The Nankin Township Historical Society

Merry Christmas Elva Brockmiller of Dearborn from Elsie of Inkster, Michigan.

This flier was in the large collection of Dearborn Historical Society magazines that I bought at their garage sale last spring so I'm assuming that it was an insert into one of the back issues. It's a public service announcement for a free viewing of Alistair Cooke's "America" 12 part film series at the McFadden-Ross Museum in Dearborn. I would guess that it dates to the 1980s or so.

As I've stated in other groups dealing with the dead, ghosts & other subjects of the macabre, the easiest funerary pieces to procure are remembrance cards. I likely found this in a book at the Farmington estate sale and tossed it into my pile of papers but don't remember. It's for Edward Franczek who died January 3, 1968. He was 40 years old, having been born on December 6, 1927, and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery. I found an obituary in the Freep that states he lived in De troit at 4125 Lawndale and lists family members but no cause of death. His funeral was handled by the Edmund S. Lesney Funeral Home at 13201 W. Warren Avenue in Dearborn. The phone number was LU 1-0200. Detroit Free Press , January 5, 1968

Situated across the street from the Ford Motor Company Central Office Building, the Rotunda was originally located in Chicago at the site of the World's Fair in 1934. Henry Ford liked the building so much that he had it dismantled and shipped to Dearborn. It became a tourist attraction (the 5th largest in the US ahead of such stalwarts as the Statue of Liberty and Yellowstone Park) and was beloved by metro Detroiters for its annual Christmas shows that began in the 1950s after an extensive remodeling of the building. Coloring books were given away to young visitors and this was the last one distributed before the building was gutted by flames.

Detroit Free Press , February 4, 1859 So maybe my idea for this sort of Historical Society isn't so far afield. It seems that our suburban forebears of the county Wayne in 1859 tried to form their own county named Washington. It was to be comprised of the townships of Livonia, Taylor, Dearborn, Nankin, Brownstown, Redford, Plymouth, Canton, Sumpter, Huron and Van Buren. According to the article below the townships included were all part of the Third District in Wayne County elections. They met at the J. L. Robert's Hotel in Wayne in September of 1852. Detroit Free Press , September 7, 1852 Originally, they proposed some parts of east Washtenaw as well but those inhabitants weren't having any of it. The bill easily passed the Senate but stalled somewhere because I could find no further hits.  Within the new by-laws was the provision that all paupers and persons residing in the County House and in jail who were not residence of the new Washington County would be returned t...

scroll through the pages with the arrows at the middle edges of the book See what happens when I have time to organize things! An article on the DUR interurban system that ran through the area between Detroit and Jackson and locales in-between as featured in the Winter 1971 edition of The Dearborn Historian . Of course, the various rails traversed the entire country but our main concern is the immediate Detroit area. Note the photos of the Westwood stop in Inkster and the few of Eloise among the mostly Dearborn stops.

I can't recall where I found this flier but since it was stored away in a box that I scavenged through after many years in storage it was mostly likely another of my ephemera serving as a bookmark finds. My guess is that it's from the 1950s though it could well be from the early 1960s. I can't vouch for whether the people shown on the flier are local, national or international members but it seems likely that they'd use local folks for their recruitment campaigns. The address shown on the flier, 1034 Monroe Boulevard, is in Dearborn. The Young Women's Christian Association began in London, England in 1855 under the direction of Emma Roberts and Mrs. Arthur Kinnaird. The American branch of the organization formed in Boston and New York City in 1858. For the past 150+ years they have been pioneers in the fields of race relations, labor union representation and the empowerment of women.  Some of their accomplishments include holding the first interracial conference in...