USA > Michigan > Washtenaw County > Past and present of Washtenaw County, Michigan > Part 75
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Commercial, under the name of the Ypsilanti Sentinel-Commercial, under which name the pa- per is still published.
YPSILANTI COMMERCIAL.
The Ypsilanti Commercial was founded on March 1, 1864, as a republican paper, and was the first paper in Michigan to denounce Andrew Jackson as a traitor to the republican party. The Commercial at first was called the Ypsilanti True Democrat which was quickly changed by Mr. C. P. Patterson, who founded the paper, to Ypsi- lanti Commercial. The office at which it was pub- lished had been used in the publication of a news- paper known as the Ypsilanti Herald, which had been established in 1858 by Norris & Follett and purchased in July, 1860, by James MeCracken, and shortly afterward sold to Captain Woolsey who carried on the publication of the Herald until some time in 1861. The material of the Herald constituted the material with which the Herald was first issued. Mr. Patterson, who is still living, at present in Florida, was a man with the courage of his convictions. Many a battle royal was fought out by him and Editor Wood- ruff in the columns of their respective papers. He was forty years old at the time he established the Commercial. He was a good business man, and while a good republican was not always in accord with the party leaders. He was a leader in the temperance reform movement which swept over Ypsilanti in 1872 and 1873. Eventually he took his paper from the ranks of republican papers. Previous to starting the Commercial. Mr. Patterson, after graduating from the Uni- versity of Michigan, had graduated from a theo- logical seminary and acted as pastor of churches in Pontiac and Grass Lake. He retired from his editorial labors in 188 -- , selling the paper to the Coe brothers, who immediately devoted more space to purely local news items and less to editorial opinions. They, in turn, sold the office to Harold Sayles, an evangelist, and in time the office came under the ownership of G. M. Monroe who, in 1901. started a daily paper called the Ypsilanti Daily Commercial. A few months' publication of this daily proved so costly that Mr.
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Monroe gave up the publication of the paper, first ceasing the publication of the daily, which passed into the control of the Democrat Publishing Com- pany of Ann Arbor, who united it with the Senti- nel under the name of the Ypsilanti Sentinel- Commercial. Thus the two old papers of Ypsi- lanti, which were rivals for so many years, are now published as one.
THE YPSILANTIAN.
The Ypsilantian was started as an independent paper in January, 1880, by Marcus Tullius Woodruff, who had been educated in the office of his father in the Ypsilanti Sentinel. It at once assumed the lead among the Ypsilanti weeklies in the giving of items of local news, those little happenings which go to make up the ordinary life of a community, and was really the first of the modern style of papers in Ypsilanti, the Senti- nel and the Commercial at that time adhering to the old-fashioned editorial style as molders of public opinion instead of chroniclers of local hap- penings. After a few years Mr. Woodruff sold his paper to George F. Smith and Perry F. Pow- ers, who made a great weekly out of the Ypsi- lantian. Mr. Powers sold his interest to Wil- liam M. Osband who eventually purchased the interest of his partner, Mr. Smith. Mr. Osband still continues to publish the paper which remains, as it has been since its purchase from Mr. Wood- ruff. a stanch advocate of republican principles. Mr. Osband is assisted in the conduct of the paper by his talented daughter, Miss Marna Os- band.
YPSILANTI PRESS.
The Ypsilanti Press is a daily paper started in 1904, by a stock company composed prin- cipally of the business men of Ypsilanti un- der the management of Frank Coddrington who resigned the state editorship of the Detroit Free Press to become the principal stockholder in the Ypsilanti Press Company. The Press from its inception has been an excellent local paper and has had a more generous share of advertising patronage than was given to most of its prede- cessors in the newspaper field in Ypsilanti. Mr.
Coddrington still manages the paper and it seems to have become a fixture in Ypsilanti journalism.
TIIE DEXTER LEADER.
