The Nankin Township Historical Society

Sometimes these posts write themselves. Unlike The Detroit News new carrier card , that I found last time at John King Books and returned to the owner, Fayetta Crowley Thurber won't be receiving this 1916 return notice for the Aivanti Chartres book Marie Tarnowska from the lending library at Dennen's Book Shop which she took to Gratiot Beach in Port Huron for the summer. The store was located at 19 East Grand River at the foot of Woodward and was a new and rare bookstore. Detroit Free Press , December 9, 1917 The store also sold stationary and party decorations and did engravings along with the circulating library. Detroit Free Press , May 1, 1917 Fayetta Crowley married Donald Thurber, son of the private secretary to President Grover Cleveland, and was well-connected socially being a friend of opera singer Enrico Caruso. Detroit Free Press , April 30, 1911 While the card spells it out the ne wspaper traces her stay with the Lafayette Crowley family (her parents) in Port H...

Since I think Donald Trump is a liberal you probably don't want my views on the New Deal. Or as the poet E. E. Cummings called it the "Nude eel". Which is saying a lot since Cummings was a communist during WWI. In 1931 he traveled to the Soviet Union and witnessed firsthand the horrors of the Soviet State. His contempt for FDR and his socialist policies were shared by many poets and writers of that era and they excoriated the President, oft openly referring to him as a cripple. Livonia Township Democrats were obviously on board with the New Deal since it was their party platform and they likely won in a landslide as the Democrats held large majorities in Congress. The flyer likely dates to the 1930s when the New Deal was implemented.

I know nothing about the Eckles Oil Division of the Consumers Petroleum Co. of Plymouth but they had a "peace of mind" wise owl fuel budget plan and this was a brochure to procure said service. Since there is a 5 digit zip code it's not older than the early 1960s. Here's the flat scan of the foldout. No clue where I picked this up at but I would assume it was in Plymouth in some desk drawer or in a book.

I found this booklet at a Farmington estate sale a week or two ago. There were 3 scattered among the house and at one point I had all of them but acquiesced to sanity on this one occasion and put them back for others to collect. If you've been around newspapers, especially the Detroit dailies, and books long enough you know the name Lilian Jackson Braun. She of the long-running mystery series The Cat Who... which I never read a page of but have sold many a copy. She was also th e Good Living section editor for the Freep for 30 years while writing columns as well. This booklet appeared in that paper, likely in segments. I'm dating it to 1966 or so based on the information in the booklet. It states she had been there 17 years at the time of its publication and had published two novels.She started in 1948 and published her third novel in 1968. Anyway, here are the covers and first 4 pages.

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...