"Those who shall be so happy as to inhabit that noble country cannot but remember with gratitude those who have discovered the way by venturing to sail upon an unknown lake for above 100 leagues." - Father Louis Hennepin, 1679 report on the Detroit area

 

Starting in the early 1600s, many European nations sent ships, explorers and settlers across the Atlantic on huge sailing vessels. Many settled on the Atlantic coast of North America. For example, the French settled along the east coast of Canada, the British settled in Massachusetts and Virginia, the Dutch settled in New York and the Spanish settled in Florida. Some groups, especially the French, sent smaller boats inland to explore the Great Lakes region.

Under the powerful King Louis XIV, France became a center of European fashion. Fur coats and hats were a sign that a person was rich and important. There were not enough fur-bearing animals in Europe to supply all who wanted them, and as a result, furs were very expensive. French voyagers traveled to the New World to find a bigger source of fur and to make their fortune selling them in France. The trading and transportation of furs, especially beaver, became the most important economic force in Michigan between 1700 and 1815.

The fur business became a trading business because the Native American cultures did not want European money; they preferred to trade for goods. The fur trading process followed the seasons, moving goods when the rivers weren't frozen. Native Americans and French trappers spent the fall and winter hunting, trapping, and skinning the animals. In the spring, merchants from coast cities on the Atlantic Ocean sent men and trading supplies westward through the Great Lakes waterways. Tools, blankets, silver, muskets, and glass beads were distributed to traders and taken to smaller trading posts.

In the spring, the traders met the trappers to bargain for animal pelts, sometimes at the trading posts and sometimes at Native villages. The traders transported the pelts to large trading centers on the Atlantic Coast, where huge merchant sailing ships waited to carry the furs to Europe. In return, the merchants and sailors in Europe shipped back supplies to continue the trading process the next spring.

By the 1690s, the French traders had brought so many furs to France that the prices dropped. Also, the French had started quarreling with the Native American tribes in northern Michigan. King Louis XIV decided to stop the fur trade in Michigan. He closed all the forts, including those in Mackinac and St. Joseph, and called the traders back to France.

 

Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac was a Frenchman stationed at Mackinac in the 1690s. After he returned to France, he persuaded King Louis XIV that a French military post and colony at the southern part of the Great Lakes would be the best way to secure, control and protect French interests in the area. The King agreed to Cadillac's idea.

Cadillac picked the location for his venture and called it Detroit, which is a French word for "the straits." A strait is a waterway that connects two lakes. Cadillac arrived at Detroit on July 24, 1701, equipped with men and supplies to build a fort and settlement for the French King.

Detroit was a strategic place for the fur trade in Michigan. The Detroit River connects the Great Lakes of Erie and Huron. Lake Erie connects to Lake Ontario, and Lake Ontario connects with the Saint Lawrence River. The Saint Lawrence River connects to the Atlantic Ocean. This 2,000 mile waterway made it possible for the French to reach the heart of the American continent. Detroit was a perfect location for a settlement and a fort because the river was narrow and easy to defend against invaders. Also, the land was perfect for planting and farming.

What Was Daily Life Like at Le Détroit?
For almost fifty years, a bustling trading community grew on the Detroit River. For the first time, the land at the river was claimed and "owned." French seigneurs, or nobleman, owned the lands; they also owned animals, fruit trees and important buildings like the church, the gristmill and the brewery. French settlers, called habitants, found jobs working on the seigneur's property.

As the number of traders, military men, women and children in the fort grew, skilled tradesmen arrived to meet their needs. Barrel makers provided storage for grain, beverages and gunpowder. Bakers made bread, cakes and pastries. Carpenters built houses, buildings and boats. Blacksmiths forged metal tools and shoed the horses.

Cadillac invited Native Americans to live near the fort as trading partners. For Native women in the area, life continued according to tradition. They contributed to the tribal community by tanning hides, making clothes, gathering food, raising children and caring for elders. Some Native women married French trappers and learned to speak French.

Madame Cadillac was the first Caucasian woman to live in Detroit. For Caucasian women, daily life in Detroit was very different than in Europe or Canada, where they shopped at city markets for many family needs. Instead, they carried water to the house from the river, cooked over a fireplace and made their own soap, clothes, food and toys. If children learned to read and write, it was the women who taught them. There were no schools during this frontier century. Women coming from Europe and Canada to the Detroit frontier had to work very hard and learn many new life skills.

