The Nankin Township Historical Society

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...

If a thing isn't obscure or of a vintage that is difficult to find then I don't really have much interest in researching or previewing it. In this case the book, author and the bookplate qualify.   I originally picked the book up because I thought that the Boscobel was a ship that sank in Detroit and lay just beneath the water and emitted ghostly lights at night but I was wrong. Though there was a boat-of-sorts, possibly even a ship, by that name which sank it wasn't the one th at I recalled. So the name of an obscure little town in Wisconsin which was written about by a priest suffices to please the eye.    So, too, does the bookplate of this Grosse Pointe Farms structure settled within a block of architectural elegance in that city north of Detroit.    The poems don't particularly resonate with me but given my cretinous nature that is a given. Another thing of note, to me, is that this was a former University of Detroit book as well as ex-libris of the Conv...