Dawn of Detroit

by Tiya Miles

  These survivors of war, slavery, and migration encountered by the missionaries had come north by various routes in the late eighteenth century and resided with Wyandots, members of the Wendat (Hurons, Petuns, and Neutrals) diaspora set in motion by wars with the Iroquois in the middle 1600s. Some blacks in the village had been brought in as captives but later lived as free people; others may have entered as free. Some of these individuals were mixed-race of African and Native ancestry, but seen as “Negro” by the Moravians due to their darker skin tone. Some may also have preserved African and African American spiritual and folk practices, as not very far away, in Fairfield, Upper Canada, Moravians had observed a black woman with a broom that was “somewhat like the fetishes the Negro in Guinea fashions out of roots” and was believed to bring protection to its bearer from “illnesses and misfortune.”35 This village south of Lake Erie was the same community that produced the free black trader who worked between Detroit and Ohio with a Wyandot partner in the 1790s.36 When the Wyandots were compelled to sign away territory to General Anthony Wayne after the Battle of Fallen Timbers in 1795, most tribal members moved westward. Several black families who had acclimated to Wyandot ways stayed behind. Tension grew between the groups, as the Wyandots, pressed to remove and take stock of their now meager resources, began to distance themselves from people of African ancestry in the village.37 The black, mixed-race, bicultural residents who remained rebounded from this rejection and received other African descendants into their midst, especially runaway slaves trickling in from the U.S. South. Negro Town (a name that would stick well into the early twentieth century and later be disparaged as “Nigger Town” by local white Ohioans) became a radicalized community of color out of necessity.38 Mrs. Grant’s black woman and the man with her in jail likely had connections there, suggestive of a free black network based near Lake Erie and the interconnected Detroit River region as early as 1803. In the summer of 1807, James May on the American side complained to John Askin on the Canadian side that his own enslaved man, Nobbin, had escaped and that “a bad set of people about” were also trying to persuade Askin’s enslaved boy, George, to run across the river.39 These “bad people” may well have hailed from Negro Town. Enslaved blacks and Indians in Detroit now had another destination should they take a gamble on seizing freedom: a black village in the remote, semi-protective zone of former Indian lands not yet settled by whites.

  Despite the continuation of slavery, circumstances in Detroit had shifted in discernible ways for unfree people as well as their owners several years into the new American era. The disruption of the Revolution had reshaped the racial makeup of Detroit’s population, dispersing more African Americans throughout the region. The Northwest Ordinance narrowed pathways to slaveholding for Americans, while the Jay Treaty drew a boundary that highlighted routes for escape to foreign territory for enslaved people. In this environment, captives found greater opportunity for boldness. Escapes were more frequent, and freedom-seekers identified multiple destinations.40 In addition to fleeing south toward Sandusky or Cincinnati across wild terrain that no white gentleman relished entering, bondspeople made for Native towns, viewed as equally formidable by slaveholders even in the aftermath of the Treaty of Greenville that had stripped indigenous groups of most tribal territory in Ohio. From one community home-base with both a black and Indian imprint, Negro Town of Ohio, clandestine attacks may have been waged against Detroit slaveholders to rile bondspeople, seize goods, and spread the message of freedom. Just as John Askin had sensed when he packed up his things and moved to Canada, winds of change were in the air along the strait.

  Legislating Detroit Town

  While enslaved people in Detroit pushed for liberty in radical ways, Elijah Brush’s professional star continued to rise. His father-in-law, John Askin, wrote that Brush was “an industrious man and except for improvements is by no means extravagant for a man who earns so much for his profession” and noted with paternal pride, “His practice is worth a great deal.”41 In 1803 Brush was appointed as a trustee of the board governing the township of Detroit (as had been his father-in-law before the move to Canada). Brush was responsible, along with a handful of leading men, for devising local rules, ensuring the compliance of the public, and handling complaints. The board’s first municipal ordinances addressed fire protection and the sale of foodstuffs. Bread now had to be stamped with bakers’ initials and sold for the fixed price of six pence for a three pound loaf. Instead of allowing farmers (primarily French residents) to come to town with carts of eggs, butter, beans, vegetables, and meats on Sunday and commence selling these products following mass at Ste. Anne’s, as was the local custom, the board established market days on Tuesday and Friday and designated a set location by the river that would serve as a farmers’ market.42 Tavern keepers were prohibited from allowing “any minors, apprentices, Servants, or Negroes to Set drinking in their houses, at any time, or to have any Strong drink, without Special order & allowances of their parents or masters.” This directive indicated the finely graded class stratification in Detroit as well as town leaders’ continued efforts to control the behavior of societal underlings. “Negroes,” a term nearly synonymous with “slaves,” were classed right along with poor laboring whites, minors, and “servants,” the latter of which could include members of any racial group as well as lifelong unfree people characterized as indentured servants in contracts.43

