A Talk on Ypsilanti’s Vanished Gardens

We walked up the three grey wooden steps of the stately-on-a-small-scale Grecian-style home and opened one of the narrow, tall storm doors. We’d come to the right place: lights yellowed the windows in the chilly March dusk. We pressed down the thumb-latch of the heavy inner door and eased it open.

It was our first visit to the Ladies’ Literary Club building on Washington, and a talk was scheduled here tonight. Under darkening indigo clouds and sheltered from a chilling wind, attendees would learn about vanished gardens of Ypsilanti’s past.

After chatting a bit with the speaker, James Mann, we greeted the three or four people who had already arrived and wandered off to explore the home’s first floor.

Once a private family home belonging to the Grant family, James explained, the paterfamilias had willed it to his son provided that he never marry during his mother’s lifetime. The son never did. Neither did he ever gain his father’s skill in real estate, James continued, but squandered money on “good living and bad investments.” After the mother died, the son was reduced to selling off the furniture piece by piece. He also dressed daily in formal tails and was known to hang around downtown on Michigan Avenue. He’d stare into a store window, James continued, for a good fifteen minutes, motionless, then move on to the next one. Eventually the son moved to a small second-story Michigan Avenue flat. He sold the house in 1913—luckily, the Ladies’ Literary Society bought it, thus helping to preserve the building to the present day.

The home’s caretaker, a cheerful, friendly woman, moved the coat rack blocking the stairway and said we could look around upstairs. We peered into a small bedroom and a larger one facing Washington, passing two locked doors.

Everywhere in the house, fancy woodwork bordered doors and windows, complemented by ornate plaster coronas of scrolling leaves around the bases of ceiling light fixtures. Money had been lavished on the interior in subtle ways: the slight zigzag in the carved window molding, the curious and dainty wooden vertical blinds, the generously wide stairway. From the outside, the home was simple, even austere. In the interior, however, no expense had been spared to create subtly luxurious surroundings.

James began his talk on vanished local gardens by discussing the gardens that once graced the city jail, now an artist’s studio, at 6 Cross Street. At one time the garden land sloped down to the river from behind the small jail building, but much of it was washed away in a 1905 flood, said James.

Mention of these gardens reminded me of a memoir, recently unearthed in the Archives, written by George Jackson’s granddaughter Minnie Lewis. She wrote, “No. 6 Cross Street was a show place all the years that Grandpa lived there. Its long flight of stairs lead down the east side of the building to a garden so pretty and old-fashioned that passers-by would pause, lean on the sidewalk railing, and admire his several flower-beds of multicolored varieties . . . his own make of lawn furniture, including two hammocks and swings seemed to invite the town folk to rest a spell, which many did.”

James turned to the well-trod territory of the gardens that once bordered the eastern side of the tracks near the Depot. They were the creation of onetime Scottish-born gardener John Laidlaw. Laidlaw created such floral extravaganzas as a replica of the battleship “Maine,” a log cabin rendered in sod, and a model of a locomotive crossing a bridge over Niagara Falls—with even the surging falls recreated in waves of flowers. James said that Laidlaw maintained all of the station gardens up and down the railroad in other towns and that Laidlaw’s Ypsi greenhouse harbored all of the plants required for every other station.

Neither claim is correct. Railroad gardens were maintained locally in each town. Niles, in particular, had gardens far more extensive than Ypsilanti’s, with a series of greenhouses maintained by its own gardener John Gipner. It is also clear to anyone with any gardening experience that Laidlaw’s lone greenhouse is not large enough to supply plants for any garden other than the one in Ypsilanti.

The Ypsi greenhouse stood until the 1950s, said James, when it was either torn down or disassembled. “The foundation is still there,” he added.

