The Nankin Township Historical Society

Yes, Ypsilanti is outside the periphery of Nankin Township but being where it is in proximity to the general area of said place it has many ties to the community. As such, anytime I have an opportunity to pick up relics from the town I will do so and feature them here. I've had such opportunities numerous times in the past year and took full advantage of the fact. I don't know the campus of Eastern Michigan University very well and it's probably a hate crime to post these vintage photographs of EMU coeds "misappropriating the heritage" of the Huron Indian tribe but I would assume that they were just having fun, somehow, in the age before cell phones. I don't recognize the buildings and those who attend the campus and would have knowledge of such claim none. So until somebody happens upon this with pertinent information we're stuck assuming that these are former buildings of the Eastern Michigan University campus. The EMU jersey screams the 1970s but that...

Detroit Free Press , July 15, 1892 With the foreign namesake being what it is there was bound to eventually surface a story mixing the two Nankins. Not directly but indirectly through an English visitor to the Russell House in Detroit via China and Liverpool, 4 years removed. Myself, I've searched earnestly for just such a story and here we are having found it quite accidentally. The man, James B. Wylie, was headed to Buffalo and stopped over in Detroit en route. He related some stories of the brutality of China in regards to women, daily life, opium and even cannibalism. Speaking to the former latter, opium, it was quite curious that Mr. Wylie refused the porter his attempt to carry his luggage. Perhaps Mr. Wylie was making a few transactions himself in the illicit trade before going to Buffalo.

Detroit Free Press , July 8, 1934 In the Bible Tubal-Cain, the blacksmith, is said to have been the last surviving member of the race of Cain after the flood and the Supreme Hierophant or High Priest of commerce. Which, in the Masonic tradition, would be laboring to acquire truth and not worldly possessions or so says they. Tubal Cain Owen of Ypsilanti may have just been following in that true path. Except for the fact that he was a millionaire and the well dug (which by the way was 808 feet deep; ironically enough in the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences from 1912 the entry for Tubal Cain--a significant name in the Masonic Ritual (skilled craftsman)--appears on pg. 808) on his Ypsilanti property on Forest Avenue was meant as a drinking source, in a city of dark and foul-smelling water, but instead became a mode of commerce for the ambitious man. The Ypsilanti flood came in a crystal clear water reservoir that when exposed to the air turned black but after a few min...

Detroit Free Press , May 10, 1872

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...

Detroit Free Press , August 18, 1897 As stated previously, if Elizabeth Soop was a witch she practiced in her spare time. Her day job for many years likely consisted in aiding her husband and family in their many business enterprises from the Hawkins House in Ypsilanti during the Civil War, to his dining Hall on Washington Avenue to the Cass Avenue Hotel venture which he retired from in 1895. Detroit Free Press , September 5, 1897 Mrs. Soop and her daughter-in-law launched the Imperial Cafe in the summer of 1897 at 214 Griswold Street. I couldn't fi nd much on the enterprise though there were several other Imperial Cafes in the area during this time, as well as before and after. All seemingly on Cass Avenue and at various addresses. Whether they were related or not is inconsequential though it's doubtful that they were a franchise. Detroit Free Press , December 24, 1899 I still haven't found any incidents of seances or black magic rituals by Mrs. Soop. Maybe she only be...

Detroit Free Press , January 12, 1958 The Eisenlord House hotel was built and opened in 1861 by William Eisenlord. Detroit Free Press , December 30, 1885 It became the Windsor Hotel in December of 1885 when it changed hands to John White and his lessee R. J. Wilson. By 1886 it had been sold to E. C. Harvey & Son and was being billed as the Cass Avenue Hotel. Detroit Free Press , June 15, 1886 It went through two other owners before Frederick Soop took proprietorship sometime around 1890-91 and held it until September 13, 1895 when he supposedly retired. The building sat vacant for close to a decade before being purchased by a Kansas City firm which re-billed it the Hotel Morgan.  Detroit Free Press , July 29, 1903 The Morgan was torn down in 1929 to widen Bagley Avenue. One highlight from Soop's tenure was the hosting of jurors from the Hull murder case in 1891. I did find several adverts from the fall and winter of 1896 stating that Soop and his sons were running the St. Jame...

What does the grave of Elizabeth Soop have to do with the Eisenlord House in Detroit? I'll fill you in as inertia allows. Much of what I research is absolutely happenstance meanderings that have no pattern. This entire several hour gleaning began with a simple search for Rawsonville after similar searches for "Eloise", "Catville" and others failed to bring up anything.    The Northville Record , October 18, 1889 Up popped the brief snippet of Soop Cemetery being located in Rawsonville from The Northville Record from 1889. A nothing mention which conjures up the mysterons of the internet who chase hobgoblins in the wind and whose flitting intellects necessitated me to start my own groups to get away from them. While I love the ideal of haunted locations and believe that I have had so-called paranormal experiences I also think that they have more to do with psychological reactions to locations and not free-wheeling entities known as ghosts. Anyhow, Elizabeth Soop...

My happiness of finding an old defunct hamlet called Catville was short-lived as the town eventually evolved into New Boston. Which is sad but it also led me to this section of a longer article called History of Detroit's Real Estate that was written concerning a paper by C. M. Burton on just that topic read before the Detroit Real Estate Board in early 1900. Detroit Free Press , April 8, 1900 Mentioned are several defunct villages, name changes and neighborhoods. Included are Belgrade (bet. Delray & the Rouge Bridge), Cassandra (a mile & a half west of Woodward & the 10,000 acre tract [didn't this get mentioned recently?]), Mount Pleasant (sec. 31 within the town of Romulus), Truaxton or Truago (which became Trenton), Vreelandt (Flat Rock), Michigan City (Rawsonville), Grand Port (Ecorse) and Catville (New Boston). ( enlarge )

I bought these first two carte de visites, among a lot of nine, from an eBay dealer who apparently purchased them from a Livonia or Plymouth, Michigan estate sale. They have a possible relation to a man named P. Galt Miller. Beyond that they remain unnamed. A short biography of Stephenson along with some example of his other work gleaned from across the internet will follow this next CDV.   "Jerome J. Stephenson was born in 1847 in Michigan. He married Betsy Frazier in 1871 and bought Edwin P. Baker’s studio in 1872. He operated his studio in Ypsilanti until he sold it to Frank P. Ford in 1903. At one point during his operations, for a limited time he offered a free cabinet card photograph to anyone over sixty years of age. It seems like he was a man before his time by being one of the pioneers of  'senior discounts'." "This cabinet card portrait features a young girl intensely staring at the camera in a studio in Ypsilanti, Michigan. The child is wearing a dark...