USA > Michigan > Wayne County > Detroit > Compendium of history and biography of the city of Detroit and Wayne County, Michigan > Part 8
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At this session of the assembly, Solomon Sibley presented a petition from the people of Detroit asking for the incorporation of the settlement as a town. The petition was read to the delegates in January, 1802, and was formally passed as a bill on the 18th of the fol- lowing month. It bore the signatures of Edward Tiffin, speaker of the house of represen- tatives, and of Robert Oliver, president of the Northwest territorial court, and it was im- mediately approved by Governor St. Clair. The bill provided for the election of town officers on the first Monday in May, 1802, and named five trustees who were to serve as guardians over the affairs of the fledgeling corporation until such election. The town was extended officially for a distance of some two miles northward from the river; on the east to the westerly line of the farm of Antoine Beaubien; thence westerly along the river front and to the line between what were later known as the Cass and Jones farms. The incorporation act directed that only land owners, citizens paying a minimum rental of forty dollars per annum and those privileged with what was known as the "freedom of the settlement" should be eligible to vote at the elections of town officers, held at the annual town meetings.
Immediately after the trustees had taken their oaths of office they entered upon a strenuous existence of guardianship and execution. Appointments and ordinances fell thick and fast. Nearly every citizen possessed of civic ambition found outlet for superfluous energies in appointments at the hands of the trustees. A secretary, marshal, assessor, col- lector and messenger were chosen to administer the smaller duties of home government, and at one of the early meetings of the trustees a suggestion that the new town was in dire need
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of improved fire protection was unanimously approved. A voluminous ordinance was the immediate result. On pain of a fine, every citizen possessed of a defective chimney was directed to make such repairs as safety required; provisions were specifically made requiring householders to provide themselves with water barrels, buckets and ladders and directing that all merchants keep constantly ready for use, large sacks which might be wet and used in protecting roofs adjacent to burning buildings. No citizen could hope to retain the respect of the community who failed to volunteer his services in case they were needed.
Five days after the passage of the act of incorporation, the town's first fire department was formally organized. A detail of soldiers was named by Colonel J. F. Hamtramck, the military commander, to serve as the nucleus of the fire brigade. Various citizens made up bucket, axe and battering companies, the latter corps being employed to demolish, by means of a log ram, all structures that were hopelessly aflame.
There being no town hall, the trustees met either in the houses of the members of the body or in some tavern. Ordinances followed rapidly as need arose, a market place being provided and regular market days established. Inspectors were appointed whose duty it was to visit stores and dwellings and to insist on the enforcement of the fire ordinances and report generally upon the condition of grounds and structures.
At the first election, held May 3, 1802, the polls were kept open for but two hours near midday. James Henry, George Meldrum, Charles Francis Girardin, Joseph Campau and John Dodemead were elected as trustees. The town treasurer and collector were paid three per cent. of the moneys collected in fines and taxes, while the marshal and messenger were allowed one dollar per diem.
The days of the town's formative period were replete with all the romance and more than the usual elements of the picturesque, generally characteristic of frontier settlements. Though the trustees were insistent in regulating the exact size of the loaves of bread sold and persisted in prescribing many other minor details, the streets were often given over to roisterers who frequented the public houses, and gambled and drank to their hearts' content with little fear of interruption. Nearly every one drank to some extent, and many of the old ledgers still extant show heavy scores for punch, brandy and wines, bought by some of the best citizens. Not until two years after the incorporation of the town was Thomas McCrae appointed as the first police officer. His duties, aside from the care of wabbly-limbed and exuberant citizens, involved the functions of sanitary officer and fire war- den. While he was not thus engaged he was allowed to fill in his time on market days as recorder of the market,-all for the munificent consideration of seventy-five cents per day.