  The absence of the word “slaves” in this edict is representative of all early laws in Detroit, which avoided directly pointing to a class of people held in slavery, likely due to the influence of the Northwest Ordinance and the seriousness with which leading Detroiters, such as Solomon Sibley, took this federal mandate. Detroit would never develop a slave code like other municipalities with slaves; nor did it clearly lay out rules for indenture. Slavery and servitude were old practices instantiated by custom rather than regulated by local law. Enslaved people would therefore fall under the general rules of the community, with their masters held responsible for their infractions. It would take decades before Detroit had a law specifically aimed at enslaved people, which took the form of a Michigan territorial black code, rather than a slave code, in 1827. Following a dramatic act of organized resistance in which Detroiters aided the escape to Canada of Thornton and Lucie Blackburn, runaways from Kentucky, the territorial legislature seated in Detroit passed “An Act to Regulate Blacks and Mulattoes.” This punitive legislation required blacks in the city to provide proof of freedom, register with a clerk of court, and pay a registration fee; it also required newcomers of African descent to pay a $500 bond to a free resident within twenty days to guarantee good behavior, or else be forcibly removed. The law charged fines for anyone aiding runaway slaves and, in the interest of maintaining order in the wake of mass action to aid the Blackburns, mandated the punishment of those who kidnapped free blacks. Despite the clause that protected African Americans with proof of freedom from unlawful seizure, this law intended to limit and control the black population, making it harder for free blacks and runaway slaves to call Detroit home. But decades earlier, in 1802, before the existence of Michigan Territory as a discrete place, no such law directed at the black population existed. Blacks and Native Americans held as slaves were legislated alongside people deemed dependents with no reference to enslaved status.44

  While studiously avoiding the subject of slavery, Detroit’s board of trustees spent the bulk of its administrative energies passing and enforcing rules about fire prevention. In a town built almost entirely of wood, fire was a hovering threat and constant cause for anxiety. The board therefore required residents to keep their roofs free of soot, to own ladders tall enough to reach the tops of chimneys, and to maintain personal fire-fighting paraphernalia, including a barrel full of water and buckets. In the evenings, domestic fires had to be covered and candles snuffed. A night watchman patrolled the streets looking for wayward flickers of light and pounded on door planks to question residents about candles left visibly b
urning. Fire inspectors regularly checked every household for the requisite ladders, buckets, and barrels. Those who broke the fire codes and other regulations were charged by the board and required to pay fines. By 1805 town trustees had put in place scrupulous precautions against a possible conflagration, a regulatory code for the grocery market, fines for noncompliance with municipal rules, and a system of tax collection.45

  As soon as Detroit’s trustees began to make local laws, residents—including those same trustees, began to break them. John Askin was a fire code offender before his move across the river, as was John Dodemead, a relative of James Dodemead, the man in charge of the fire engine. In 1803 merchant-slaveholders George Meldrum, Henry Berthelet, Robert and James Abbott, and James May were all fined for fire code violations; they failed to keep at their houses the required kind and number of ladders and buckets. Elijah Brush “esq[uire]” was also charged for having a “roof-ladder too Short” but was conveniently “excused” from fine payment.46

