The Nankin Township Historical Society

I bought these three carte de visites on eBay and should probably scans them but phone photos will suffice at this point. This first shot of a young teenage girl was shot by photographer E. B. Lewis whose studio was on the first floor over the Express Office. The next two shots are of two young men who were photographed by Sam B. Revenaugh. The latter card states that the studio was on the Ground Floor Gallery, wherever that might be. I should be embarrassed of myself for not doing even the obligatory cursory glance on the named photographers but I haven't and have zero motivation to do so.

Detroit Free Press , September 15, 1860 Now this is the kind of story that I like. That of utter nonsense disguised as patriotism. While there are many articles mentioning the actual raising of a so-called Douglas Pole most were very brief snippets. After browsing many mentions of Douglas Poles I got wind of the idea that it was a political matter and it made more sense. Not much but some. As in Lincoln vs. Douglas for President. Still there are hardly any mentions of the actual purpose though I did track down a 1950 article discussing some of Iowa's notable raisings. This would be an interesting topic for a book.   The Des Moines Register , May 17, 1950 Anyhow, a Douglas Pole was raised in Livonia on September 15, 1860 at the store of Horace Heath near the Nankin Post Office. The raising of Lincoln Poles in the area apparently didn't go as smoothly. Or at least the Free Press chose to highlight the failures since they were opposed to the so-called black republicans (anti slav...

The front cover is a curious place to place a bookseller label but save for that fact I wouldn't have grabbed this detached front cover of Political and Constitutional History of the United States by Ralston Hayes and Oie Worth Stephenson (1918) from a pile of papers at an estate sale. George Wahr of Ann Arbor was the publisher. The Slater Book Shop was located on State Street in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It is the building with the third awning from the left.

While national politics lead us away from our lives and towards war, local politics generally fortify us despite the divisions in philosophy, or so we'd like to think. Which is why I've long been enamored with local history over national and global histories. All are important but the local is severely undervalued and largely ignored. "Oh, Ypsi girls are very fine girls, With codfish balls they comb their curls." Gundella's connections to Marcello Truzzi, EMU professor and sc holar, have piqued my interest in Ypsilanti and the university in its many permutations.  While looking for information on the Michigan State Normal College News from the late 1800s I found this interesting spat between coeds from that institution and "Michigan Men" from 1940. An article in the Michigan Daily , a student newspaper, claiming that the girls of Normal College weren't as pretty as they used to be sent a throng of coeds to Angell Hall in a bus to protest the ...

#416 of the Gundella Letters enters the realm of Creepersville. As such, I've crossed out the name and address of the Ann Arbor author. He requested a spell and made a phone call to the good witch hoping to woo Jane Fonda when she came to Detroit sometime in the early 1970s. From all indications she did not respond to his request in writing and hopefully contacted the police because this guy sounded either delusional or heavily medicated. Detroit Free Press , November 20, 1970 Based on the dates of letters 415 and 417 this would date the letter to November 20th or so of 1970 when Fonda spoke at the University of Detroit. The appearance included musical acts the Stooges, Alice Cooper and Damnation. Detroit Free Press , November 28, 1970

I won't belabor the Gundella letter thing too much (but will leave it for my blog on her ) and will leave the subject for the time being after this post. This letter seemingly indicates that Truzzi and Gundella first corresponded in October of 1969 and likely met shortly thereafter. There's nothing groundbreaking in the letter from my standpoint since I've researched Gundella for close to 10 years but a few things of note are as follows. 1. That her sister believed that she was less-than-authentic and was too theatrical, despite not being a witch herself (many relatives were including their mother, grandmother and great grandmother, among others so the sister was aware of how a witch "should" behave.). 2. That she was partial to Italian men! She was not only a ham but also a flirt. Good to know.