In 1868 Norman E. Allen published a paper at Dexter called the Dexter Bulletin semi-occa- sionally. This awakened a feeling in Dexter that the town needed a regular newspaper and S. C. Alley furnished the capital for one being started, and on January 28, 1869, the first number of the Dexter Leader was issued, with Alley & Wick- mire as publishers. In May, 1869, Mr. Wick- mire retired and in the following September Mr. Alley sold the paper to Archibald McMillan, who afterward became a well known newspaper pub- lisher at Bay City. In September, 1876, the Leader was sold to Orville E. Hoyt who, in May, 1880, sold it to Rev. David Edgar. It was soon purchased by Mr. Allen, who, in 1890, sold out to John M. Thompson, the present proprietor, who had a few months previously started a rival paper in Dexter which he united with the Leader on purchasing the latter, retaining the name Dex- ter Leader. Mr. Thompson had published a paper in Alpena and is a good newspaper man.
CHELSEA HERALD.
The Chelsea Herald was originally the Grass Lake Reporter, a paper which had been published by Andrew Allison in Grass Lake from 1867 to September, 1871, when the office was moved to Chelsea and the Chelsea Herald was started. Mr. Allison continued to run the Chelsea Herald, ex- cept for brief periods when it was published by the Rev. Thomas Holmes and Mr. Emmons, un- til 1898 when the paper was sold to Thomas Min- gay who continued its publication until the close of 1905. when it was purchased by and united with the Chelsea Standard under the name of the Chelsea Standard-Herald.
THE CHELSEA STANDARD.
The Chelsea Standard is one of the largest and most pretentious papers of Washtenaw county. It has been published since the '80's under the
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ownership of the Rev. Thomas Holmes and after- ward of O. T. Hoover, at present postmaster of Chelsea and who ran it for a number of years in an able manner, and Glen Stimson, who pur- chased it in 1902. It has recently acquired the Chelsea Herald, and from its office is now issued the Chelsea Standard-Herald. It has an excel- lent circulation and is a newsy paper.
THE MANCHESTER ENTERPRISE.
The Manchester Enterprise is at present the oldest paper in Washtenaw under a continuous management. It was started in October, 1867, by George A. Spafford who was aided in its es- tablishment by Mat D. Blosser. Mr. Blosser purchased the Enterprise in 1868 and has con- tinued its sole editor and proprietor from that time to this day. The Enterprise has been Mr. Blosser's life work, and it has ever been an inde- pendent paper which has well represented the community in which it is published. It has been a good proposition for a good business man and Mr. Blosser has built up a better newspaper property than is ordinarily found in villages of the size of Manchester.
SALINE OBSERVER.
The first paper started in the village of Saline was called the Saline Review and it was estab- lished by David Sherwood in 1872. After pub- lishing it in Saline for a year and a half Mr. Sherwood moved the office to Plymouth. In 1875 a second paper in Saline was established by IV. W. Secord but this venture lived for only a year. It was called the Saline Oracle. On De- cember 1. 1870. Louis J. Lesimer started the Sa- line Standard, which. in January, 1879, was merged into the Ann Arbor Democrat. The fourth paper to be started in Saline, and the only one that lived, was the Saline Observer, which was started in November. 1880. by Lebaron & Company. publishers, and George Nisely, editor. Mr. Nisely soon became the publisher as well as the editor. He was a newspaper writer who filled the Observer with a greater number of local items than any other village paper in Washtenaw. In 1888 the paper was purchased by Andrew J.
Warren who still continues its publication, and never in its history was it a better newspaper proposition than it is to-day.
MILAN LEADER.
The Milan Leader was started in 1881 by A. B. Smith and A. E. Putnam. After a few months Mr. Smith acquired Mr. Putnam's interest and continued to make an excellent paper of the Leader for seventeen years. During this time he purchased the Milan Journal which had been run for about a year by George W. Burnham, and consolidated it with the Leader. In 1898 Mr. Houseman purchased the Leader and made a model paper out of it until he sold it in Septem- ber, 1905, to Frank L. Gates. All the owners of the Leader have been good newspaper men and the Leader has been a paying newspaper property.
