Ruth, Esther and their father Alfred Tuttle

Arthur was born in 1868 to Ogden Valorious and Julia Elizabeth (McArthur) Tuttle on the family farm near Leslie. He climbed quickly up the ladder to success.

• In 1895 he graduated from the University of Michigan.
• In 1898 he was elected Ingham County Prosecutor.
• In 1903 he married Jessie Beatrix Stewart.
• In 1904 his daughter Ruth was born.
• In 1905 his daughter Ester was born.
• In 1907 he became a senior partner in the Lansing firm of McArthur & Dunnebacke and was elected to the Michigan State Senate’s 14^th district.
• In 1911 President Taft appointed Arthur U.S. District Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.
• In 1912 he became a federal judge for the eastern district of Michigan.

Arthur earned a reputation as a “stern” judge, administering severe sentences for “white slavery” cases via the Mann Act. He was applauded and disparaged in 1924 for proscribing former Hamtramck Mayor Peter C. Jezewski a two-year stay in Leavenworth prison for his part in a “beer ring”.

Arthur also declared the only death sentence to be carried out in Michigan since its statehood. Upon recommendation from a jury, Arthur condemned Polish immigrant and career criminal, Anthony Chebatoris, to death after shooting a bystander during a thwarted bank robbery in Midland, Michigan. He was hung at Milan Federal Prison on July 8, 1938.

Arthur again condemned a man to death in 1942, sentencing a German born Detroit restaurant owner, Max Stephan, to hang for assisting an escaped Nazi WWII pilot. Stephan was the first person in the country to be convicted of treason since the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794. FDR later commuted the sentence to life in prison.

Arthur remained a Federal Judge until his death in 1944 and is now buried in Leslie’s Woodlawn Cemetery. He lived long enough to see his daughters graduate from the University of Michigan Law Department, open their own firm – Tuttle & Tuttle — and marry in a dual wedding.

Sources Consulted
Lansing Capitol News 10/3/1930
Lansing City Directory 1934-35
Let the Record Show by Richard Frazier and David Thomas
Michigan Bar Journal: Michigan and Capital Punishment by Eugene Wanger, September 2002
University of Michigan Archival Finding Aid of Arthur J. Tuttle Papers

National Library Week

Mrs. Groves and her first grade class visit the Carnegie library in 1959

Ever since it was founded in the 1800s, Lansing has boasted some form of library. In the very early days people paid a subscription fee to borrow books, typically ten cents a week. The first non-fee public library opened in 1882, when the Ladies Literary Society donated 3,000 books to the Central High School to be used for both students and the general public.

After outgrowing that space, the library was moved to the City Hall in 1897 — in a secured room inside the jail! By the early 1900s it was clear that the library needed its own place. State Librarian Mary C. Spencer wrote a letter to philanthropist Andrew Carnegie asking for funding. When Carnegie agreed to provide $35,000 for a new building, the city furnished a site. That building, at the corner of W. Shiawassee and Capitol, opened in 1905. It still stands today on the edge of the Lansing Community College campus.

Postcard of the Carnegie Library

By the late 1950s, the library once again needed a larger space. In 1957, the Lansing Board of Education began working with citizens’ groups on plans for a modern building.  A bond issue passed in 1961, and a site was chosen at the corner of Capitol and Kalamazoo.

The new library opened in June of 1964, with a distinctive white-tiled façade that featured logos from major publishers. Many of its services were new for the time: handicapped access, a collection of audio-visual items and a drive-up window. Over the years more branches were added, including a bookmobile, a South Lansing branch and a branch inside Foster Community Center.

For most of its history, the Lansing library system was funded by the public school system.  By the 1990s the schools could no longer afford that expense. A plan was formed to create a district library system, which would merge the Lansing libraries with those in Ingham County. In 1997, voters approved a millage for this plan and the Capital Area District Library was born.

Downtown Library under construction

CADL now offers 13 different locations as well as a huge collection of books and eBooks, many outreach services and the latest technologies. But our mission is the same as that of the earliest libraries — to provide access to ideas and information, support continuous learning, and enhance the quality of life in our communities. And that’s a great thing to celebrate!