James last addressed the onetime science gardens on the grounds of EMU, in which students received their own plot for botanical experimentation. The gardens were later covered by the erection of Hover Hall. Next mentioned was the onetime EMU fountain that stood near Cross Street within sight of the Water Tower. This ornate iron creation, said James, was the gift of the class of 1888 (actually 1898), and was removed in 1961 to a fate unknown. James showed a photo of onetime natural sciences professor and garden director William Scherzer standing in front of a bank of spiky flowers. Whispers of “iris—those are iris” wafted among audience members.

Soon the talk was over, and the audience rose to chat in clusters and move to the refreshment area set up in the home’s vast dining room. Outside lay the cold March darkness. Long gone were the railroad gardens, the campus garden, and the riverbank garden behind the old City Hall. Yet walking back to the car, in a yard dimly lit by a pink-orange streetlight, I glimpsed a clutch of stubby pointed shoots of tulip.

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives” and the upcoming “Hidden Ypsilanti.”

Don’t Fall for the ‘Bohemian Oats’ Swindle

“Say there, brother, don’t mean to interrupt your threshing. Got a minute? Nice to lean on this fence for a minute after going around the township all day.

“Now, sir, what would you say if I told you that these here seeds in this little vial could get you ten dollars a bushel? I know. Sounds ridiculous. Twenty, thirty cents a bushel for oats is the norm around here. But this here seed is that new strain of oats—maybe you’ve heard of them–Bohemian Oats.

“Now, I ain’t about to sell you no junk. These oats are serious business. Lotta farmers got rich on these. Take a look at these testimonials. Here, take a look at this contract. Got your official notarized gold seal right there. You can see for yourself what it says. I do hereby agree to purchase, next fall, the crop of Bohemian Oats you raise, and pay ten dollars a bushel, minus a 25 per cent service charge. Yes sir, we’re talking ten good American dollars. What do you say? From the looks of your fine farm here, I’m sure you have an extra acre or two to try it. You can’t lose—anything you grow I’ll buy for ten bucks a bushel. OK, sign right here.”

In the 1870s and 1880s, numerous Michigan farmers fell for the Bohemian Oat swindle. Silver-tongued salesmen singled out the area’s leading farmers and approached them to extol the merits of the miraculous oat.

The swindle was elaborate, stretching over two years. After securing a signature on a contract, the salesman gave the farmer a supply of Bohemian oat seeds to plant.

The following fall, the salesman came back to buy, as promised, the farmer’s crop of Bohemian oats at the fabulous price of ten dollars a bushel—minus the salesman’s cut.

Except that by this time, the farmer’s neighbors, perhaps less successful and eyeing the money, clamored to buy the crop as seed for their own lucrative crop of Bohemian oats.

The salesman agreed. A flurry of fancy contracts, signatures, and the entire crop was sold, doled out in small portions to the farmer’s neighbors, who anticipated huge profits when the salesman came back next fall.

The salesman thanked the new farmer-investors, pocketed his bankroll, and hightailed it to the nearest depot, to hop on the next train.

He never came back the following fall.

One of the many Bohemian Oat companies was incorporated in 1884 and headquartered in Ypsilanti. At least, it claimed it was based here. It never had a brick and mortar office downtown. Nor did it advertise in local papers. In fact it appeared to be a rather vaporous concern until its president was arraigned on charges of fraud, as documented in the December 15, 1887 Pinckney Dispatch.

“The first conviction in Michigan of a Bohemian oats agent, for obtaining a signature to a promissory note, under false pretences, occurred in the circuit court, for Genesee county . . .” said the paper. “The case was that of the people vs. Alfred W. Hamner, representing the Bohemian oats and cereal company of Ypsilanti. The complaining witness was Abram Tittsworth, a well-known and well-to-do farmer of Atlas township. The case occupied two days in trial and excited widespread interest . . .”