 

The 1800's

The 1800s brought many changes to Detroit. The animals and trees that once filled the shoreline were replaced by docks, mills, roads, and businesses. The fur trade was no longer an important industry. Not many Native Americans walked the streets. Gradually, they were forced to move north or west to reservations. The 1805 fire and Woodward plan forever changed the look and feel of Detroit. It was no longer a cozy settlement and a military post. By the 1860s, it was transformed into a mercantile center full of stores, hotels, and new immigrants. It was a settler's gateway to the rest of Michigan and to Canada. Detroit was a rapidly growing city full of opportunities for people from many places around the world.

During the first half of the 19th century, innovations in transportation made traveling faster, easier, and cheaper. The steamboat was the first to impact travel to Detroit. Before the steamboat, travel between Buffalo, New York, and Detroit took a month. In April 1818, the first steamboat on the Great Lakes, named the Walk-in-the-Water, made the trip in 44 hours and 10 minutes.

When the Erie Canal was completed in 1825, travel to Detroit was made even easier. The Canal connected the Hudson River with Lake Erie, making it possible to travel completely by water from the Atlantic states to Detroit. Moving from New York to Michigan became affordable and easy, because it was cheaper and faster to travel by water than by wagon.

When the railroad arrived in Detroit in the 1840s, transportation changed again. By 1854, Detroiters could travel to New York City in a matter of days on the railroads.

With travel to the interior of the country made easier, thousands of people made the choice to settle in Michigan. The United States government opened a land office in Detroit to sell land in Michigan. Large numbers of people travelled through Detroit every day on the way to their new land. They all needed places to stay, food and supplies. Many people settled in Detroit where jobs were plentiful; Detroit needed people to build houses and shops, wagons and train cars, better roads and railways. It also needed merchants to sell everything from food and clothing to furniture and hardware.

In the mid-1800s, Detroit was on the verge of becoming an industrial city. Copper, iron ore and lumber replaced fur as the key exports. Detroit was the perfect location for raw materials to be brought for manufacturing. Detroiters took advantage of the dense forests of white pine which covered much of the Lower Peninsula. Lumber was brought as logs to Detroit where it was then sent to sawmills to make boards. The boards were used to make wagons, carriages, ships and furniture. Copper and iron ore from the Upper Peninsula were brought to refineries in Detroit, where they were made into products like wheels, rail tracks, rail cars, stoves, pots, wire, or furnaces.

A variety of other products were made in Detroit. Tobacco was processed into cigars and pipe tobacco. Pharmaceutical drugs were manufactured. Hybrid seeds were produced and packaged. Flour was milled, and beer was brewed.

The Underground Railroad in Detroit
A few free African Americans lived in Detroit and owned property in the early 1800s. Detroit and all of Michigan was a free state by the mid-1800s. Many abolitionists (people working against slavery) lived in Michigan. There were free African Americans, Catholics, New England Protestants, Quakers and people of many backgrounds. They provided support to African Americans who decided to leave enslavement and seek their freedom in the north.

In 1850, the Fugitive Slave Laws passed in the nation's capital. They said that runaway enslaved people could be captured and returned to slavery. Many free African Americans living in the north faced being returned to the south as slaves, and greedy bounty hunters tried to make money by hunting runaways. Detroit was just across the river from Canada, which outlawed slavery in 1819. Many refugees came through Detroit as their last stop on their way to Canada, where they could not be caught and sent back to slavery.

Runaways stayed in several Detroit area locations, including Seymour Finney's barn at Griswold and State Streets. It was a livery stable, but many fugitives stayed there until dark when they were taken to the river to cross into Canada. Another place to hide was the Second Baptist Church at Monroe and Beaubien Streets, which was built in 1856. This was the first African American church in Detroit. It was founded in the 1830s. Many members were formerly enslaved, and they were eager to help others to freedom. There were also several safe houses in the outskirts of the city.

Many people formed groups which participated in the Underground Railroad and fought to change slavery laws. One group was called the Convention of Colored Citizens of Detroit. The members were free African Americans, white abolitionists, and Quakers.

There were several individuals who were active in the Underground Railroad. William Lambert was manager and treasurer of the Underground Railroad station in Detroit. He was also a member of the Convention of Colored Citizens of Detroit. Lambert was a free African American from New Jersey who came to Detroit at age 18. He was quite wealthy, after opening a successful tailor shop in downtown Detroit. He used his money to fund abolitionist groups. He helped to free thousands of enslaved people by hiding them in his house and arranging for their transport at night. He sometimes created diversions for slave catchers and authorities while freedom seekers escaped across the river to Canada.

