The Nankin Township Historical Society

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'm committed to the Nankin cause but not $25 committed. Which is how much this 1932 press photo of the Rawsonville Hotel is going for on eBay. The back states that it was located 5 miles from Ypsilanti on the Huron River and was the residence of the Clarence Bennett. The property had been owned by Mrs. Bennett's father Edwin Barlow. Henry Ford also seemingly had a stake in the old hotel having converted a front upper room into a ballroom for children participating in old-time dances. No newspaper is listed on the print.

Detroit Free Press , September 15, 1848 I'm not sure why of all the stories that I've come across recently the one about Rawsonville and a Whig party meeting there in 1848 would draw me in but such is the case. Namely because the town is no more and likewise the political party. Furthermore, a Democrat derisively wrote the piece and within it he mocked the two young men from Ypsilanti who made the trek with an old wagon to the meeting on September 2, 1848. Being that these two young speakers, one a son of Dr. P of Ypsilanti and the other a son of Mr. P., were approximately 18 years of age--one had never voted and the other couldn't--the organizer of said meeting called it off and rescheduled for a few days later. On that day only 8 Whigs, including the aforementioned 3, and 18 Democrats showed up. The two young men spoke and at the end the Democrat felt sympathy for the supposed pitiful display of Whiggery.  Two months later Zachary Taylor became the second and final Whig...

This photo of the Milatz family east of Rawsonville, MI was taken on May 30, 1917. Rawsonville is a defunct town that mainly lies beneath Belleville Lake and the eastern portion of Van Buren Township. I don't know the geography of that area that well but I would assume that the body of water in the background is the Huron River.