This Ypsilanti company did not limit itself to fleecing Michigan farmers, but ventured far afield, as far as New York State. “A curious case of speculation has been brought to light here by the arrival in the city of W. H. Clark, a wealthy farmer of Groveland, Mich,” reported the December 1, 1886 edition of The American Florist, reprinting a Rochester, New York newspaper article. “Clark, it appears, was induced to enter with others into a large grain speculation two years ago, buying a large quantity of oats of an agent of a concern calling itself the Bohemian Oat and Cereal company, located at Ypsilanti. The agent sold the grain to Clark for $10 per bushel, and gave him a bond that the company would this year sell for him double the quantity he purchased at the same price per bushel. About a month ago the agent appeared and sold the double quantity to other farmers. The company cleared 33 and 1/3 per cent, profit in cash, and Clark was given notes which he has found to be nearly worthless. Clark pursued the officers of the company to this city, and intends bringing the matter into the criminal court. The same scheme has been worked extensively in western New York, and interesting developments are expected. The company cleared over $100,000 by its scheme in Michigan.”

“The farmer is induced to buy ten bushels of the oats for one hundred dollars, by the hope of selling twenty bushels for two hundred dollars,” reported the March, 1886 issue of the American Agriculturalist magazine, “and he thinks that this is guaranteed to him by a ‘bond,’ given him by the seller. This ‘Bond,” in spite of its abundance of green and red inks, its very broad seal (intended to look like gold, but is only Dutch metal), and the bold signature of a secretary, this ‘bond,’ so-called, has no more binding effect than a mere memorandum.”

Coverage of the Bohemian Oat swindle began surfacing in numerous other agricultural journals in the late 1880s, with exhortations to area farmers to eschew the golden promise of the miraculous oat and its accompanying fancy contracts and gilded promises.

Bohemian Oats even surfaced in Michigan Supreme Court proceedings in 1890. The complicated case centered on the issue of fraud surrounding the issue of notes, the then-equivalent of checks. Boiled down into a nutshell for the sake of sparing the kind reader the dizzying particulars, the whole Bohemian Oats scheme failed the smell test, and the lucrative scam died away.

By the turn of the century, the Bohemian Oats scam was extinct. Plenty a smooth-talking sharper had made his pile and disappeared, and plenty a greedy farmer had fallen for the swindle. But what was true in the 1880s is no less true today—there’s no free lunch. Reader, if some honey-tongued salesman leans over your fence and promises you an exorbitant return with a miracle seed, and flaunts some fancy-looking contracts with gleaming golden seals, you’d be best off sending that con man down the road on his merry way.

Don’t fall for those old Bohemian Oats.

Ypsilanti’s Venerable Ark

Think back for a moment to the long-ago days of Sunday school. Quiz: Name a large and ancient wooden structure that had something to do with water, that contained extremely varied contents, and that moved from one place to another. It ended up on higher ground than its starting point. Near the end of its journey, it served as a launch pad for exploratory birds.

This description applies to the Biblical boat you thought of and to the huge onetime secondhand store at Washington and Pearl called, by weirdest coincidence, “The Ark.”

The Ark was built in 1837, the same year Michigan became a state. Its original site was on the now-vanished Water Street just east of the river. It was originally intended to serve as a tannery, where cowhides could be processed into leather.

Its site was in those days well removed from the few buildings that would grow to become downtown Ypsilanti. The site was likely chosen on purpose. Tanneries were smelly places, where piles of cow skins were scraped of their remaining flesh and soaked in vats of chemicals in order to process them into leather. A location downstream from downtown meant that meat scraps and used-up chemicals could be drained into the river without creating a stench in the stretch of river traveling through town.

In the mid-1800s, John Howland opened another tannery on the northwest side of the intersection of Forest Avenue and the railroad bridge, today the site of the Farm Bureau silo. Like the Water Street tannery, it was located on the fringe of settlement, for good reason. “The stench around [Howland’s] tanneries was terrible,” reads an undated local newspaper article from the Archives. “The odor often penetrated into the district surrounding Forest Avenue.” Howland’s tannery began producing leather goods in the 1870s, notes the article, up until 1918, when the Farm Bureau took over the site.