Today in Washtenaw county the newspaper field is occupied by the Ann Arbor Daily Times, the Ann Arbor Daily Argus, the Washtenaw News and the Michigan Daily, at Ann Arbor. and the Ypsilanti Press at Ypsilanti. These are daily papers, the Michigan Daily, however, not being a general newspaper but simply a student publication devoted to college news exclusively. The weekly papers of the county today are the Ann Arbor Argus-Democrat, the Ann Arbor Courier-Register. and the Washtenaw Post at Ann Arbor: the Ypsilantian and the Ypsilanti Sentinel-Commercial, at Ypsilanti: the Manches- ter Enterprise: the Chelsea Standard-Herald ; the Saline Observer: the Dexter Leader ; and the Milan Leader. These papers cover the field in Washtenaw as well as any county in the state is covered by its local papers. Never in the history of the county has there been a time when the news has been more carefully gathered and printed than it is today, and the historian of the future will have less trouble in arriving at the daily life of the community in the future than in the past.
CHAPTER N.
POWER DEVELOPMENT OF THE HURON RIVER.
A history of the development of power on the Huron river is a history of the industrial de-
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velopment of Washtenaw county. The Huron was first utilized for sawmills, and a number of these mills were erected at Ypsilanti, Geddes and other points on the river. Almost at the same time small grist-mills were erected on the banks of the river, although for the first year or two of the early settlement the pioncers were obliged to go to Detroit. then a journey of several days, to have their grist ground. Following the grist-mills came the more pretentious flouring mills, woolen mills, carding mills-all small in size and giving employment to but few people. As the county grew older and became one of the greatest wheat-growing counties in the na- tion-in fact, one year leading every other county in the United States in the amount of wheat produced-the flouring mills were pros- perons and ran full time, and many men be- came well-to-do in operating then. But with the opening up of the wheat fields in the far west- ern states and the coming in of machinery which made it possible to cultivate fields thousands of acres in extent, and with the cheapening of transportation which brought this machine grown wheat from land of small value per acre but extremely productive, wheat-raising became less and less profitable in Washtenaw, and the decadence of the flouring mills set in. To some extent their place was taken by paper mills and pulp factories, but the quantity of material for wood pulp was limited, and today there is no pulp factory in existence on the Huron river. Were it not for the development of electricity. the value of the water power of the Huron river would have diminished greatly in the past few years. The wheat now raised in the county is not sufficient to supply at all times the flouring mills of Ann Arbor alone. While flouring mills still flourish to some extent on the Huron river. they are not nearly as numerous as formerly. The development of electricity has made the water power of the river extremely valuable. Formerly the power had to be utilized on the spot. Now it can be transmitted long distances from the source of production ; can be utilized in running electric roads, for manufacturing power. for lighting cities, and is as useful away from the river bed as it is upon its very banks. Hence
it is that today a scheme of river development is in progress, having for its object the raising of the headwaters of the river and the location of numerous large and high dams at convenient distances along the river, making immense res- ervoirs of water, all to be utilized by one com- pany for the production of power, immensely greater in amount than has ever yet been pro- duced by the river. This scheme is, at the date of this writing, in progress of being carried through, and it has caused an increase in the value of the river for many purposes. In the future the river is to furnish not only power for flouring mills, carding mills, or saw-mills, but also for every other kind of manufacturing in- dustry. If the development of the river is fully carried out on the lines planned, power can be furnished to manufacturing industries at a cost which will make Washtenaw attractive to those factories where the cost of power is a large ele- ment in the cost of production. It will make Washtenaw dependent for its industries not upon those whose productions are for mere local use, as was the case in its early history, but upon all the divers kinds of manufactures for general use. It is not too much to say that the develop- ment of this power, as planned, will make manu- facturing centers of Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti and the vicinity.
The Huron river proved a great attraction for the first settlers of Washtenaw. It was really the thing that brought hope to them within the confines of the county. Its beauty proved ex- tremely attractive to all the land prospectors who were looking over Michigan, and all the early letters sent back east from this section are full of glowing eulogies of the beauty of the Huron. But the prospectors were an eminently practical people, and what appealed to them as strongly as the beauty was its utility for milling pur- poses. In several letters which we have examined it has been pronounced by the early prospectors as undoubtedly the best mill stream in the state of Michigan. One writer in 1829 says: "The Huron is very crooked, and with little exceptions is a continued rapids throughout the county, and there is every reason to believe that this county will ere long be an extensive manufacturing dis-
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trict." The Huron, its beauty, and its advan- tages, had much to do with Washtenaw being more rapidly settled than the other counties of Michi- gan. Within the past year there has been a re- turning realization. not only of the great beauty of the river itself. but of its possibilities for manufacturing. Plans are being now worked out for preserving and enhancing the great natural beauty of the river. and for the laying out of drives and walks to make it easier to witness its beauties. These plans are working side by side with the plans for flour development, and to some extent are dependent upon them.