One of Lambert's closest friends, George De Baptiste, was also an important abolitionist. De Baptiste grew up in Virginia. He worked in the White House for a period and was said to have been a close friend of President Harrison. He was in the clothing and catering business in Detroit. He was a leader and active supporter of the Underground Railroad in Detroit. He also helped thousands escape to Canada.

Another abolitionist was William Webb, a free black. He was a grocer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He raised funds for escaped enslaved people to build new lives in Canada. Mr. Webb often held meetings for important leaders in the abolitionist movement at his house on East Congress Street. William Lambert, George De Baptiste, John Brown and Frederick Douglass had a famous meeting at Webb's house in 1859. At this meeting, they planned to fight for freedom of enslaved people at Harper's Ferry, Virginia.

By the mid-1800s, the busy docks along the shoreline were bustling with people. Some were busy unloading logs into sawmills or iron ore into refineries. Others were loading finished goods into shops bound for eastern cities. Still others were getting off steamboats with the hopes of finding a better life. From the shore, goods traveled in and out of the city by new railroads or by horse and carriage.

Streets were lined with shops and businesses from millineries to printers to bakers. There were also factories that made shoes, cigars, glassware, packaged seeds, and stoves. Mueller's Confectioner and Ice Cream Saloon served sweet treats and Conklin's Watches and Jewelry repaired necklaces and other items.

 

By the 1860s, Detroit's transformation from frontier outpost to bustling metropolis was almost complete. In 1870, the city's population was 79,577. The city covered almost 13 square miles, and it ranked 18th in size in the United States. The city boasted over 14,000 homes, 52 churches, 24 public schools, and 14 hospitals and asylums. Detroit's streets were littered with horse-drawn streetcars. In 1886, streetcar lines covered 42 miles of streets in the city of Detroit. In 1893, the streetcar horses were replaced by new electric trolleys.

Immigration from foreign countries was beginning to peak. Nearly half of all Detroiters were born outside the United States, with the highest-percentage coming from Germany, Ireland, Poland and Canada.

Detroit's economy was booming. One of the largest industries in the 1870s was copper smelting. Raw copper ore was shipped from Michigan's Upper Peninsula to Detroit, where it was processed in factories. "Smelting" is the process of removing minerals and other contaminants from the ore in order to make pure metal. The copper was then made into several products, like wiring, pipes, jewelry and other items. By the 1880s, Detroit was also known for its iron foundries. In addition to refining the raw iron ore, several manufacturers melted the iron until it was a red hot liquid, and poured it into molds to make stoves, candle holders, tools, building facades and other products.

The Original "Big 3"
By the 1890s, Detroit had emerged as a center of heavy industry. The availability of iron ore in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and easy access to coal via the Great Lakes made Detroit an ideal place for factories. Manufacturers were building names for themselves and the city in three key industries: railroad cars, stoves and ship building.

The railroad helped jump start Detroit's development, and Detroit became known for manufacturing railroad cars. It was the largest industry in Detroit in the 1890s. In 1892 several companies, including the Michigan Car Company, Peninsular Car Company, the Russel Wheel and Foundry Company and the Detroit Car Wheel Company merged to become the Michigan-Peninsular Car Company. The company made train wheels and frameworks for rail cars, as well as innovated on car design. In 1868, Detroiter William Davis patented the first refrigerator rail car. He sold the design to George H. Hammond, a Detroit meat packer, who built a set of cars to ship his meat to the east coast. It used ice harvested from the Great Lakes to keep it cool. Even railroad sleeper car innovator George Pullman manufactured his cars in Detroit in the 1870s.

In the middle of the 19th century, Detroiters had to purchase cast iron wood and kitchen stoves from upstate New York. It took a lot of time and a lot of money to ship stoves and repair parts to Detroit. In 1861, Jeremiah Dwyer, an apprentice stove maker from Albany, New York, began dabbling in the manufacture of cast iron stoves in Detroit. By 1864, his Detroit Stove Company was making stoves that were noted across the country for their quality. By the 1870s, the company had grown so large that it changed its name to the Michigan Stove Company, and declared Detroit the "stove capital of the world." They commemorated their title at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago with a monumental structure: the world's largest stove, which was a replica of their Garland wood stove that was carved from wood, weighed 15 tons and stood 25 feet tall. (The stove had been restored and erected at the Michigan State Fairgrounds in 1974. It burned to the ground in August 2011 when it was allegedly hit by lightning.) Other stove manufacturers in Detroit included the Peninsular Stove Company.