To see more pictures, go to the Ford Ceasar Lansing Schools Photograph Collection.  From the The Forest Parke Library & Archives, Capital Area District Library.

- James M., David V. and Anne R., Reference Librarians @ CADL 

Springdale Farm in 1889

He graduated from Lansing High School, received an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and then, in 1904, graduated from the Michigan School of Mines, now Michigan Tech. After working several short-term positions in the U.S., Africa and Europe, his first long-term job was in 1911 establishing a coal mine on Spitsbergen, an island in the Svalbard archipelago. Turner was in command of this mining community, nearly a thousand miles north of Iceland’s tip.

With the outbreak of World War 1 and scarce resources, the owners decided to sell the mine to Czar Nicholas II of Russia. Turner then boarded the ill-fated RMS Lusitania, en route to St. Petersburg. As the ship was sinking, he secured a seat on a lifeboat only to capsize and swim to another, making him one of 17 to survive. After recuperation he sailed to Bergen but was diverted off course by a Zeppelin bombing attack. He then traversed by train to St. Petersburg. By then the Czar had fled and no one had authority to make the final payment. Returning to Norway he secured a deal with the National Bank, Prime Minister and King Haakon VII of Norway to purchase the mine. After eight days of negotiations and transaction Turner left for a new job.

Turner returned to what was once Springdale Farm and purchased 163 acres. He was then appointed Chief of the U.S. Bureau of Mines by Herbert Hoover. Turner had not lived in Lansing for decades but stated in a 1952 Lansing State Journal article, “I confess to a soft spot in my heart for the old place.” For much of the mid-20th century Turner owned and operated his own engineering firm in New York but periodically returned to the farm and planted over 200,000 trees.

In November of 1952 Scott Turner sold the property to the City of Lansing with the stipulation it remain a park. In the late 1950s the newly appointed City Parks Director, Carl Fenner, began developing what we would now recognize as the Fenner Arboretum.

Scott passed on July, 30 1972, the day before his 92nd birthday. He lies next to his father and grandfather, near his wife and overlooking the old family farm. Turner’s words of wisdom include, “Study fact, analyze information, get advice. But the final decision on any next step is yours alone. Take it-and go ahead. Don’t look back or take time to be sorry.”

- David V., CADL’s Local History Librarian

Sources Consulted
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 07/23/1952
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 08/11/1966
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 02/09/1972
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 08/01/1972
1895 Standard atlas of Ingham County, Michigan
Lansing Illustrated 1889
Scott Turner: Distinguished Alumnus Award 1966 by Edna Yost
Images Courtesy of the Capital Area District Library Special Collections

Chances are no one has issued a complete history of your home and most people will never live in a historically significant structure. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t a story that can be told through the walls or the people who lived there before. There are resources available that enable you to become a home historian in order to weave the information into a narrative.

Most homes throughout Ingham County were built from 1910 to 1960, with a few predating 1850. There are numerous ways you can discover the date your house was built, including

• Contacting the assessor through the Ingham County Equalization Tax portal
• Searching your municipality’s website
• Search property transactions at the Register of Deeds in Mason
• Create an account on the online index called the Ingham County Register of Deeds

Once you know the built date, you can start documenting the owners by searching City Directories or phone books. CADL Downtown Lansing has City Directories that go as far back as the 19^th century. The Library of Michigan also has an extensive collection of rural community directories throughout the state.

Other Resources

• All Michigan plats and subdivision maps dating back to 1821, over a dozen years before statehood, are now available online from the Department of Labor and Economic Growth
• The State Archives of Michigan has a collection of Rural Property Inventories, which give a sketch of the structures on a property and provide field notes about the home.
• Capital Area District Library’s Special Collections section on researching your home has links to maps and the resources mentioned above.

For more information, attend the event Researching the History of Your Home at CADL Leslie on Feb. 7 at 6:15 p.m.

- David V., CADL’s Local History Librarian

In many accounts, including Burton’s City of Detroit , Howard is credited with officially adopting the name Republican Party and drafting the platform at the Under the Oakes convention in Jackson, Michigan on July 6, 1854.