It may be that How land’s tannery siphoned business away from the Water Street site, or it may just be that the Water Street site never became fully operational. Perhaps the financial troubles of “The Panic of 1837” played a role. In either case, sometime before 1851 the building was disassembled, moved into the downtown area, and reassembled on the southeast corner of Pearl and Washington.

Shortly after its move and reassembly, the huge fire of 1851 swept through downtown Ypsilanti. “The city made heroic efforts to stay the flames,” wrote Harvery Colburn in his “Story of Ypsilanti.” “Ropes were fastened to the building known as ‘The Ark’ on the southeast corner of Washington and pearl, and futile efforts were made to pull it down. The fire, however, did not reach the building.”

The Ark stayed in business for the next 70 years. For a while it served as a blacksmith shop. Eventually it became what it is remembered for, a secondhand shop selling furniture, household goods, and a wide variety of other items.

The century turned and the Ark still stood in its historic spot. By now it was looking a bit decrepit, with ill-fitting window frames, missing panes of glass, uneven siding, and shreds of old posters dangling from its exterior. On the front of the building near the roof, a mannequin of a man dangled, wearing a sign advertising Smith Brothers’ cough drops. The Ark’s day was almost over.

Its swan song came in the form of pigeons.

“Joe Sim of 364 16^th Street, Detroit, is interested in carrier pigeons,” said the June 19, 1911 Ypsilanti Daily Press.

“To teach them to fly long distances and return to their home, he brings a basket full of them, about 20, out to Ypsilanti, and lets them loose,” continued the paper. “Several people were seen Sunday morning standing by the ‘Ark’ intently looking up into the ethereal blue. It was about 8 o’clock. The pigeons were circling higher and higher above the city. They refused to light on the ‘Ark’ or return to it. These sensible birds, Joe says, will take about fifteen minutes to get their bearings. They were released at 7:45 and sure enough at 8 o’clock Joe announced, ‘They’re off, they will be home by 9.’”

Just a year after the pigeons’ departure, the Ark was torn down and a new building was built on its site. One of the city’s longest-surviving buildings was no more.

Weird, Vanished, and Forgotten Jobs from 1892 Ypsilanti

Could we time-travel to 1892 Ypsilanti and stroll around town, we’d notice differences in the streetscape and in the fashions. But the single largest difference would be in the sphere of work.

For example, almost no one commuted out of the city limits to their job each day. The majority of men and women with a job walked a few blocks or just across town to reach their place of employment. Many went home for lunch.

Another major work-related difference was the number of manufactories in town. These included four boot and shoe makers, three bakeries, a book bindery, a box factory, a stone carver, and a foundry.

Also included were makers of gasoline furnaces, painted portraits, cabinets, furniture, harnesses, copperware, carriages, clothing, wagons, cigars, candies, dresses, saddles, tinware, carpets, dress stays, handles, guns, hats, and beer.

Yet another thing we’d notice on an 1892 walk around town would be the number and nature of full-time jobs that have vanished.

Starting our walk at River and Forest Avenue, one can see the large malt-house next to the ornate red brick home of Frederick Swaine, maltster. In the malt-house, Frederick soaked grains in water, preparing them for conversion into alcohol. Today the malt-house is gone, but the Swaine home remains, rescued from demolition some decades ago.

Walking west on Forest and crossing the river, the little brick structure housing the city’s electric company comes into view (today the office of Ypsilanti’s Department of Public Works.). The building has a row of windows along either side. Peeking in, one can see an enormous metal frame supporting a huge circular structure. This is the dynamo that creates the city’s limited electricity supply. And peering at a control panel is a man in work clothes. It’s Charles Hyzer, the dynamo tender.

Born in New York, Charles moved to Ypsi with his parents sometime before the late 1880s. He lived alone at 24 East Michigan Avenue but moved in with his family by 1900. Single at 43 that year, he shared a home with his 69-year-old father Joseph, a teamster, and 66-year-old mother Martha on Olive Street.