The availability of natural resources also made Detroit a shipbuilding center by the 1870s. Early entrepreneurs had built "dry docks" on the Detroit River in the 1850s. (Dry docks were landings in a harbor next to a pier where ships were loaded and unloaded or repaired. Most had a series of gates to let water in and out.) In 1879, the Detroit Dry Dock Company purchased a large shipyard in Wyandotte, Michigan and began building massive fresh water vessels. Factories that made marine engines, steam boilers, and ship parts sprung up all over the city. By 1905, Detroit shipbuilding companies were manufacturing nearly half of all ships — both freight and passenger — on the Great Lakes.

In addition to heavy industry, Detroit was also known for making a host of other consumer goods. Turning lumber from northern Michigan into boards was still an important industry, as well as making leather and fur goods and clothing, cigars and tobacco products, boots and shoes, soap and candles, seeds, and pharmaceuticals. Dexter Ferry founded the D. M. Ferry & Co., a flower and vegetable seed producer, in Detroit in 1879. People can still buy seeds from the company today. Many common products and businesses that are familiar today got their start in the late 1800s, including Vernor's ginger ale, Sander's ice cream shops, Hudson's department store, Stroh's beer and Kresge 5 and 10 (now known as Kmart).

Detroiters were hard workers. The new industries required both skilled and unskilled workers. Many of the foreign-born immigrants found jobs in factories. Women would sew or make cigars, and men would work long hours in the factories. A normal work week was ten hours a day, six days a week. Most laborers earned about $1.00 per day. The city also had many professional jobs. Hundreds of doctors, lawyers, dentists, barbers, merchants, and clerks worked in offices spread across the city.

Progressive Detroit
Hazen S. Pingree was a cobbler who moved to Detroit after serving in the Union Army during the Civil War. In Detroit, he quickly found success as a shoe manufacturer, and by the early 1880s he and partner, Charles H. Smith, were the largest shoe and boot manufacturer in the Midwest.

In the 1880s, Pingree was upset and angry by the corruption he saw in Detroit's city government. He had a distrust of private companies that did business for the city, such as paving streets, building sewers and supplying electric and gas, which he felt were taking advantage of city contracts and charging exorbitant fees. Pingree ran for the office of Detroit mayor and was elected in 1889.

Pingree's administration was known for fighting corruption in the city. He challenged the privately-owned electric and gas monopolies by creating municipally-owned competitors. His largest and most public struggle was against the private Detroit City Railways. He felt they overcharged patrons and demanded they lower their fares to three-cents per ride. He even tried to create a competing municipally-owned streetcar company, but did not succeed because it was prohibited by the Michigan Constitution.

In 1893, Detroit and the country faced a severe economic depression. Pingree took action by creating public welfare programs and initiating public works projects for the unemployed which built new schools, parks, and public baths. In 1894, Pingree won national acclaim for his "potato patch plan." He arranged for vacant city land, both public and private, to be converted to vegetable gardens that would provide food for the city's poor. Pingree even funded part of the garden plan with his own money.

In 1896, Pingree was elected Governor of Michigan. He still had one year left as mayor of Detroit, and he intended to serve in both positions at the same time. However, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that he could not hold two elected offices at once because it created a conflict of interest. As a result, Pingree resigned as mayor. During his four years as Michigan's governor, Pingree advocated for several reforms, including direct election of U.S. senators, an eight-hour workday and a regulated income tax.

Detroit at the turn of the 20th century was an exciting and overwhelming place. The city had grown from a mainly agrarian place to a bustling industrial city in less than 75 years. Population was sky-rocketing as foreign and native immigrants arrived in the city to work in the factories. Detroit was growing faster than it could handle, and politicians like Hazen Pingree worked hard to ensure that the growth was regulated and fair, and that the citizens' interests were considered and protected.

With its three key industries — cast iron stoves, railroad cars, and marine engine and ship building — providing ideal infrastructure, Detroit was primed to take on the 20th century's newest industrial innovation, the horseless carriage. Although Detroit was not the only city building automobiles in the early 1900s, key innovators like Ransom Olds, Henry Ford and the Dodge Brothers ensured that 20th century Detroit would become known as the "Motor City."