Born in Shaftsbury, Vermont on July, 10 1805, the family lineage stretched seven generations in New England. His English forbearer, William Howard, settled in Braintree Massachusetts around 1644 and several relatives fought in the Revolutionary War. Howard attended district school supplemented by a private tutor, then enrolled in Brattleborough Academy. He graduated from Williams College in 1830, and went on to study law.

Portrait of Jacob Merritt Howard

In 1832 he moved to Detroit, was admitted to the bar in 1833 and became City Attorney by 1834.  In 1835 he married Katherine Shaw of Massachusetts and had seven children. He “took up arms” in defense of his adopted home during the nearly bloodless Toledo War. Several accounts report swine killed to feed troops as the only casualties. The exclusive human injury was that of a Michigan Sheriff, Joseph Wood, who was stabbed in the leg with a penknife by an Ohioan named Two Stickney. Stickney’s curious Christian name was given by his father, Major Benjamin E. Stickney “who fancied himself a military genius.” Major Stickney had two sons, the first named One Stickney. Two was the second.

Following the war Howard was a member of the Michigan legislature and elected to the U.S. Congress in 1840. By known accounts it is there he honed his thoughts on slavery and distilled what he believed to be the only answer to its eradication; war between the states.

Diagram of the Michigan Senate in 1857

In 1861 he was elected U.S. Senator following the death of Kingsley S. Bingham. He remained in the senate until 1871. During his first term he “is credited with working closely with Abraham Lincoln”. Howard was a contributor drafting and petitioning to successfully pass the 13^th Amendment, abolishing slavery. In the following years Howard was instrumental in drafting and passing the 14^th and 15^th amendments.

He died less than a month after leaving the senate on April 2, 1871. He is buried at Elmwood Cemetery in Detroit.

For more on Lansing’s history, check out the events happening at CADL.

Sources Consulted
Local history of Detroit and Wayne County by the National Historical Association, Inc.
Historic Michigan, land of the Great Lakes; its life, resources, industries, people, politics, government, wars, institutions, achievements, the press, schools and churches, legendary and prehistoric lore by Fuller, George N. ed.
History of Michigan by Moore, Charles
The city of Detroit, Michigan by Burton, Clarence Monroe
Michigan: On the road histories by Dave Poremba
Annals of Brattleboro, 1681-1895, Volume 1
Finding aid for Jacob M. Howard Papers at the Detroit Public Library
Michigan Manual 1857
Diagram of the Michigan Senate Courtesy of the Capital Area District Library Special Collections
Photograph Courtesy of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Brady-Handy Photograph Collection

Just west of the city is a tract known as the “Bogus Swamp.” The cause of this euphonious cognomen being bestowed upon a genuine swamp, was by reason of its having been, before the Capital was located, the rendezvous of a gang of counterfeiters and horse thieves.

The exact parameters of the bog are not known. From several accounts and period maps it appears to have stretched over most of the Westside Neighborhood, emptying northeast into the Grand River via Weinmann’s Creek and west to the current city limit, possibly beyond.

Longyear describes the quagmire as “an impenetrable morass, being covered with a rank growth of swampy vegetation that appeared to be as impregnable to the passage of anybody, but that of a snake or other reptile.” In Turner’s An Account of Ingham County from it’s organization he states; “[t]his land was covered by a dense growth of ash, elm and tamarack with thick undergrowth of brush and brambles.”  All known narratives chronicle a refuge of high ground somewhere in its depths. Upon this holm resided a “shanty” where the counterfeiters plied their trade.

Location and remnants of Bogus Swamp in 1859

Turner recounts the bandits kidnapping and nearly dispatching an unsuspecting interloper lost in the palustrine swale. The tale continues that one of the criminals was killed by an explosion and buried in an unmarked grave by his comrades. Records digress on the manner of how this venture ended. They agree by the early 1840s the peccant syndicate had dissolved.