The scheme, however, for deepening the waters of the Huron by means of large dams, and especially by damming the numerous lakes which form the headwaters of the river, and thus increasing the waters contained in these great reservoirs, so that the manufacture of power on the river can continue in all sizes, is not absolutely a new one. When it was broached before, however, it came not as a scheme for the increased development of power so much as a plan for making the Huron river navigable. The early settlers. as soon as they had got sufficient land under cultivation, to much more than supply the community, wanted a market for their sur- plus produce, but the cost of transportation upon what is now the Michigan Central. but which was then a road owned and operated by the state, was so great that the profits of the farmer on his surplus wheat were dissipated in getting it to market. Water appealed to him as the cheapest mode of transportation. The terri- torial legislature, before 1835. passed an act re- quiring that after a certain date all dam owners on the Huron river should construct locks for the purpose of enabling boats to pass up and down the stream. The next year the time for the construction of these locks was put off for one year more, but we have yet to learn of any such lock ever having been constructed.
In 1845 the people of the county, aroused by the high rates on the Central railroad, began looking for a cheaper outlet to the lakes. Wheat was selling for 10 cents more a bushel at Mon- roe than it was at Ann Arbor or Ypsilanti. for the reason that the Monroe buyers were able to
get their produce to Detroit. then the shipping port for Michigan, at a much less rate than the railroad would give. The consequence of this was that farmers within five miles of the city of Ann Arbor took their wheat in the fall of 1845 to the city of Monroe with ox teams. Monroe was the market for the entire southern part of the county. In August, 1845. a public meeting was held in Ypsilanti for the purpose of con- sidering what improvements, if any, could be made in the Huron river. A report was read setting forth the advantages and the feasibility of constructing a slack water navigation on the Huron. The demand for justice in freight rates on the Michigan Central, then owned by the state of Michigan, was allowed. It cost 25 cents to transport a barrel of flour from Ann Arbor to Detroit. 37 miles, while a barrel of flour could be transported from Albany to Boston, 218 miles, for the same money. At this meeting a committee consisting of W. A. Buckbee. J. M. Edmunds and John Van Fossen was appointed to survey and take levels of the Huron river be- tween Ypsilanti and Flat Rock, and to estimate the expenses of making slack water navigation between these points. This committee reporte.1 at a meeting held in the latter part of September. They found the fall in the river from Ypsilanti to Flat Rock. a distance of 30 miles, to be 102 feet and 6 inches. The channel of the river, they said, was uniform in width, varying at a trifle over 100 feet. The banks were high and ranged from 4 to 8 feet above low water mark. The committee recommended the improvement of the river by means of dams and locks so as to forni slack water to he not less than 4 feet deep on any part of the line.
The report of the committee will prove of considerable interest within the next few years. when the plans which are now sought to be carried out become operative. Hence, it will bear transcribing to our pages. The greater part of the report was as follows :
"With the judicious location of dams. little or no land would be overflowed. and but in one or two instances would any injury be sus- tained by owners of land along the line in con- sequence of raising the water to the required
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PAST AND PRESENT OF WASHTENAW COUNTY.
height, and in these instances the whole area of land injured could not exceed 125 acres. With a single exception, the people along the line are highly favorable to the project and will render all the aid in their power by surrendering right- of-way, and in several instances proffers of tim- ber, without charge for constructing dams, were made, and in two instances an offer to surrender such water power as might be created, and it is believed by the undersigned that a free grant of water power may be obtained in several in- stances ; the individuals justly conceiving that the increased value of their property consequent upon the improvement will more than counter- balance the value of the privileges surrendered. which, without such improvement, would be en- tirely valueless.