Charles walked the short distance from Olive to the dynamo-house each day. Sometimes the neighborhood kids would come by to visit him and press their pocket knives on the dynamo to make them magnetic.

Leaving the dynamo-house and heading to Huron, the giant knitting mill and underwear factory on the left is impossible to miss. Just southwest of the Forest Avenue bridge, the mill employs dozens of women, most of them in charge of one large floor-mounted knitting machine.

Heading south on Huron, one passes Cross Street, where lives the city’s only female mail carrier, Miss Nannie Sewell at 215 East Cross. Continuing on, Pearl Street comes into view. At 517 Pearl is the home of 63-year-old city watchman Henry Boutell. A former farmer and a Civil War veteran who was wounded in battle, Boutell was promoted to brevet captain before mustering out in 1865. He lives with his son Henry from his first marriage, his second wife Catherine, his father-in-law Horace, and a servant, Rickie Frick.

In his patrols around the downtown area, Henry regularly passes the Dress Stay Manufacturing Company at 101-105 Huron just north of Pearl. The company made thin steel rods ranging from a few inches to a yard long, tucked into fabric sleeves and sold to be sewn into dresses to give them shape.

Hattie Allen was one of the 1892 workers at the factory, walking to it each morning from her home at 230 Grove Road. She lived on Grove with her parents Hiram and Elizabeth, her sister Jessie and Jessie’s husband Adam, and the couple’s daughter Lyleth. After the dress stay factory closed shortly after the turn of the century, Hattie remained in the family home. Her parents and brother-in-law died. By 1920, only Hattie, 50 and unemployed, lived there with Jessie and Lyleth. One of Hattie’s near neighbors was DeWitt Matthews at 159 South Grove, a successful apiarist and gardener who sold honey, fruit, and beekeeping supplies.

While passing the dress stay factory and heading towards Michigan Avenue, a man walks by with large papers rolled under his arm and carrying a bucket containing a brush. His clothes look old and worn. It’s Charles Bowerman, local bill poster. His job was to glue up posters and notices around town.

Charles’ pay was meager, and he shared a home with his father David, stepmother Kaziah, and David’s adopted daughter Etta. David worked odd jobs, Kaziah took in washing, and at age 15 Etta cut tags at the Scharf Tag, Label, and Box Company. The family scrimped to get by.

Turning east on Michigan, a clanging sound grows louder. It’s from John Lang’s blacksmith shop at 25 East Michigan Avenue. Just around the corner is his home at 9 River, not far from his neighbor Alexander Fee, a worker at the short-lived Ypsilanti Condiment Company in Depot Town.

Born in Germany in 1847, Lang emigrated in 1853, married fellow emigrant Jane, and had 4 children. At his shop, John worked iron and made horseshoes, and nailed them on his customers’ horses.

But he seems busy at the moment—though he won’t be for much longer—so we’ll leave him for now, after this short glimpse at the vanished jobs of 1892.

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales from the Ypsilanti Archives.” Have an idea for a story? Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

The Candy-Man’s “Shotgun Divorce”

At first it was just a job in the candy store at 15 North Huron, and an easy and safe one for a girl in 1911, compared to the jobs for girls in the recently-closed knitting mill over on Forest Avenue or even those in the box company around the corner on Pearl. Carrie had to make sure the boxed candy was displayed nicely, keep the cigars replenished, check that the fruit was fresh, and make an occasional ice cream soda for a customer at the counter. It was pleasant, and it was exciting to work in the city instead of being stuck at home on her father’s farm east of town. The money helped her family and gave eighteen-year-old Carrie a feeling of independence.

Perhaps too much independence, at least by her father’s standards.