A news article appearing in the State Republican November 6, 1894 tempts the Westside Neighborhood may still harbor a buried treasure from the ill begotten hoard. The article originally appeared in the Argus-Patriot of Montpelier, Vermont. It details a Mr. Charles Stebbins who would be leaving Montpelier shortly after the article appeared and traveling to Lansing, Michigan. His mission was to track down “a large sum of money in gold”, buried by counterfeiters.  Its location appears to be the Bogus Swamp. By then, 1894, it had been drained for years, used for polder farmland and was set for development; the Westmoreland Subdivision.

Stebbins came by this information from his then recently deceased “bachelor uncle” who possessed “a lot of old papers and a diagram of the locality.” His uncle had “guarded his secret with the greatest care.” The State Republican’s introduction to the piece names the Bogus Swamp as the probable locale and states “where recently [was] found several gold coins, molds and other evidences of the counterfeiter’s work.”

The details of how the counterfeiters conducted their affairs are more fleshed out in this story than other accounts, as is how they were discovered and disbanded their operation. Stebbins uncle, as the story suggests, was a member of the brigands. After encroachment from the law he fled to South America, “accumulated some fortune, and did not return until a short time before he died.”

The fortune, valued in the 1894 story at $10k, would today be worth slightly in excess of a quarter million dollars. There is no known record of the booty being discovered.

A Stebbins family, still represented in Lansing, came to prominence locally in the late 19^th century. They were successful in a number of ventures. By all accounts they settled decades after the nefarious gang. When asked about the treasure, a descendant of this branch, Win Stebbins, grinned and promised to look into his family genealogy, of which he is knowledgeable. Stebbins did come from Vermont. He does not know of a family legend concerning buried treasure or a relative with the name and appropriate age to the individual in the story. However, “Charles is a family name”.

If new evidence surfaces regarding the Stebbins family, historic local counterfeiters/horse thieves or buried treasure in the West Side Neighborhood. It will appear here.

Sources Consulted
Lansing State Republican Newspaper (11/06/1894
1895 Standard atlas of Ingham County, Michigan
1874 County atlas of Ingham, Michigan
1859 Topographical Map of Ingham County
A history of the city of Lansing, from the foundation thereof down to the present time by John Munro Longyear
An account of Ingham County from its organization by Frank Turner

In uniformed pictures Seymour displays a perpetual glower, even when paired with other officers. Thickly built, his eyes were narrowed in focus and intense. The wide, slightly bulbous, bridge of his nose suggests an intimate knowledge of fisticuffs.  Seymour’s handwritten description of his experience during the Lansing Labor Holiday in 1937 intimates a man versant with violence, giving and receiving.

Portrait of Chief Seymour

Accompanying a formidable presence Seymour was adept at politics. He served as Vice President and President of the International Chiefs of Police. Vice-President of the United States Calvin Coolidge thanked and praised him and the LPD in a letter dating from April 1922. That same month incoming Lansing Mayor Jacob W. Ferle began a “drive” to vanquish Seymour as Chief. Ferle was gone by 1923. Seymour retired in 1937, serving in the Detroit and Lansing Police Departments a combined 47 years. During his retirement dinner “crack” state police detectives and Ingham County Sheriff officers staffed the jail, detective bureau, drove patrol cars and walked the beat so the entire LPD could attend.

At some point Seymour became acquainted with and befriended a rising star in the U.S. Justice Department, John Edgar Hoover. In a letter dated August 16, 1933 Hoover thanked Seymour. “Upon my appointment as Director of Investigation in the Department of Justice, I want to express to you my sincere appreciation for the support and interest which you have manifested in my behalf.” Hoover had been named Director of the Bureau by Calvin Coolidge in 1924. Seymour appears to have served as a mentor. More than once Hoover asked Seymour for advice and counsel.

Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Chief Seymour

In a letter dated April 25, 1933 Hoover, sending well wishes to Seymour who was suffering from appendicitis writes the acting Chief of the LPD; “Chief Seymour is not only one of the most important factors upon which the structure of law enforcement rests in this county, but he has been a very loyal and sincere friend to me…if there is anything I can do in any way please do not hesitate to advise me.”

Several Christmas cards from Hoover to Seymour still exist.