  Town officials policed moral dangers, too. In 1803 inspectors filed a report against Henry Berthelet, the purchaser of little Veronique who would soon attain U.S. citizenship, as well as other “Delinquents” for using “profanity on the Sabbath day.”47 In 1802, Deputy Attorney General Solomon Sibley brought suit against Margaret White, “Spinster,” for keeping “a common, ill governed, and disorderly house.” At White’s residence, “for lucre and gain, certain persons, as well men as women, of evil name and fame, and of dishonest conversation” engaged in “drinking, tipling, whoring, and misbehaving themselves.” The growing Town of Detroit now had a social counterpoint to Ste. Anne’s Church in the form of a rowdy saloon and brothel. We can surmise that indigenous and black women were present here, as the prostitution of enslaved women by their owners had long occurred in Detroit’s sister city of New Orleans.48

  James May, an elected town board member, was a two-time offender for breaking town codes. He violated regulations by sending beef “not Sound” to market, for which he had to pay fifteen dollars.49 He also broke the law by proxy, since he carried responsibility for the actions of his slaves. In 1802 May was charged twenty-five cents because his “young Negro boy” was caught “carrying filth out of the S. W. gate of the town,” which amounted to littering on the public commons.50 May was also busy accusing others of breaking the rules; in 1803 he complained that the “Negro-man” of John Michel Yack (of French and German descent) was guilty of “Galloping a horse in the streets of the town of Detroit.” Yack was fined a dollar for the transgression of his slave.51

  Although James May could not have been happy about his own fees, he certainly had the means to pay them. In a tax list for Wayne County compiled in 1802, one hundred and four homes and only seven slaves were counted within the pickets of the fort and just beyond the walls to the west. Several enslaved people who lived in farms outside of town were not accounted for, including the Denison family, the bondspeople owned by William Tucker on a tributary of the Detroit River. According to the records of Ste. Anne’s Church, between 1800 and 1809, at least twenty-nine individuals were still being held as slaves within the church community. This included ten blacks, fifteen “Panis,” one “mulatto,” and three individuals with no racial designation listed.52 James May, who possessed one slave according to the 1802 census, also owned one of the three most valuable homes, assessed at $1,000. In a tax levied in 1805 for ownership of “mules, calashes, carioles, dogs and studhorses,” May was the highest taxpayer, followed by Joseph Campau, James Abbott, and Elijah Brush, all slaveholders or beneficiaries of indentured slave labor.53 Although William Macomb’s widow, Sarah Macomb, was not listed among these men and may not have had a fancy calash or studhorse, she was still prospering in the decade following her husband’s death. In the spring of 1806, under a list of “Sundry Expenses for the Family,” Sarah Macomb recorded the purchase of “Molly the Wench,” for whom she paid “70” in “cash.” The acquisition of Molly dwarfed all of Sarah Macomb’s other expenditures recorded in the same list, including: honey, eggs, fish, work by the blacksmith, a pig, six hens, linen, and cash paid while “shopping at New York.”54

  The serious-minded attorney Solomon Sibley watched national matters as closely as local issues from his home in Detroit. When Ohio achieved statehood and Congress formed Indiana Territory in 1803, the seat of Northwest Territorial governance shifted from Ohio to Indiana. Sibley, who served as a territorial representative, worried about the fate of Detroit in the aftermath of this consolidation, fearing Detroit would fall prey to neglect now that the regional government was at a farther remove. Therefore Sibley, along with other local leaders, pushed for a separate territory that would prioritize Detroit. Two years later, Sibley saw his dream of independence realized. In January of 1805, President Thomas Jefferson approved a division of the lands then encompassed by Indiana Territory. The newly christened Michigan Territory would occupy the boundaries of what had formerly been defined as Wayne County, a land nestled among flowing rivers and glistening lakes. Even better, Detroit would become the territorial capital, and President Jefferson would appoint commissioners to govern from the town beginning July 1, 1805.55

