The Nankin Township Historical Society

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...

Detroit Free Press , September 5, 1908 Mrs. Belle Hawley was seemingly always at the cusp at having it all: love, money, health and happiness but couldn't quite get there. She had modest wealth and a marriage to a well-to-do saloon keeper Edward Hawley but couldn't keep him. After dying in a barroom brawl with his brother James, Hawley left nothing to his erstwhile wife. A frequent occupant at the County House along with her sister Mary Glenn she had been let out of the facility a few weeks before her untimely death. Though seemingly afflicted with heart troubles she chose to be healthy over cared for and died from an aortic "aneulism" after ignoring the doctor's office for the comforts of the Continental Hotel at 55 Cadillac Square. She had blamed her sickness on an accidental poisoning but an autopsy said otherwise. She was 45 years old.