Added on February 24, 2014 Ray Berg

Life on a Manchester Corner: a Complete History of the Intersection of M-52 and Main Street (Part Two of Five)

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By Ray Berg and Alan Dyer

The Post-Civil War Economic Boom

The demand for food, other commodities and manufactured goods during the Civil War had benefited Manchester’s merchants and farmers as never before. With the end of the war in April 1865, village leaders looked for means to assure that the economic boom continued. One way to accomplish this, as Mat Blosser put it in the Manchester Enterprise, was to “build up the town”. The construction of much of Manchester’s Italianate downtown buildings in the late 1860s-mid 1870s was a direct result of this idea. A second means of assuring that good times continued was a civic campaign to fund and bring a second railroad to the village. This became a reality in 1870 with completion of the Detroit Hillsdale and Indiana Railroad. Its tracks crossed Ann Arbor Street and form the northern boundary of the area of this study. A village the size of Manchester having two competing railroads was viewed as a boon to merchants and farmers for their products. Village leaders lost little time in promoting Manchester as second only to Ann Arbor in terms of its potential for growth in Washtenaw County.

The war, while creating an economic boom for the victorious North, had also increased prices, including those for land. John W. Cowan, well aware of this fact, platted the land along Ann Arbor Street in 1866 that he had earlier purchased before prices rose. By the following year, expensive and stately homes began “climbing” Ann Arbor Street, providing Cowan with handsome profits on his earlier speculative purchase.

Cowan’s March 5, 1866 plat includes 17 lots in Block 1, numbered in ascending order from the corner of Main Street, northward along the west side of Ann Arbor Street. Since the DH&I Railroad passed across Lots 6 and 7, and small portions of Lots 5 and 8, this study is limited to Lots 1 through 6. The period 1866-1872 in covered in the following enumeration.

Lot No. 1

The land encompassing Lot 1 of Cowan’s Addition was owned by Drs. Amariah (father) and Ebenezer (son) Conklin, and contained two wood frame buildings on the corner of the intersection in 1870. A biography of Amariah Conklin was presented earlier in this article, and both he and his son were practitioners of eclectic medicine. Nathaniel Schmid’s 1921 historical poem about Manchester life, entitled “Those Were the Days”, describes a walking tour of downtown Manchester in 1871. Schmid remembers that:

“On the corner was Dr. Conklin who made a specialty of treating cancer;

And at any time, day or night, a call he would answer”.

Both Conklins earned the community’s gratitude and respect for their medical knowledge and civic involvement, as well as their later development of Lot 1 in the 1880s. Lot 1 was also the location of the Manchester Meat Market, in which John Cowan participated as a business investor.

Lot No. 2

Lot 2, relatively shallow in depth, was retained initially by John Cowan. A smoke house was constructed on this site to serve the meat processing business in the building directly south.

Lot No. 3

Lot 3 was sold by Cowan to Philo Botsford Millen on October 5, 1866 for $50. Millen (1823 – 1901) was born in Connecticut, came to Manchester in the 1840s, and was a prominent blacksmith in Manchester. By 1870, he had relocated his blacksmith shop to Lot 3, and per the 1870 census occupied a portion of the building as a residence for his family. By 1876, he was living on the east side of Ann Arbor Street across and up the road from the shop. He subsequently turned over his business to his son Chauncey, but stayed on as a part-time craftsman handling special projects, while taking on lighter duties as a seller of sandwiches and soda pop at the DH&I depot. Schmid’s 1871 poem comments:

“…now we go up Ann Arbor Street, there was Philo Millen in his blacksmith shop.

He later moved near the depot and sold lunches and pop…”

Millen sold a part of Lot 3 to his niece Julia A. Pitkin of Ann Arbor in September 1870 in a complex deal involving land in Block 32 on the east side of Ann Arbor Street.

Lot No. 4

Lot 4 was owned by John R. Jaynes, who figured prominently in the manufacture of woolen goods and spinning in Manchester. The Porter and Jaynes Woolen Mill was located on the south side of Main Street in 1870, east of the river, in the area behind the current Dairy Queen. The Manchester Enterprise reported on June 24, 1869 that the Porter & Jaynes Woolen Mill produced 100 yards of wool cloth/day in a building that cost $ 13,000 to build. The mill consumed $ 240 in raw materials each week and paid a weekly payroll of $ 70 to 12 employees. With a contract from a Chicago firm for 3,000 yards of material and a second one to fill, the mill expected to start a second loom in a few days. Yarn making machinery included “two sett [sic] of custom cards and two manufacturing cards, also a spinning jack with 198 spindles and other necessary machinery of the latest improvements”.

In April 1870 the mill received a contract for the cloth needed to make prisoner clothing for the Michigan State Prison. Mat Blosser commented in the Enterprise that the Porter and Jaynes mill produced cloth in the latest styles, including stripes and checks that were “the rage”, adding that their stripes, however, included those of the prisoner type. He thought that it was perhaps the most profitable mill in the country, that it drew much trade to the village, and was an industry the village could be justly proud of.

