Douglass Houghton's Impact on Michigan History

By Sam Tibebe

Douglass Houghton painting from A History of Michigan in Paintings by Robert A. Thomas. Courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library.

Growing up with a history professor as your father you learn to love and hate history, although it remained highly valuable, even today. Consequently, I ran far away from history only to study the history of the Earth, through geology. Webster’s Dictionary defines geology as “a science that deals with the history of the earth and its life especially as recorded in rocks.” The history of mankind pales in comparison to the history of the earth, which is over billions of years old. Earth’s history is recorded in rock records whereas mankind records history in written words. Although rock records do not reveal everything about their past, they are absolute and precise with the information they do provide. For example, one of the first things a geologist will look for in an outcrop is the rock's texture, ranging from grain size to types of minerals seen by hand. These textures are the written history of rocks, allowing geologists to make interpretations and assumptions about the environment’s deposition. While working as a student assistant at Clarke, I was asked to look up content about Douglass Houghton for a social media post. I jumped at the opportunity to combine geology and history together.

Douglass Houghton's Field Notebooks, c. 1838. Handwritten notes on Mackinaw and the Upper Peninsula. Courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library.

I have had the fortune of taking several field trips during my academic career at Central Michigan University, as the first time I heard of Douglass Houghton was during a trip up Quincy Mine in the upper peninsula of Michigan. Douglass Houghton was the definition of a renaissance man who was geologist, physician, mayor, philanthropist, Professor, and even was a U.S. Indian Agent (U.S. government official authorized to interact with Native Americans).

1st Edition Survey Map of Marquette Township by Douglass Houghton, c. 1838.

Courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library.

From the Detroit Historical Society site, in The Encyclopedia of Detroit, Houghton was born in September 21, 1809 in Troy, New York to a Lawyer/ Magistrate father who demand academic excellence from his sons and daughters. He then attended and graduated from Rensselaer School of Science, premier school at the time and still open in Troy, New York, with a degree of geology in 1830 and medicine in 1831. It was safe to say that Houghton was a child genius which made him a great mentee for The Rensselaer co-founder Amos Eaton, a renowned geologist himself. When a the territorial governor of Michigan asked Eaton to give a lecture, he deferred to his protégée Houghton, who quickly became the talk of the town. This led Houghton to form the Detroit Young Men’s Society.

Houghton became the first Michigan State Geologist when Michigan became a state in 1837. In this  role, he began the Township Survey Maps Project, which set the modern day county boundaries. It was during this time it made the greatest contribution to Michigan and the U.S. as a whole, with the exploitation and discovery of mineral deposits contributing to an economic and immigration surge. According to Mining History Association, this lead to the largest copper mining operation in the U.S. history, and led to the creation of many mining companies like Quincy, Tamarack, and Calumet and Hecla. Quincy Mine is now a popular tourist attraction and one of the few that actually take tourists underground.

Houghton was supported by many, which resulted in him being elected as Mayor while he was on one of his expeditions. Houghton was also a professor at the University of Michigan, and might have been governor of the state in the 1845. Unfortunately, Douglass Houghton died at the young age of 36 years old in 1845. Houghton’s dedication to this work lead him to misjudge a storm and to sail off in Lake Superior leading to this death. In homage to his legacy, there is a county and city, as well as statues, schools, and even a hall at the University of Michigan named after him. Mining in the Upper Peninsula has decreased, but as new and more efficient technology is being developed we are seeing a new surge in the area with the formation of new mines like Eagle Mine.

  

Biographic Sketch of Douglass Houghton - Michigan's First State Geologist, 1837-1845 by Wallin, Helen McCarthy. Courtesy of the Clarke Historical Library.

The Clarke Historical Library collection on Douglass Houghton is quite impressive not just in terms of geology, but also Michigan’s history. The first edition, personally written by Houghton, surveys maps of townships including Lapeer, Livingston, Marquette, Saginaw, Houghton, Oakland, Shiawassee, Tuscola, and Wayne. Other first edition paper, letters, field note, account ledgers, and even biographical sketches all written by Houghton but also material about him and his life from memoir to bibliography like Michigan’s Columbus: The life of Douglass Houghton by Steve Lehto. All of these and more can be found at the Clarke Historical Library, come check it out Here.