Though the British at Fort Malden, near the present site of Amherstburg, were sup- posedly on good terms with the citizens at Detroit, their action in stirring up the old Indian troubles became apparent prior to 1804. The courtesies extended socially to the Americans by the officers at Fort Malden seem to have been inspired by doubtful motives. The trus- tees were forced to give heed to an undercurrent of hostility on the part of the savages that was so noticeable as to demand serious consideration on the part of every citizen. Sentries were not only posted at night, as in the earlier days of the military regime, but additional military protection was sought at Washington. Even at that time agencies were at work that ultimately led to a final contest at arms with England in the war of 1812.
CHAPTER VII.
Change in Boundaries of Wayne County-Ohio Admitted to Statehood-Michigan a Part of the Territory of Indiana-Forming of the Territory of Michigan-Boundaries of New Territory-First Officers-Detroit the Capital-William Hull, Augustus B. Woodward, Frederick Bates, John Griffin - Civic and Social Conditions in Detroit-Detroit Destroyed by Fire-Effects of the Disaster-High-handed Rule of the Federal Appointees-Work of Rehabilitation-Rebellion of Citizens Against Conditions-Distribution of Town Lots-Rights of the People Flagrantly In- fringed-Governor Hull Establishes an Army-Popular Protests Against Hull's Despotism-Bank of Detroit Established-History of the Institution.
By an act of congress dividing the Northwest Territory, a large portion of the present state of Ohio was combined with the eastern half of lower Michigan and designated Ohio Territory. Of the addition of but the eastern half of the peninsula, "Landmarks of Wayne County and Detroit" says: "This (combination) necessitated a change in the boundaries of Wayne county, for it could not be extended over two territories, so the eastern portion of the lower peninsula, which had been set off as a part of the Territory of Ohio, was added to nearly one-quarter of the state of Ohio, the eastern limit being the Cuyahoga river. and the southern boundary being placed about one hundred miles south of Lake Erie. While this suited the people of Detroit and Wayne county, it did not please the people of Ohio. As a result, in the fall of 1800, a section of the lower strip was chopped off from Wayne county and added to Ohio proper, so that the eastern boundary was near San- dusky. Next year nearly all the territory which is now included in the state of Ohio was cut off from Wayne county, and only a narrow strip, including the present site of Toledo, was left. The residents of the Ohio region organized a general assembly and began to move for a constitutional convention, for the purpose of organizing their section into a state and leaving Wayne county out. The Wayne county people and some of the others objected. In the fall of 1802 a convention was held at Chillicothe by the people of Ohio, and a con- stitution was adopted. In order to make up the requisite number of residents for state- hood, the people of Wayne county were counted in, and in March, 1803, the state of Ohio was admitted to the Union. Wayne county was then cut off from Ohio and attached to the present boundary of Indiana, and the two were organized into the Territory of Indiana."
After Governor St. Clair had changed the seat of government from Chillicothe to Cin- cinnati, at the close of the session of 1802, but prior to the meeting of the next assembly, the act of congress established the Territory of Indiana, whose boundaries included all of what is now Michigan.
General William Henry Harrison was appointed governor of Indiana Territory and was given authority to call an election of legislative delegates for the new territory. His proclamation ordered this to be held in January, 1805, and the Ist of the following month was appointed as the date for convening the delegates so elected. Owing to lack of facili- ties for communication, or to some misunderstanding, Wayne county sent no delegates to this session. Before the difficulty could be properly adjusted, a federal enactment, passed in June, 1805, relieved Governor Harrison of his jurisdiction over Wayne county.
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Thomas Jefferson, than whom perhaps no man of his times was more gifted, was presi- dent of the United States. The nation, emerging from the chrysalis days of its struggle for existence, was spreading untried wings in its first uncertain flights. Washington was an isolated marshy village, ridiculed in the capitals of the Old World and an object of the scorn of the disgruntled American cities; but assembled there about the president was a group of men of peculiar attainments. There were men of culture, men of courage, men of genius, men of honor; but all, scrupulous and unscrupulous alike, were men of insatiable ambition. To some of these the west called.