Jaynes constructed a large two-story home and outbuilding on Lot 4 prior to 1870. The 1870 census identifies him as a woolen manufacturer, married with three children, and born 1812 in “Canada West” (Ontario). He is shown in the census as living near Dr. Conklin and Philo Millen. By 1880, the census lists him as a “clothier”, and an 1888 Sanborn fire insurance map shows the Lot 4 outbuilding being used for “wool storage”. John Jaynes’ life underwent some changes which will be covered later in this article.

Lots No. 5 and 6

Lots 5 and 6 were sold by John Cowan to Valentine Weiss in September 1868 for $600. Cowan had only paid $823.63 in 1861 for the entire 50 acres that bordered Ann Arbor Street and continued along the river’s bend in the upper Mill Pond. This purchase had resulted from the bankruptcy of John D. Kief, the land’s former owner. Seven years later, having more than recouped his original investment, Cowan’s profits were considerable.

Weiss, 23 years old in 1868, was a German born wagon maker living in Manchester. He continued in this occupation throughout the next two decades, earning respect as a craftsman in the process. During this time, he joined Raisin River Lodge No. 27 of the International Order of Odd Fellows. It appears that Weiss purchased his two lots purely as a speculative venture. On November 30, 1870, he sold a portion of Lot 6 to the DH&I Railroad for $400. Two days later, he sold Lot 5 and the remainder of Lot 6 to David G. Rose for $1,500, netting a profit of $ 1,300 on the two transactions.

The 1860 census lists David Rose as a Connecticut-born farmer in Sharon Township with considerable real estate holdings. In February 1869, he moved to Manchester where he soon became involved in village affairs (trustee of the Methodist Episcopal Church, member of the Masonic Lodge, trustee of the Manchester Democratic Party, member of the Common Council). In the 1870 census, Rose is found as a 43-year old hardware merchant and fairly wealthy in terms of real estate and personal assets. Mat Blosser of the Enterprise characterized him, with tongue in cheek, in April 1873 as probably the largest farmer in Washtenaw County, owning over 800 acres and weighing in excess of 225 pounds.

There is no evidence that David Rose developed either Lot 5 and 6. Even so, he became a key figure in the Manchester/Sharon area in the 1880s and will have an important role to play later in this article.

The Boom in Maps and Views of Manchester

By 1870, development both downtown and on Ann Arbor Street was rampant. One way a growing town could promote itself was by means of glossy, colorful and detailed maps and “birds-eye views”. While these views focused on commercial accomplishments, they also pointed to the harmony, civic pride and physical beauty inherent in the developing town. The first published work of this type detailing Manchester’s achievements was in the form of an 1870 large, colorful and highly detailed map. It was financed by local leaders and produced by C. DeVolson Wood, a University of Michigan professor and civil engineer.

Wood first reconfirmed all the original 1833 and 1837 surveys (no doubt to resolve some property line conflicts which arose as land changed hands and rapidly increased in value). The finished product illustrated, to exact scale, all the buildings in town, and listed those residential and business owners who paid a patron fee to offset the cost of producing the map.

The corner of Exchange Place (Main Street) and Ann Arbor Street is shown in Figure 6. Dr. Conklin’s original wood-frame medical office building sits at the east end of Lot 1. The building also housed the meat market, and, perhaps, another unnamed business. An outbuilding is also shown on the south end of Lot 2, which, on later maps, is identified as a smokehouse, likely associated with the meat market. The word “Cowan” next to this structure indicates he has some business involvement with it.

Philo Millen’s home and blacksmith shop is shown on Lot 3, as is John Jaynes’ home and outbuilding on Lot 4. Lots 5 and 6 are devoid of buildings. The DH&I Railroad, as it crosses a portion of these lots, is also clearly shown. The Porter and Jaynes Woolen Mill is prominently displayed south of Exchange Place and east of the River Raisin.

Figure 6 – Manchester 1870 Map cropped for corner

Figure 6– Excerpt from C. DeVolson Wood’s 1870 Map of Manchester

In 1872, Manchester was captured in a Birds-Eye View map, a format popular during this era for promoting villages and their enterprises. It shows, with great accuracy, the placement, architecture, size, and details such as the layout of windows of the different buildings. It is purported that this Manchester view was displayed at the 1872 World’s Fair.

Figure 7 shows the same pattern of buildings on Lots 1, 3 and 4 as that found on the 1870 map. The Birds-Eye View, however, clearly illustrates that the single structure visible on the earlier map for Lot 1 is actually two distinct buildings. Lot 3 depicts Philo Millen’s home and blacksmith shop, and Lot 4 Jaynes’ multi-story home with an attached single story wool storage structure. The Lot 2 smokehouse, due to the angle of the aerial view, is hidden in this instance. The Porter and Jaynes Woolen Mill on the east side of the river below the dam is pictured with smoke coming out of the smokestack. The presence of smoke plumes was common in artwork of this era, reflecting the great pride by the community in its manufacturing successes. This map excerpt also shows the spread of residential structures northward up Ann Arbor Street (called North Avenue in this map, for unknown reasons).