Christmas Card from Hoover to Seymour

Seymour passed in June of 1953 at the age of 86. A story about his life and career appeared in the Lansing State Journal 11 months before he died. In the article he stated the “most baffling” case he ever worked on involved the murder of a Lansing “socialite” in 1922. She was murdered in her home on Britten ave, directly behind Seymour’s house. Seymour contends a carnival worker did the slaying.

“There was a carnival in town that day, and we got Sheriff Silsby’s blood-hounds and tracked the guy right down to the Grand Trunk Railroad on Washington. And as far as I know that is where the Britten murder case ended, never had another clue.”

Sources Consulted
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 04/22/1922
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 10/01/1939
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 07/22/1952
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 06/27/1953
Unpublished Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Alfred Seymour 05/20/1932
Unpublished Letter from Alfred Seymour to J. Edgar Hoover 07/11/1932
Unpublished Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Alfred Seymour 07/15/1932
Unpublished Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Alfred Seymour 07/27/1932
Unpublished Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Alfred Seymour 09/16/1932
Unpublished Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Alfred Seymour 04/25/1933
Unpublished Letter from J. Edgar Hoover to Alfred Seymour 08/16/1933
Unpublished handwritten description of the Lansing Labor Holiday by Chief Seymour
The story of Reo Joe : work, kin, and community in Autotown, U.S.A. by Lisa M. Fine, 2004.
The Boss: J. Edgar Hoover and the Great American Inquisition by Athan G. Theoharis, 1988
Unpublished correspondence of Alfred Seymour from the Capital Area District Library Special Collections
Images Courtesy of the Capital Area District Library Special Collections

According to the 1880 U.S. Federal Census Dr. Thomas Armstrong, an Eaton County resident, was born in Canada about 1852. He lived with his wife Hellen, six years his junior, and their one-year-old daughter Lizzie. In the 1895 publication, The County of Eaton Michigan, a short bio appears on Dr. Armstrong.

“Dr. Thomas McKee Armstrong is forty-four years old, and began his practice in Roxana twenty-one years ago, continuing seven years at the place. He then returned to pursue his medical studies at the Detroit Medical College, and graduated in 1882, locating at Grand Ledge for seven years, then he went West, returning about one year ago to the old camp ground. He was for a time a student of Prof. E. W. Jenks the President of the Detroit Medical College.”

Jenks was well known and respected as an author, educator, Gynecologist and surgeon.

A report from 1878 states Armstrong was charged with body snatching. This crime is mostly associated with the disinterment of fresh corpses for dissection. American medical schools proliferated in the early 19^th century. With this growth came the symbiotic need for cadavers. The Detroit Medical College opened in 1868.

Jailhouse where Dr. Armstrong's case was tried

An incident in 1878 prompted the tightening of many body snatching laws. Former United States Representative John Scott Harrison from Ohio died at the age of 73, May 25, 1878. Harrison is the only man to be the son and father of a U.S. president. His father was William Henry Harrison, his son Benjamin Harrison.

While accounts vary, the closest to primary sources tell the following tale. During Harrison’s funeral it was discovered the body of a recently deceased young man, buried close to Harrison’s grave, was stolen. The Harrisons knew the missing departed, Augustus Devin, and offered aid in the search. The entourage headed from North Bend to Cincinnati en route to the Ohio Medical College. A warrant was procured and a senior faculty member accompanied them.

They did not find the body of the young man. About to leave, John Harrison, brother to Benjamin, noticed a rope hanging down a chute. The party pulled it up, removed a sheet, and revealed the countenance of the elder Harrison staring back at them. The ghoulish purloiners had successfully extracted his corpse and delivered his carcass less than 24 hours after internment. He had been shaven in an attempt to hide his identity. The body of Devin was later found in a vat of brine at the University of Michigan Medical College.

Details in the Dr. Armstrong case are sparse. He was acquitted. However, not all public sentiment was with him. The Ingham County Democrat February 7, 1878 reports the following story.

“Tuesday forenoon Dr. Thomas M. Armstrong and Arthur Martin, of Roxand, had some words in H.S. McDonald’s drug store about the body snatching case, in which Armstrong is defendant and Martin used some very vile epithets whereupon Armstrong struck him in the face. Martin drew a revolver and attempted to shoot him, but was prevented by W[illia]m Kirchmaier knocking his arm, the shot going to the floor. No arrests have yet been made.