Cradled between two of the greatest of the lakes in the west, both prairie and forest- rich beyond the knowledge of the day, beyond the rosiest dreams of the most visionary- awaited the hand of the pioneer. Fortunes were to be gained; great and honorable names were to be made; a powerful commonwealth was to be hewn from the wilderness. Dis- satisfied with the conduct of affairs in the Indiana Territory, the people of the lakes were ready to carve for themselves a future of their own from the destiny of the northwest.
In December, 1804, an assembly convened at Detroit. Two men, James May and Robert Abbott, had prepared petitions to congress, praying for the establishment of a sep- arate territory, to be known as Michigan. The petitions asked that the territory embrace all of Wayne county; and this had comprised since 1796 the area to the northward of an imaginary line drawn eastward from the foot of Lake Michigan.
On June 30, 1805, congress passed the act that brought the Territory of Michigan into being. A governor and three judges constituted for the new territory a legislature, which formally organized within a month from the birth of the territory.
Michigan then consisted of the area now embraced in the whole of the lower penin- sula of the state; the eastern half of the northern peninsula and that portion of the present states of Indiana and Ohio which lay north of the line running directly east from the foot of Lake Michigan. The eastern confines lay along the Canadian frontier, and this, under the Jay treaty, extended from Sault Ste. Marie, to the north of Mackinac island, and thence through the center of Lakes Huron and Ste. Claire and along the principal navigable channel of the Ste. Claire and Detroit rivers. On the west the territory was limited by a line run- ning nearly north and south, through the center of Lake Michigan.
To govern the territory were named: William Hull, governor; Stanley Griswold, secretary ; Frederick Bates, treasurer, and Augustus B. Woodward, Frederick Bates and John Griffin, justices of the supreme court. Among these men the judicial, legislative and executive functions of the territory were divided. The federal ordinance of 1787 was adopted as the underlying principles of law for the territory. Detroit, the most impor- tant settlement, became the capital.
Of these officers the authors of "Landmarks of Wayne County and Detroit" say :
"William Hull was a native of Derby, Connecticut, and was born on June 24, 1753, of English ancestry. Young Hull entered Yale College and graduated after a four years' course, when he was nineteen. He taught school and afterward studied law at Litchfield, and was admitted to the bar in 1775. He was elected captain of a Derby company, * which proceeded to Cambridge, then Washington's headquarters. *
* * It is said Hull was a brave soldier, but the only separate command with which he was entrusted was a force of four hundred men in an expedition against Morrisania, on the East river near Hell Gate, New York. In this affair he did not distinguish himself. * *
* At the conclusion of the war of the Revolution he settled at Newton, Massachusetts, and prac- ticed law. In 1793 he was appointed a commissioner to make arrangements
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with the British government for a treaty with the western Indians then at war with the United States, but nothing came of it. In the same year he was appointed judge of the court of common pleas and was also elected senator in the Massachusetts legislature. He was a popular man and was re-elected senator every year until he was appointed gov- ernor of Michigan Territory, by President Jefferson, on March 22, 1805. In the latter position he was appointed for three years and was reappointed for two successive terms. When he arrived in Detroit on July 1, 1805, he was a little over fifty-two years of age.
"Augustus B. Woodward, the chief justice or presiding judge, by virtue of his com- mission being the earliest, was a native of New York city. He held the position from 1805, when the territory was created, until 1823, when he was virtually legislated out of office,-a period of eighteen years. He commenced to practice law in Washington about
1795. * Personally and judicially the judge was a unique and interesting char- acter, and his name and fame are indissolubly connected with the history of Detroit.
"Woodward had a legal mind of no common order; he had great literary ability and fine executive and administrative powers, but his merits as a jurist and legislator were obscured by his colossal vanity. * No ruler of Detroit was ever so detested by the more intelligent citizens, but he nevertheless had many friends. His initiative in law, politics and municipal affairs was generally adopted. Complaint after complaint with reference to his official conduct went to congress, signed by the most influential citizens, but his influence in Washington was strong enough to enable him to maintain his position until an act was passed in congress providing that the people of the territory should elect their own legislature in 1824 and thereafter. His experience in trying to be elected dele- gate to congress, in which he was defeated twice, showed him that his career in Michigan was over. He resigned shortly after the act was passed, and went to Washington, where he was appointed judge of the Territory of Florida.