The store, on the east side of Huron just north of the present-day Dalat, was managed by 32-year-old Andrew Pastorino, who had immigrated from Italy in 1902. A short man of medium build with brown eyes and black hair, Andrew rented rooms above the store. He shared them with his 21-year-old nephew Salviatra Annrelare, who’d immigrated in 1908, and his 18-year-old niece Mary Annrelare, who’d come the year after Salviatra.

Andrew appreciated his clerk Carrie. As time passed, he began to find her attractive. Soon he was thinking of her after hours, in his rooms upstairs. He was in love.

Although she was roughly half his age, Carrie was aware of and reciprocated his feelings. She knew her family wouldn’t approve. Andrew and Carrie’s feelings for each other deepened. They made a decision: they would elope.

The couple discussed how to sneak out of town for a Detroit wedding. Carrie would board the eastbound interurban at the downtown waiting room at 13-15 North Washington a block from the candy store (site of the recently-closed Pub 13). Further east on Michigan Avenue, Andrew would board the car at the car barns just east of the river. Then the couple would travel on to Detroit and the clandestine wedding.

Carrie’s father had other plans.

On the morning of February 8, 1911, Carrie waited nervously in the interurban waiting room for the 8:45. She spotted city policeman Officer Pierce, who on seeing her, abruptly strode off.

Carrie’s father had come to town early that day, hitching his horse at the Hawkins House hotel at 216 West Michigan Avenue. He was keeping an eye on the departing cars to see if his daughter would show up to board one.

Now here he came into the waiting room with Officer Pierce.

“‘Why, hello, Daddy!’” Carrie said, as quoted in the February 8, 1911 Ypsilanti Daily Press. “‘I’m just going to the grocery store!’” The paper continued, “[She] hurriedly made for the Huron Street crossing thinking that she could avoid her father and yet catch the car. But her father overtook her at about the middle of the block and the car passed on. The groom was seen getting on at the car barns but alas, as the story goes the trip was made alone . . .”

Carrie was whisked home in her father’s buggy.

The next day, Andrew was behind the counter at the candy shop after his lonely ride home on the interurban. He was on the phone, and nearby customers eavesdropped. One of more of those customers would later phone or scurry to the Ypsilanti Daily Press around the corner at 301 West Michigan Avenue and dispense a tidbit of gossip regarding the candy-man’s telephone conversation. The paper ran another story on the thwarted couple.

“‘You can’t see me.’ ‘But I must see you. ‘No, I tell you, you can’t see me; if you come out here father will shoot you.’”

The February 9, 1911 paper continued, “It was at a candy kitchen on Huron street that one part of this conversation is reported to have been overheard this morning. The assurances pro and con came and went over the telephone to the amusement of the parties who chanced to be present . . .”

The paper went on to say, “The distracting experience of boarding a limited D. J. & C. car on which he had so fondly hoped to find a pretty fiancée and being forced to ride some distance alone on account of the unforeseen appearance and intervention of the fair maiden’s papa, seemingly proved a painful event for the candy manufacturer and the telephone was the best medium of consolation to which he could resort. Just what the next step will be is a difficult problem to solve but friends say that neither of the interested parties are of the disposition to give up easily and further interesting developments are still expected.”

“Father seems to have a gun and according to gossip, would be quite inclined to use it, so that the poor merchant’s position is apt to be either sad or perilous, or possibly it may be both.”

The Press was not finished with this story. On the following day, it published a third article about the affair which included responses from Carrie’s father, Allen Stewart. Allen claimed that he’d been in town that fateful morning just by coincidence. He denied that he knew of any business with Andrew, and denied he had a gun. He told the Press “[N]othing was really said about shooting.”

Carrie never came back to the candy store.

But Andrew’s broken engagement would not leave him a bachelor long. In about a year’s time, he married one Evelyn. Carrie also married soon after. The candy-store romance with its attempted elopement was over, though it was likely, by either Carrie or Andrew, not forgotten.

Laura Bien is the author of “Tales of the Ypsilanti Archives.” Contact her at ypsidixit@gmail.com.

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