"To overcome the fall of 102 feet 6.9 inches would require 16 locks having an average lift of 6 feet each, which as per estimate marked ( 1) would cost each $1.500. $24,000
"To get sufficient depth over reefs and shallow places 13 dams would be re- quired from 3 to 6 feet in height, to cost as per estimate (B) each, $1,000 .. 13,000 "For the purpose of shortening the dis- tance by cutting off bends and for lo- cating around dams, about three miles of excavating could be made with ad- vantage, to cost as per estimate (C) ... 7,000 "To clear the river of flatweed, stone, etc., as per statement (D), per mile, $100 3.800
"Making four bridges over cuts, as per statement (E), each, $300. 1,200
"Total cost of construction. $49,000 "To this sum of $49,000 add the estimated cost of completing the Gibraltar canal from Flat Rock to Gibraltar. $25,000, and we have the sum of $74,000 as the sum total of the entire cost of water communication from this village to the mouth of the Detroit river; one of the most spacious and commodious harbors on Lake Erie, accessible at all times during the seasons of navi- gation.
'The interest on this sum, $74,000, at 7 per
cent per annum is $5,180; the repairs, attend- ing locks and superintending generally may be estimated at $5,000, making the sum of $10,180, which amount must be realized as the gross in- come of the work in order to make the invest- ment a profitable one for capitalists.
"To ascertain whether this sum can be an- nually collected in the way of tolls it will be necessary to estimate from the best data at hand the amount of business that would be done upon the work when completed.
"For this purpose the undersigned have thought it proper to divide the country to be affected by this improvement into two sections, as follows :
"First: From Gibraltar to Rawsonville, a dis- tance of 24 miles, extending 40 miles each way from the river, making 480 square miles of ter- ritory. Second: From Rawsonville back in the interior 20 miles, that is 15 miles beyond the termination of this place, 75 miles each way from the river, and a section of country 30 miles by 20, equal to 600 square miles.
"Of these two sections of country we can say that they are unsurpassed in point of fertility, all things considered, by any other territory of equal extent in the western territory.
"The first described portion of this territory is thinly populated and could not therefore be expected to furnish at first a large amount of agricultural products for exportation, or to im- port a very large amount of the products of other states or countries; but the improvement of this section is already fairly commenced. It is covered with an immense growth of valuable timber which, with the opening of this new, convenient and cheaper mode of transportation, and the employment of the immense water power that would be created along the line, must find its way in the shape of lumber, timber, staves, etc .. to the eastern market to an almost incalculable extent. The whole of this timber is comparatively valueless and is really an ob- stacle to the settlement of the county, but open this outlet for it and it will at once be shipped to a very large amount and become a source of revenue to the county and an inducement to the settlement of the whole section, as the
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PAST AND PRESENT OF WASHTENAW COUNTY.
timber alone will nearly or quite pay the ex- penses of clearing the land. The committee be- lieve fully that the tolls on lumber, staves and what agricultural products would be shipped from this district, and on the merchandise for which it would be exchanged will more than pay the $5,000 estimate for the annual expense of repairs, etc. For every $10 worth of timber ex- ported, an acre of land will be brought under cultivation, by which means, as the shipments of timber become less, its place will be supplied by agricultural products so that this section may be relied upon to furnish at all times a sufficient amount of transportation to meet the necessary annual expenditures along the entire line, still leaving $5,180 of interest to be defrayed by the business of the second district described.
"This district, as above stated, covers an area of 600 square miles over the whole of which good roads and an enterprising and industrious population are to be found,-one-half of this section is estimated to be under cultivation, equal to 300 square miles : and it is ascertained as per statement (F) that each square mile, having as much land under the plow as farmers usually have when they wish to clear no more, that is, when all is improved except what they wish to reserve for wood, timber, etc., requires 100 tons of transportation annually, which, being multi- plied by 300, the number of square miles under consideration, gives 30.000 tons of transporta- tion annually, which, at a toll of 25 cents per ton, gives the sum of $7.500 as the net income of the proposed improvement, or a fraction over IO per cent on the cost of the entire work from this place to Gibraltar. Another statement. (G). made from a different view, is prepared showing nearly the same result.
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