"Frederick Bates came to Detroit from Ohio in 1797 and engaged in mercantile busi- ness, improving his mind in leisure hours by studying law and history. He was post- master of Detroit from 1803 to 1806. Official honors then came thick upon him. In 1804 he was appointed receiver of the Detroit land office; trustee in 1804-5; United States territorial judge in 1805-6; and territorial treasurer during the same year.
"John Griffin, who was territorial judge from 1805 to 1823, was exactly contempo- rary with Woodward in that office. He was subservient to Woodward and invariably voted with him on the bench." Griffin was judge of the territorial court in Indiana before Michigan was formed."
Detroit, the frontier town, had for its citizens for the most part, men who were not perhaps as well versed in les beaux arts as were the governor and judges of the territory. The people were still very close to the traditions and institutions of the Old World. The general standard of public opinion had not at that time developed into that more generous American standpoint from which the rights of individual citizens came, later on, to be regarded. Rapidly changing forms of government, repeatedly shifting territorial confines, and the peculiar admixture of racial extremes tended toward an unfortunate condition,-a condition closely bordering on business, social and political chaos. In this state of confu- sion individual rights were freely violated by those possessed of sufficient power and the inclination to presume. Affluence and education were natural barriers which, while not always superficially apparent, came nevertheless to be tacitly felt in the general undertow. Citizens and petty officials alike, were accustomed to the recognition of more or less sharply defined lines of social demarkation which placed the common people and a quasi-aristocracy
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clearly apart. The phenomenal period of industrial advancement which was marked by the construction of railroads in the east and by that of the Erie canal, had not opened the gateway to the west. Communication with the frontier was still uncertain and difficult. The flow of sturdy, stable New England stock, perhaps the most potent factor in the real building of this part of the west, had not been started toward Michigan Territory. The actual moulders of an irresistible public opinion had not as yet arrived; there was no adequate defense against abuse.
Governor Hull, whose official mistakes can be termed errors only through a most generous application of charitable regard, proceeded almost immediately to vie with the chief justice in the establishment of a far from desirable record. President Jefferson, swayed unduly, it seems, by the intellectual attainments of his appointees, overlooked the necessity for sending well balanced, broad-minded officials to the west. Detroit and the territory became at once the victims of the arrogance, selfishness and personal vanity of Hull and Wood- ward; these men seem to have possessed between them all of these and even more unfor- tunate characteristics. Both were soon at loggerheads over petty differences of opinion which found origin in smallness and personal pique.
Of the events facilitating the usurpation of civil rights, perhaps no circumstance was more favorable to the officers of the new territory than the great fire of June 11, 1805. On that dark day nearly every citizen was made homeless and many saw their entire for- tunes swept away in a few hours' time, by the carelessness of John Harvey, a baker. In spite of the previous efforts of the trustees to provide against such a possibility, nearly the whole town was destroyed. Harvey, it seems, dropped the live ashes from his pipe into a pile of hay in his stable. Quickly the building became a mass of flame. Battering rams, a decrepit fire engine, the ladder corps and the bucket brigade proved ineffective. Before the excited inhabitants could realize their danger, flames leaped from roof to roof across the narrow streets. The sparks, drawn high in the air from the central conflagration, fell promiscuously, and every citizen was forced to seek his own home in hope of saving some part of his property from the general destruction. In somewhat less than five hours the stockade and every house and structure within its confines were reduced to smouldering ruin.
News of the disaster gradually reached the east and the Canadian cities, and, though money was comparatively scarce, contributions were received from Mackinac, Montreal, and other towns. Only a portion of this fund was spent for the relief' of the needy, in spite of loud protest, and though the population numbered at this time somewhat less than one thousand, much suffering resulted from the inability of the neighboring farmers to shelter the homeless. Many doubted that the city would ever be rebuilt and sought homes at Amherstburg and in the Canadian provinces in the east.