The case of Dr. Thomas M. Armstrong, which has occupied the attention of the circuit court since last Friday, was given to the jury yesterday forenoon, and they returned a verdict of not guilty in the evening.”

Sources Consulted
Ingham County Democrat 11/01/1877
Ingham County Democrat 2/07/1878
State Republican 11/02/1877
New York Times 5/31/1878
1880 U.S. Federal Census
The county of Eaton, Michigan : topography, history, art folio and directory of freeholders by Bullock, Taggart & Morrell, topographers and publishers, 1895
History of Detroit and Wayne County and early Michigan : a chronological cyclopedia of the past and present by Silas Farmer, 1890
Michigan medical news, Volume 1 edited by John Jolliffe Mulheron
From Grave Robbing to Gifting: Cadaver Supply in the United States  by Aaron D. Tward, MA; Hugh A. Patterson, PhD: Journal of the American Medical Association (online article)
Images Courtesy of the Capital Area District Library Special Collections

In September of 1962 the Lansing Human Relations Committee issued a statement deriding sectarian landlords and discriminatory real estate practices. In part, their official announcement read “[w]e hold that segregation based on race, creed, and national origin is contrary to God’s will and the American heritage of freedom”. Copies were sent to the Lansing Board of Realtors and local brokers.

Five years later, amid the controversial relocation of residents for the proposed 496 expressway, a story in the Lansing State Journal reported the construction of low income housing units, primarily for those displaced residents. Later that year the Lansing City Council unanimously adopted an Open Housing Ordinance. Stuart Dunnings Jr., notable local attorney and Chairman of the Human Relations Committee who drafted the ordinance said, a month before the vote, “I won’t say housing legislation will change [the] hearts of some people overnight, but it will provide a legal means to assure minorities the opportunity to rent or buy housing in areas of their choice without discrimination.” Lansing was the tenth Michigan City to enact such a measure.

Below is a 1949 Lansing real estate listing denoting in the special remarks “rented to colored”.

In previous decades the parochial slant appears even less obscured. The Standard Home Builder, a publication of Lansing’s Standard Home Real Estate Company, was published in the second decade of the 20^th century. During the development of the West Side’s Westmoreland subdivision the restrictions were published.

For much of the 20^th century realtors and developers did not produce overt discriminatory documentation. Often purposefully vague restrictions on subdivisions allowed for boards to restrict new residents citing nebulous reasons. Restrictive covenants, which are part of a deed, take many forms. They may “run with the land”, or be between the original seller and buyer. The covenant may limit details such as the number of buildings per acre, size or buildings, type of businesses allowed or if minority groups can own or occupy buildings. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled these race/ethnic restrictions unenforceable in 1948 (Shelley v. Kraemer).

In December of 1971 an article appears in the LSJ detailing techniques some local realtors and lenders used to circumvent the housing ordinance. However, the local ordinance combined with the Fair Housing Act of April 1968 appears to have curtailed egregious offenders, opening home ownership to many who had previously been denied. The then Lansing Human Relations Director Richard Letts stated “[i]f there is any large scale discrimination…it is very subtle”. He was encouraged by the West Side Neighborhood Association’s efforts towards integration.

In July of 1977 the Greater Lansing Residential Loan Review Committee was established, the first of its kind in Michigan. Allegations of redlining continued to decline. However, accusations of impropriety by city officials, collusion between Housing Commission members, scandals over secret meetings, race and sex discrimination lawsuits and refusal to comply with Freedom of Information requests peppered the local press through 1979. Lansing Mayor Graves called for an audit of the Housing Commission’s books.

In October of 1979 a LSJ article describes local lenders following national trends by severely restricting loans by raising eligibility requirements as interest rates soared. This process burst a housing bubble, created in part by Baby Boomers coming of age coupled with the Fair Housing Act.

In December 1979 the City of Lansing published a 165 page report on the commission’s books. The document cited several problems including: missing or incomplete documents, faulty placement policy, incomplete leases, lack of records of income verification, waiting list deficiencies and some special privileges for select tenants in “paying rentals”. Overall it was a mixed review. The report concludes; “[i]nternal Audit found many areas functioning very well and others that needed a good deal of improvement.”

