Monthly Archives: July 2019

On Eber Ward of Marine City: A Sad but Unusually Forthright Account

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Regarding the selfish and grasping cousin of Mr. Ward’s, from pages 3-6 of The Autobiography of David Ward (1912, self-published, held by the Library of Congress).  Eber eventually moved to Detroit, where he died.  David Ward made his home in Oakland County, Michigan.

My Uncle Samuel left Lake Ontario before the close of the war of 1812, residing at Salina, N. Y., and boiled salt there for a while. He married there “Aunt Betsey,” and afterwards moved to Northern Ohio at or near Conneaut, and finally moved to Michigan and settled at Newport (now Marine City) on the St. Clair River. He engaged there in farming, small merchandising, building and navigating small sail craft on the Lakes, and eventually in building, owning and navigating first-class passenger steamers, and buying much pine land from the United States. He died at Marine City at nearly seventy years of age, and willed nearly all of his property of about one million dollars to a son of Uncle Eber’s, named Eber B. Ward [1811-1875], who was my cousin. This gave E.B. Ward, in addition, practically the franchises of the steamboat lake passenger and freight routes, as he largely monopolized these routes. These monopolized lake steamboat routes, fairly managed, were worth another million or two of dollars, as the passenger traffic to the West by lakes continued immense for some fifteen or twenty years afterwards.

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1888 St. Clair County Histories: county, cities, towns

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The following histories are taken directly from L.A. Sherman & Co.s county and city directory of 1888.  PHAHPA is not attesting to the accuracy of the histories, but is providing them for reference.  While a typo or two might have gone unnoticed, the passages were typed as-is, archaic grammatical differences and all.  None of the images are from the historic directory.

COUNTY OF ST. CLAIR.  HISTORICAL SKETCH. [pages 9-12]

The Lower Peninsula of the state of Michigan, as it now exists, with the exception of some changes in its southern boundary, was detached from the territory of Indiana and given a separate territoria existence in 1805, William Hull being the first governor, with the seat of government at Detroit.  Up to the year 1818 the territory now comprised within St. Clair county formed the township of St. Clair, and was a part of the county of Wayne.  In that year the county of Macomb was organized, St. Clair constituting a portion  of it.

St. Clair county, including the territory now constituting Sanila county, was organized by proclamation of Gov. Cass, may 8, 1821, its area being about 1,500 square miles, and its population some 80 families, settled almost entirely along St. Clair river.  The county seat was located at St. Clair, where there were half a dozen houses at that time.  james Fulton and William Thorn agreed to build a court house, but failed to do so, and for several years court was held in Mr. Fulton’s house.  Mr. Fulton built a jail for the county in 1821, for which the contract price was $35, the hinges and bolts, furnished by Andrew Westbrook, costing $6.62 extra.

The location of the county seat was not satisfactory to the residents of either the northern or southern sections of the county, and a movement for its removal to Newport (now Marine City), began almost immediately.  Commissioners appointed for the purpose investigated the matter, and reported to the legislative council of the territory, january 19, 1825, in favor of the retention of the county seat at St. Clair.  Subscriptions amounting to $637.50 were made for the erection of buildings at Newport, if the county seat should be located there, but this movement also failed.  Previous to the action of the legislative council retaining the seat of justice at St. Clair, Thomas Palmer and David C. McKinstry had pledged themselves to built a jail and court house  which they did, the building being of hewn [page 10] logs, about 24×34 feet in size, with living rooms for the jailer and cells for prisoners on the ground floor, and a court room on the second floor.  It was accepted by the board of supervisors September 3, 1827, although no constructed according to contract.  This building was used until 1853, when it was destroyed by fire.  The brick building erected in its place was used for county purposes until the removal of the county seat to Port Huron, in 1871, and the fail continued to be occupied for keeping prisoners until the completion of the new jail, 1884.

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Ultimate Fake News in 1938 Papers? On Welles’ “War of the Worlds” Broadcast

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Orson Welles during (or rehearsing for) the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds. At 23 years of age, he co-wrote the brilliant adaptation from H. G. Wells’ novel.

By Vicki Priest (any opinions are her own)

Having no occasion to re-familiarize myself with the panicked results of the 1938 “War of the Worlds” broadcast that I was taught in school decades ago, I had no idea (until recently) that the reported “panic” has lately been claimed to be a fabrication.  History.com still covers the subject as I recall learning about it–that many people tuned-in to the (brilliant) program late because of a different station’s popular program, and thought the “news” announcements of a Martian invasion in the radio play were real.  There had never been an audio play like it before and people just heard what sounded like a regular news story, albeit a very disturbing one.  The broadcast was on October 30th, in time for Halloween.  So are the editors at History.com wrong (the article was last updated in June 2019)?

Not having lived through that time, it would be near impossible to completely assess the veracity of either the “traditional” or the revisionist view of “the panic.”  However, the issue points to the need to use a variety of sources when doing historical research and, further, considering them with a detective’s eye.  Even so, if many newspapers reported the phenomenon–which a great many did–why would someone question the basic validity of it (it was reported in our local paper that the Federal Communications Commission chairman was going to look into the broadcast right away, as it caused “general panic and fear”; Times Herald, October 31, 1938, page 1)?  We all know that “you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,” but would all those papers be that deceptive?  And certainly there are other contemporary sources to help anyone interested enough understand what people went through, and the magnitude of the event.

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