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Transcript of Taped InterviewWithMr. and Mrs. Joseph KarmannApril 20, 1964MR. ARNESON: Well, today we have the privilege of interviewing Joseph M. Karmann, a former mayor of what is today East Dearborn in Dearborn that is the time Dearborn was called Springwells till 1925 I believe and then the name was changed to Fordson. But anyhow this is all part of what is today a Greater Dearborn. We are interviewing Mr. Karmann at his farm out on Ford Road in Washtenaw County. Marion Forbes and Winfield Arneson of the Dearborn Historical Museum are interviewing Mr. Karmann today. We will also be interviewing Mrs. Joseph Karmann during part of the interview. The date of this interview is April 20, 1964. To begin with, Mr. Karmann, I know we’ve spoken to you many times in the past and some of these things may be a little repetitive but in order to have it in the record in some detail we would like to ask you some of these things again and we would like to do it in as much chronological order as we can. We would like to first ask you where you were born, some of your earliest recollections, and any pleasant memories of your grandmother’s farm on the old Maple Road, your recollections of school in those days, your life developing into manhood, changes that came about in Springwells over the years, eventually will get up to the time when you became mayor of what is today East Dearborn and as time goes on there’ll be other items that we will be covering. So let’s begin at that point and I know the date you were born but for the record, would you like to indicate that and start at that point?MR. KARMANN: Well, I may. Born on the 21st day of October, 1887 on a little 40-acre parcel of land at the corner of Greenfield Road and Ford Road in what is now the City of Dearborn. At the age of 4 years my father received permission to build a home of their own and he got the land from his mother who survived her husband’s life, my grandfather who had died when he was some 42 years of age and she conducted then retained the tract of land that ran from the River Rouge up to the practically the Michigan Central Railroad as it passes through the City of Dearborn. At 6 years of age, I started schooling in the little country one-room school house on the corner of the old Indian Trail known as North Dearborn Road and the intersection of the Maples Road. Maples Road was provided for with half of the road came off the Karmann Farm and the other half off of the Maples Farm and that is why they adopted the name the Maples Road. That school house stood there for many, many years until the land in the entire area was acquired by Mr. Ford for the development of his gigantic industry that now covers the area where the school house stood. The old log cabin where my father was born had been torn down and my grandfather had built a brick house at the time that my father was born in the year 1856 and that was approximately a city block from the schoolhouse so like all most youngsters having the admiration of grandpa and grandma lived alone in the brick house after grandfather had died and the other members of the family had been married off. She lived there some 48 years alone in that house and my grandfather was a horticulturalist. He had two large fruit orchards covering approximately practically 60 acres of land and the school kids from the Maple school had to be chased out of the orchard quite frequently and due to the fact that I was one of the ring leaders I was responsible perhaps for them getting over in grandmother’s orchard occasionally but she finally paid off the mortgage on the land by the sale of apples in Detroit cord wood from the wood lots on the farm area. Mode of existence and livelihood that most all of the farmers in that area took place and merchandise would be taken to the City of Detroit which was some 6 or 8 miles from the old homestead. Now we want to speak a little bit about the formation of the Township of Springwells which was originally a part of the Township of Greenfield. In the early days that was too large of a township for the township officers to supervise and look over so they divided the township creating the Township of Springwells. My first recollections of the distance of Springwells – the boundary line between the City of Detroit and the Township of Springwells at Michigan Avenue intersection was at Trumbull Avenue where the ball park is today. Then they annexed a part of Springwells some many years later to the City of Detroit and brought the boundary line out at Vinewood and Michigan Avenue and then the next annexation took place some 15, 20 years later annexing out to Central Avenue and Michigan Avenue. And that was where our nearest Post Office was located at Central Avenue. It was operated by Postmaster as I remember by the name of Lumley.MR. ARNESON: Incidentally, Mr. Karmann, when you mention names if you do not recall the first names the first time you mention them if you will indicate the full name it will help us in our records. If you know them, if you don’t, it’s all right too.MR. KARMANN: All right.MRS. FORBES: If you spell the last name too. Now on that one I didn’t get it.MR. KARMANN: It’s LUMLEY.MR. ARNESON: I know we can’t recall all these names complete but if you do happen to know the first names the first time you mention it. MR. KARMANN: One of the old ancient cemeteries of the Township of Springwells was located on Lumley Avenue just south of Michigan Avenue and that has been recorded in our Historical Museum down at Dearborn. The next annexation was came out to what was known as Addison