Hill bridge at the foot of Main Street in downtown Rochester was closed for replacement.  That project was precipitated by an earlier collapse of the bridge deck that occurred when a support strap failed. Emergency repairs were made, and then engineers determined that then entire bridge needed an overhaul.  Downtown Rochester suffered through the long months of road closure in 1989-1990, and celebrated the reopening of the span with a "Bridge Bash" in October 1990.  Then-governor James Blanchard cut the ribbon to open the roadway, and a parade of vintage automobiles made the first trip across the new bridge.

These photos of the South Hill bridge project and "Bridge Bash" festivities were taken by my dad in 1989 and 1990.

Subdivision Stories: Junction Land Company

Containing just one side street and only 38 lots, the Junction Land Company subdivision is one of Rochester Hills' smallest.  It was platted in April 1920 by Eva Barwise and her partners, John and Ella Peters and Arthur and Isabelle Law.  The subdivision lies east of Rochester Road and south of Tienken, on land that abuts the present City Walk shopping plaza at the southeast corner of that intersection.  For the last half of the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth, this property was part of the Isaac and Jane Barwise farm. At its height, the Barwise farm was over 200 acres in area and was one of Avon Township's most productive.  Isaac Barwise was a native of England who came to the United States as a young man and settled in Avon in 1861. Ownership of the farm passed to his daughter, Eva, who was a well-known Rochester schoolteacher.

The Junction Land Company was doubtless named for the location of the subdivision. For many years, the Detroit United Railway had a station at the corner of Tienken and Rochester, called Lake Orion Junction. At this point, one branch of the streetcar line headed along Orion Road to Goodison, Lake Orion, Oxford and stops beyond on the Flint Division, while another branch followed Tienken Road to Stoney Creek, Washington, and Romeo. The subdivision's one and only street was aptly named Junction Boulevard, but this name was changed to Courtland in 1950 when the township renamed many of its streets at the recommendation of the county road commission.

This Month in Rochester History

February 1962 was a quiet month in Rochester. Not much was happening, except that there was a lot more snow on the ground than we have today.  One thing that did make the front page of the newspaper was the school board's decision to spend $19,000 to install language labs in the high school and the two junior high schools, Central and West.  The audio equipment for the labs was purchased from the Dictaphone Corporation.  Up until the beginning of the 1961-62 school year, Rochester students were only offered two years of foreign language instruction, and they had their choice of French or German. The district added a third year of instruction to the curriculum in 1961-62, and after ordering the language labs, planned to offer a fourth year beginning in 1962-63.

I remember sitting in the language lab at Rochester High School, practicing phrases played on a state-of-the-art reel-to-reel tape deck. Anybody else?