Odd Gravestone Baffles Inkster Cops / Vanishing Gravestone Back at Last

Detroit Free Press, September 24, 1958

We live such strange lives, especially myself, and for some the
weirdness continues after death. For Bertha Heiden it was likely less
anomalous than our hectic lifestyles but when death came to her she
found a pleasant resting spot in semi-seclusion on a hill at Bell Branch
Cemetery in Redford, Michigan overlooking the future dead in the back
lots of the graveyard.

Detroit Free Press, September 25, 1958

Some twenty years after she was laid to rest in 1930 a thrill-seeker or deviant robbed her stone from its perching
spot off Telegraph Road and absconded with it. In the spring of 1958, 7
years after the heist, the stone suddenly appeared at the Inkster
Police Station, nearly 10 miles away. There it sat leaning against a
cell block wall for half a year before somebody decided to find out
where it came from. A newspaper article in the Detroit Free Press
solved the matter within a day when Heiden's granddaughter, Geraldine
Watson of 26305 Fenkell Avenue, came to claim the marker.

Today, it's still on that hill. After hopelessly searching for an hour,
and almost resorting to homemade dowsing rods in the section that the
Michigan Roots people luckily documented back in 2013 (or else I never
would have located it), I stumbled upon the stone.

It's a bit
cleaner than when I found it lying on its backside under a small tree
that I had repeatedly overlooked. After preparing the stone for a crude
resetting with a garden trowel I noticed that there was something hard
and dense beneath the dirt.

A bit of digging unearthed both the base and
some bricks which were originally put there to stabilize the marker. It
obviously wasn't a permanent fix but the old bricks were a pleasant
surprise. I'll have to look up their markings, too.

A good
cleaning with Orvus and D/2 should somewhat restore the stone to its
former glory. Cleaning it was the last thing on my mind after a 10 hour
drive through storms and multiple lengthy construction delays yesterday
but it was the right thing to do after uncovering the strange story.

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A Dudley Randall Poem in Milestone 2

I bought this Milestone 2 poetry Magazine at a Livonia estate sale this week. Milestone was the literary publication of Wayne (State) University and this second issue dates to 1949. While I don't recognize most of the names, Dudley Randall was both a nationally known poet and the librarian for the Wayne County General Hospital at Eloise via the Wayne County Library System. The poem featured is The Southern Road which was a revised version of the completed poem from 1948 that h as a handful or two of word differences between the two. I don't know if Randall edited the poem for later collected works editions or earlier but this link features it in its likely final form in 2009. Neither version particularly enchants me but the block print in the magazine is an added bonus.

A Cabinet Card of a Dead Man Lying in Repose From Wayne Photographer Susan Doolittle

The City of Wayne, Michigan was not a large village at the turn of the 20th century so it stands to reason that there wasn't a glut of photographers practicing their trade there. As such, the 3 cabinet cards and carte de visites that I own represents roughly a quarter of the early ones. Considering that the wives of Frank Hickok and William Corlett, first Village President of Wayne, took over after Frank's death in 1892 the list grows smaller beyond those two families. Had I snagged the Doolittle dead man cabinet card I'd be even that much more Wayne-rich in photographs. Speaking of Susan Doolittle, of whom I have learned very little about, it is interesting to note that Wayne had three women photographers in an era oft dominated by men in that very field. This photograph of a corpse is a startling example of her work.

Frederick Soop: Not An Equal Opportunity Restraunteer

Detroit Free Press , March 28, 1890 If you don't want to hear a racist tale of a suburban namesake then close your eyes now. As early as 1876 Frederick Soop had left his Belleville farm once again, having done a stint at the Hawkins House in Ypsilanti during the Civil War and the City Hotel in Detroit thereafter, and ventured off to Chatham, Ontario to run the Rutley Hotel , which was conducted as a Temperance House. Detroit Free Press , August 17, 1879 In 1879 he was searching for a good restaurant or small hotel to operate. Eventually he ended up on Washington Avenue near State Street running a dining hall which he ran until around 1890. Detroit Free Press , April 16, 1890 It was in 1888 when the aforementioned racial incident occurred at his dining establishment. It was then that William H. Haynes, a black doctor, sat down with his former classmate S. W. Barkwell for dinner. The men ordered but when the food was served none was placed before Mr. Haynes who, ironically, ha...

The Nankin Township Historical Society

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