Roosevelt Storms Marquette

By John Fierst

Theodore Roosevelt split the Republican Party when he ran as a Progressive in the election of 1912. The split led to the Democrat Woodrow Wilson taking the White House. It was an unusual campaign, to say the least, which included an attempt on Roosevelt’s life. John Flamming Schrank, who shot Roosevelt as the candidate was leaving the Gilpatrick Hotel in Milwaukee, claimed the ghost of William McKinley had directed him to do so. Roosevelt shrugged off the wound as not serious (though the bullet remained in his chest the rest of his life). What he could not shrug off so easily were the many attempts at character assassination that dogged him throughout the campaign, especially the repeated charge that he was a drunkard.

Roosevelt finally decided to do something about the charge of drunkenness and to silence, once and for all, the libelous press. He made his stand in, of all places, Marquette, Michigan, where he brought suit against George Newett, an Ishpeming newspaper publisher. Newett had charged in the local paper, The Iron Ore, that Roosevelt lied, cursed, and drank to excess. Roosevelt gathered together a host of supporters, and they made their way to the small shipping port on Lake Superior. There, Roosevelt’s lawyer, James H. Pound, took command of the courthouse and overwhelmed the defense with character witnesses and expert opinion.

Pound began his defense of Roosevelt’s moral character by examining Roosevelt himself:

Q. Now, I wish you would describe in your own way to the jury, what, if any, use you make of liquors, spirituous or malt, since your manhood, in your recollection.

A. I do not drink either whiskey or brandy, except as I shall hereafter say, except as I drink it under the direction of a doctor; I do not drink beer; I sometimes drink light wine.

Q. Let me ask you right there, have you ever indulged in porter on any occasion?

A. I never drank liquor or porter or anything of that kind. I have never drunk a high-ball or cocktail in my life. I have sometimes drunk mint juleps in the White House. There was a bed of mint there, and I may have drunk half a dozen mint juleps a year, and certainly no more.

Then followed a train of twenty-five character witnesses. Among them were: two former Rough Riders; an admiral and an ex-secretary of the Nary; a member of the Associated Press; a naturalist from the Smithsonian; members of the United State Secret Service; the social reformer Jacob A. Riis; President Garfield’s son James, who had once served as Secretary of the Interior; Gifford Pinchot, first Chief of the United States Forest Service; Dr. Alexander Lambert, Roosevelt’s family physician, and Dr. P.M. Rixey, Surgeon General of the United States; All these and many more either took the stand or, like Roosevelt’s butler and his former barber, submitted written depositions, testifying to TR’s abstemiousness.

Under this barrage of high-mindedness Newett was brought low—bully!—and he recanted. Roosevelt then waived his right to damages. He had waged this battle on moral grounds and had achieved his purpose before God and the electorate. Hence forward U.S. presidential campaigns would be free of gossip and slander.

One of the witnesses, the New York banker W. Emlyn Roosevelt, a cousin and close friend of Roosevelt, later had the transcript of the successful suit privately published. Recently the Clarke Historical Library acquired a copy of this publication: Roosevelt vs. Newett: A Transcript of the Testimony Taken and Depositions Read at Marquette, Mich. It is 361 pages long. A letter signed by Roosevelt and addressed to Dr. Albert Shaw, the editor of the “Review of Reviews” and one of the men who submitted a written deposition at the trial, is tipped into the front of the book, indicating that originally this was Shaw’s own copy.

Portion of the testimony of Jacob Riis
in Roosevelt vs. Newett

The book has value beyond being a description of the trial. Pound fashioned his questions to establish the credibility of the witnesses. He asked questions that explored their backgrounds and explained their relationships to Roosevelt. Jacob Riis, author of How the Other Half Lives was a great admirer of Roosevelt, and earlier he had praised Roosevelt in a campaign biography: Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen. Riis’s firsthand testimony, given in Marquette, reveals more than his distant respect for Roosevelt. It makes clear the strength of the bond of friendship between the two men.

With the Clarke Historical Library’s interest in Michigan history and presidential campaign biographies, Roosevelt vs. Newett has found a welcome home in the Clarke collection.