  Elijah Brush stood in the thick of local town governance as the infant Michigan Territory took shape. Constantly busy with his law office, he also juggled new roles as fire inspector (an elected position) and lieutenant colonel in the Michigan militia (an appointed position) starting in 1805.56 True to form, Elijah Brush dressed smartly for his militia post, having ordered in from New York “twelve yards of superfine Buff casimure and four doz[en] of the best trible gilt Coat buttons” as well as a stack of instructive military books: “Hayts Cavalry dicipline—Steven’s Artillery, Stubons Exercise for the Militia, [&] Fishers Military tactics.”57 During Elijah’s long stints at work, Adelaide Askin Brush, little Edmund, and the newest baby Charles sometimes stayed with family across the river in Canada. Adelaide may have been visiting at the home of her father when the greatest calamity since Detroit’s founding unfolded. One morning, from the safety of Strabane, his stately home across the river, the venerable trader John Askin witnessed flames leaping across the rooftops of Detroit.58

  The Great Fire of 1805

  It had begun at ten o’clock in the morning of June 11 in the year 1805: the fire that would destroy the original French fort town made charming by shingles and diminutive glass window panes.59 John Harvey, a baker by trade, kept a stable behind his business where sparks of a mysterious origin ignited, possibly from the pipe tobacco of an employee at the bakery falling into hay. Robert Munro, a witness to the events that would transpire, was employed as the storekeeper at the Indian Factory, where government goods were sold to Native traders. The factory site was located opposite the bakery in Detroit’s compressed town center and so made for front-row viewing of the impending disaster. When Robert Munro caught sight of “flames bursting through the doors and windows” of the bakery’s outbuilding, he wildly shouted the alarm.60 His calls, along with the panicked screams of others, were answered by the town’s single fire engine, a souped-up horse-drawn wagon manned by twelve volunteers. The bucket brigade, a line of men passing buckets overflowing with water, fell hurriedly into position. Despite the frenzied efforts of community firefighters, a robust wind carried the flames from building to building. Townspeople began to flee, lugging all they could from their homes and making their way to the commons beyond the pickets near the river. Robert Munro at the Indian Factory grabbed what he could and ran. At Ste. Anne’s Church, where mass was in session that morning, Father Richard fled as Father Dilhet, with the help of a few devoted worshippers, salvaged “vestments and sacred utensils.” Their actions to save cherished church items may be the reason why the Ste. Anne register, in which so many fragments of enslaved people’s lives were notated, has been preserved to this day. The church, along with every other structure inside the town walls with the exception of the fort (British Fort Lernoult, soon to become Fort Shelby) at the rear of the settleme
nt, burned to the ground within a few hours.61 Three days later, Robert Munro opened a letter to William Henry Harrison, governor of Indiana Territory, with the solemn words: “Sir,—I have the painful task to inform you of the entire conflagration of the town of Detroit.” He ended lamenting: “I can hardly hold the pen to write these few lines, and my mind is equally affected with the distressing scenes I have witnessed.”62

  Robert Munro was among the first victims of the disaster. Close enough to the fire when it broke out to be injured, he later bore the psychological scars. Canadians like John Askin, at a safe distance along the opposite bank but with friends and relatives remaining on the Detroit side, watched the ominous dark smoke mushroom into the sky with near equal panic that morning. The first Detroiters to escape the smoldering town jumped into rowboats and pushed out onto the waterway. From the sanctuary of the river, they watched, in the words of an early Detroit historian, Clever Bald, “the flames sweeping from house to house across the narrow streets, fire-fighters stubbornly working at their hopeless task, women and children streaming out on the Common, and above, like an angry storm cloud, the thick black smoke hiding the sun.”63 Munro, who had barely escaped the Indian Store with his papers and two thirds of the goods, reported to Governor Harrison that “In less than two hours the whole town was in flames, and before three o’clock not a vestige of a house (except the chimneys) visible within the limits of Detroit. The citadel and military stores were entirely consumed. . . . The situation of the inhabitants is deplorable beyond description; dependence, want, and misery is the situation of the former inhabitants of the town of Detroit.”64 Another eyewitness, awestruck by the incident, described it as “at once sublime and painful, exceeding in awful grandeur perhaps almost any spectacle of the kind which has happened since the world began.”65 But two important people did not see the conflagration and were late in even learning of it. William Hull and Augustus Woodward, Michigan Territory administrators appointed by President Thomas Jefferson, were en route to Detroit from the East while the great fire burned.