For more on this topic, join us for the Cartoagraphy of Race, a presentation by Matthew Daley, Ph.D., an expert on Detroit’s rapid urban growth in the early 1900s. At 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 20 at CADL Downtown Lansing learn about how covenants, signed by white homeowners to keep African-Americans from moving into neighborhoods, affected the maps created by local officials–maps that defined patterns of segregation for decades.

Sources Consulted
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 9/27/1962
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 1/31/1967
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 8/30/1967
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 10/3/1967
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 12/29/1971
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 12/29/1975
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 1/14/1977
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 2/25/1977
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 7/29/1977
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 3/15/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 7/5/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 7/10/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 7/11/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 7/13/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 8/4/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 8/7/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 10/28/1979
Lansing State Journal Newspaper 12/5/1979
“The political economy of black housing: from the housing crisis of the great migrations to the subprime mortgage crisis” The Black Scholar, 40.1 (Spring 2010)
“Redlining in a majority Black city?: mortgage lending and the racial composition of Detroit neighborhoods” The Western Journal of Black Studies 29.1 (Spring 2005)
“Residential segregation and the transformation of home mortgage lending” Social Forces, 86.2 (Dec. 2007)
The Standard Home Builder, Vol. 1, No. 1
Images Courtesy of the Capital Area District Library Special Collections

The Lansing Journal of August 20, 1908 chronicles the summer métier of one W.H. Parker family. Outfitted with three lashed-together flat-bottomed boats, one covered with canvas for inclement weather and sleeping, the flotilla descended the Grand River from Lansing. Their quarry was freshwater pearls, and as the title of the article stated the “TURTLE HARVEST IS ALSO GOOD”.

At the turn of the 20^th century a freshwater Pearl Rush ravaged the Mississippi and many Mid-Western lakes and rivers. Few of these bivalves produced pearls and fewer garnered significant monetary value. However, riparian and lake communities developed to reap the bounty, culling local populations.

The devastation to the native clams and mussels, unionids, was immense. The mollusk’s plight worsened with a soon to follow industry of crafting buttons from their shells. Thwarting their propagation, many unionids do not reach sexual maturity till 8-10 years. Some species live over 100 years.

Originally reported in the Portland Observer newspaper, the Journal quotes Parker that in 1907 he uncovered a pearl worth $75. Today that would fetch over $1,700. When unable to produce pearls the Parkers caught loads of turtles in nets and sold them to “eastern market[s]” for meat.

Identifying the Parkers with period documentation is troublesome. The story is mostly taken from the Portland Observer. It is noted in the account they were not listed in the Lansing City Directory. This was probably checked by the Lansing Journal reporter. W.H. states he worked for many years at a Lansing factory, “but through the summer can make a better living on the river.”

No viable W.H. Parker emerges from the City Directories from 1908-1910. There is one listed in the 1910 directory, married to a Sarah. However, he teaches chemistry at MAC/MSU. In the 1911 directory a potential protagonist appears in the City Directory and from the 1910 Federal Census. This W.H. Parker was born in 1873 and hails from Oregon. His wife is named Katherine.  He is listed as a laborer in both the directory and the census. They have two children as described by the news account. Their younger son, Clarence, is 2 years old in 1910, making him an infant on their river peregrinations.

Details concerning the day to day life of the Parkers on their voyage are scarce. For sustenance he claims to catch enough fish to feed his progeny. Despite “uncomfortable” sleeping arrangements, it is reported “[t]he whole family declared they liked the out of door life.” It is unclear if Mrs. Parker was interviewed.

Sources Consulted
Lansing Journal Newspaper 9/20/1908
Lansing City Directories (1908-1911)
Great Lakes Science Center
Caddo Lake Institute
Encyclopedia of Arkansas History and Culture entry on the Arkansas Pearl Rush
1900 U.S. Federal Census
1910 U.S. Federal Census
Photograph Courtesy of the Capital Area District Library Special Collections

- David H., Local History Reference Librarian/Archivist at CADL