Detroit Firefighter Certificates in the Clarke

[The voting has finished in the Michigan Digital Newspaper Grant Program and Cheboygan has been chosen by the voters as the community whose newspapers will be digitized and upload into the Michigan Digital Newspaper Portal. To read more, follow the Michigan Digital Newspapers Twitter feed]

Detroit Firefighter Certificates in the Clarke

By Marian Matyn

I recently cataloged two oversized certificates of two men who were early Detroit firemen. The certificate of Thomas Hanks is one of appointment as a Detroit fireman, undated, but definitely early to mid-nineteenth century. The certificate is nicely illustrated with an engraving of Poseidon, a female goddess holding a staff, two women, one with a baby, a river behind them, and a city with a fire in it in the distant background. The engraver was Geo. W. Hatch. The phrase "Protection and Benevolence" is included. It was signed by F. Huhl, Treasurer. At the bottom, is an engraving of a small, hand-pulled, hand pump engine with "Wolvereen [sic] 3" handwritten onto it. There is some slight damage. There was a grocer named Thomas Hanks in the 1861 Detroit city directory. He is possibly this fireman.

The other certificate is for John Quigley as an active member of the Detroit fire department, 1858. This certificate is engraved on canvas which measures approximately 16 x 13 inches. It is attached at the top to brown cardboard which measures approximately 17.5 x 20 inches. The certificate is beautifully engraved in blue, yellow, pink, brown, black, and green colors, with two firemen in uniform, firefighting equipment, including a hand-pulled hand pump, leaves, Poseidon with two water creatures, and an engraved seal of Michigan. The phrase "Fire department incorporated 1840" is at the top of the certificate and also on a blue seal in the center of the certificate surrounded by circles. Within the circles, Quigley's status was attested to by secretary B. Vernor [or Vernon], president Robert B. Roberts, and treasurer Alex. Paton, Aug. 11, 1858. The certificate was engraved by Capewell and Kimmel of New York. The certificate is badly stained, dirty, and is not completely square. John Quigley is a fairly common name at this time in Detroit and Michigan so further identification of him is impossible.

The fire department in Detroit was incorporated in 1840. Prior to this firefighters were all volunteers. Very little is known about early firemen of Detroit. None of the men listed on the certificates are identified in books about the fire department's history.

To learn more about the fire department of Detroit you can search the CENTRA catalog for these terms:

• Detroit (Mich.) Fire Dept.--History
• or for various departments search Fire departments--Michigan

I am very proud to say that my great-uncle Remy Matyn and his two sons, Edwin and Fred, were members of the Detroit Fire Department. They served in the early twentieth century and are identified in the Detroit Fire Dept. history books. If you have any questions about archival collections, contact Marian Matyn at marian.matyn@cmich.edu.

Gentle Friday Presentation and End of Voting in MDNGP

The Clarke would like to announce two important dates coming up early next week.

First, on Monday April 14, the Clarke, in association with the CMU Alumni Association will be offering a retrospective on the history of Gentle Friday. Going back to the 1960s, this unique CMU tradition was invented to help relieve tension on campus. Today, it is a reminder of how we all benefit from a culture built on the concepts of civility, good will, and a free ice cream cone. The presentation begins at 7:00 pm in the Park Library auditorium with a reception, co-sponsored by the Alumni Association, to follow in the Clarke.

Second, Tuesday, April 15 is the last day to vote in the Michigan Digital Newspaper Grant Program. Your votes will determine which one of five cities - Muskegon, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Cheboygan, or Marquette - will have their newspaper digitized and uploaded into the Michigan Digital Newspaper Portal. Use this link - https://digmichnews.wufoo.com/forms/vote-for-your-library-to-win/ - to cast you votes.

John Cumming Award Presented

by Frank Boles

Beginning with the celebration of Isabella County’s sesquicentennial in 2009, the Clarke Historical Library has participated in honoring individuals involved in local history with the John Cumming Isabella County Historical Preservation Award. Earlier this year, the 2014 Cumming Award was given to Tammy Prout.

Tammy Prout is a lifelong resident of Isabella County who has devoted much of her adult time and considerable organizational talents to preserving memories of our area's rich heritage by organizing a historical village at the Isabella County Fairgrounds, maintaining and scheduling rotating historical exhibits in the lobby of the Isabella County Building, working with Jack Anson to co-produce a video named "Isabella County: 150 years in the making" during the County's Sesquicentennial, organizing a vintage Fashion Show during that 150th celebration. Further, she was active in establishing the County's First Family Award program and helped reproduce Isaac A. Fancher's 1876 U.S. Centennial speech about the history of Isabella County in booklet form. She has been active in the Genealogical Society of Isabella County, the Friends of the Faith Johnson Library at Rosebush, and the Mt. Pleasant Area Historical Society.

The award was named in honor of John Cumming, who served as director of Central Michigan University’s Clarke Historical Library from 1961 until 1982, and was the author of This Place Mount Pleasant, a community history published in 1989, and The First Hundred Years, the centennial history of CMU, which was published in 1992.

To read more about this year’s winner (and to see a really ridiculous picture of myself presenting it!) take a look at an article from Mt. Pleasant’s local newspaper, the Morning Sun. For a complete list of all those who have won the Cumming Award, visit the webpage for the award on the Clarke website.

Michigan Digital Newspaper Grant Finalists

One of the following five cities will have their chosen newspaper digitized and placed online through the Clarke Historical Library’s Michigan Digital Newspaper Grant Program. The winning city's paper will be available on the Michigan Digital Newspaper Portal at condor.cmich.edu.

The finalists are:

• Cheboygan (Cheboygan Democrat, 1880-1927)
• Grand Rapids (The Grand Rapids Herald, 1916-18)
• Lansing (Lansing State Republican, 1859-66)
• Marquette (Mining Journal, 1868-88)
• Muskegon (News and Reporter, 1870-99; Muskegon Record & Muskegon Daily Record, 1901-04)

Be Sure to Vote

You get to decide which community will get their papers digitized and placed online. Cast your vote between April 1-April 15 at digmichnews.wufoo.com. To keep up on the vote tally, follow us on our Facebook and Twitter.

Read what the nominators said about these papers:

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.