Shortly after the fire Judge Woodward arrived on the scene. preceding the governor by several days. Judge Bates lived here before the fire. Toward the end of June they attended an open-air meeting of the citizens held to consider plans for the rebuilding of the city. Though neither of the judges had as yet taken oath of office, they were quick to offer suggestions. They finally dissuaded the meeting from adopting a plan for a new city, based on that of the one destroyed. Both officers urged that the meeting defer all action until the arrival of the governor, who was expected momentarily. Governor Hull reached Detroit on July Ist, and, after a hurried conference with his colleagues, placed the arrangements for laying out the city, in accordance with hastily formulated plans, in the
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hands of Judge Woodward. A surveyor was obtained and after many perplexing delays actual work was begun.
On July 2d, the federal appointees formally took their respective oaths of office. On that day what is known as the rule of the governor and judges began with a vengeance,- a rule of presumption and bullying unequaled before or since that time in the United States.
The people, still stunned by the sudden severity of their losses, were only too willing to look to the territorial officials for succor and to accept blindly their advices. In their hour of stress the citizens allowed the administration of their affairs to be taken quite out of the hands of the regularly elected officers of the corporation. The governor and judges, prompt to avail themselves of such a situation, overlooked no opportunity to add to their own power and importance. No detail of government, however trivial, escaped them.
As the days lengthened into weeks and still no plans for the new city were forthcom- ing, the sturdier of heart began to chafe at the delay. They were tired of their tempo- rary shelters, built for the most part of bark and canvas, along the river front. They became more and more anxious to hew new homes for themselves from the timber of the forests. The governor and judges, however, insisted on carrying out their own ideas, regardless of the desires of the people.
During the time of his residence at Washington, Judge Woodward had been the close friend of a French engineer who had assisted in planning the arrangement of the streets and avenues of the capital. These plans followed closely those adopted in laying out Ver- sailles, whose streets radiated from the palace of the French king, Louis XIV. Wood- ward had been much interested in the surveying of the streets of Washington and now he persuaded Hull that the great fire had but paved the way for the creation of a new Ver- sailles in the western wilderness. Evidently the governor's determination on such a course was reached without delay, for he issued an order in September, prohibiting the cutting of timber in certain districts. This edict was followed by a direct proclamation to the effect that former property bounds would no longer be regarded. Finally Hull announced that no new houses could be built until the surveys were completed.
This meant that those remaining otherwise shelterless were to be forced to continue living in their flimsy shanties until it pleased the executive to parcel out allotments of land in accordance with his own ideas. Naturally such action resulted in bitter disappointment on the part of the citizens and in much severe suffering. Protest after protest brought no relief, and with the coming of winter the population was still further reduced by whole- sale removals from the town.
Realizing that they had no legal right to disregard the property rights of those who had acquired title to lands in Detroit prior to the great fire, the judges and governor proceeded to Washington to secure at least a nominal right for such action. Both Hull and Woodward left for the capital in November. Acting as lobbyists, they secured the passage of the congressional act of April 21, 1806. This provided for the adoption of plans for a new city in accordance with Hull's and Woodward's desires, and for the sur- veying of what has been known as the "Ten thousand acre tract,"-an area adjoining the commons and the old city.
The act further provided that one lot within the bounds of the new town was to be conveyed to every resident over seventeen years of age who resided in the old town prior to the fire. Such grants, however, were limited to those who were citizens of the United
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States. In addition, the governor and judges were empowered with the privilege of selling lots in the "Ten thousand acre tract" for the purpose of obtaining funds for the erection of a jail and court house.
The fact that apparently sufficient funds, derived in accordance with the system of taxation, were at the time available for the erection of the public improvements, tends to substantiate the boasts credited to Judge Woodward, to the effect that his lobby had been most effective in favorably influencing congressional legislation. However much of veracity there may have been in these statements, certain it is that the territorial officers were openly and collectively charged with conspiring wrongfully to dispossess the people of their property claims and drive the inhabitants from the territory.
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