switch, and that was where the street cars had turned to go back to Detroit. MR. ARNESON: Incidentally, do you recall the approximate time period?MR. KARMANN: No, I don’t remember the dates or the time.MR. ARNESON: OK.MR. KARMANN: But these annexations were the background and the foundation of the determination of Mr. Ford to prevent his interests in Springwells and being annexed to the City of Detroit. At the time of the incorporation of the Township of Springwells to a Village of Sprinwells it was based upon the fact the Fords were acquiring much of the farm land in the area, practically all of what they have at the present time and his experience dealing with the City of Detroit in Highland Park, the City of Detroit annexing territory around the City of Highland Park made Mr. Ford feel that he would sooner or later have to give in and be part of the City of Detroit; that Highland Park would be taken over but the Highland Park officials felt that they could still retain their individual identity so they discussed the advisability amongst our Township board officials relative to the annexation to Detroit or the incorporation of a village. And of course, at that time the intention of Mr. Ford to move his industry from Highland Park out to the new area and location where it is now located. The fact that to prevent the City of Detroit to coming around it the Ford building west of the Village of Springwells and east of the Village of Dearborn was some several thousand acres of land between the two towns are the two villages. From there on why, of course, the operations and the construction, the building of the new industry brought along with it its problems of and necessity for public utilities, police, and water and fire, highways and roads, just a mellowing movement of progress and activity. The Ford industry with Mr. Ford had suggested that they would incorporate their own holdings in a City of their own to be known as “Fordson” and the Springwells Township board and Township officials felt that the new City of Fordson, as Ford predicted it, would be an industrial city with no connection with the rest of the township, that the township would be far better incorporate the entire township of Springwells including the Ford holding and many meetings were held and discussions pertaining to the advisability of incorporating a village with thousands and thousands of acres of agricultural land. The one meeting was scheduled which I happened to been the chairman of the evening and after hearing the remarks and speeches from many people I suggested that we ask Mr. Ford what his idea would be of incorporating the entire township. Mr. Ford was not much of a speech maker but he just stood up and he said, “Well, gentlemen, I’ve enjoyed the evening, I’ve learned a lot, he said, I don’t know what you’re waiting for, let’s get going.” So that was the beginning of the grooming of the present city that we have today. So I had to gained a lot of experience from the time that I was a boy at the Maple school, attended the High School in Dearborn in my early school days, lived on this farm, was a garden marketing operator, attended both the western and eastern markets with food, vegetables and produce raised on the farm but the Ford activities cut that form of life short and when they purchased the land, why we just had to get out and look, seek for places elsewhere. So that was more or less the teacher of my interests from existing standpoint with the exception that as a boy the River Rouge marshes and the tributaries thereto furnished one of the most ideal hunting and trapping areas in the country and that was one of my wintertime lines of endeavor and the moderate revenue that I got from the hides and the carcass from the various animals that were hunted and trapped. In those days we had Market hunting and much of it was sold at Detroit. MR. ARNESON: I was just going to ask you that when a youngster was out of school or so what opportunity would have been available to him. Well, this was one of the ways you could have supplemented your income. Trapping.MR. KARMANN: Very, very successfully. I remember the names of one of the fur dealers in Detroit Trougott, Schmidt and Sons and they bought furs, hides and tallow from the young fellows that did their hunting and trapping.MRS. FORBES: Can we have that name of the fur trader again?MR. KARMANN: Trougott SchmidtMRS. FORBES: How do you spell Trougott?MR. KARMANN: Well, I think it’s TROUGOTT, Trougott Schmidt and Sons. We had the experience of participating in the development of somewhat of Detroit and Springwells and it was the height and ambition of the City of Detroit to acquire additional values and if they could have gotten the annexation of the village of Springwells when we incorporated that to add the Ford Motor Company’s assessed valuation to the City of Detroit they would have been in their height of glory.MR. ARNESON: This would have been about 1921 when the Village would have been incorporated?MR. KARMANN: That’s right 1921. Now we had on the City Council in Detroit and on the Wayne County Board of Supervisors such capable and talented politicians as Jim Vernor, Sr. Now that would be the grandfather of this same Jim Vernor of Detroit today and we had John Lodge who was member of the Detroit City Council at one time was Mayor of the City of Detroit. We had Capt. John Smith on the City of Detroit Council and a member of the County Board of Supervisors. The City of Detroit was crude in its design. The old Cork Town area was a very popular voting section for that the public officers could rely on for soliciting votes to be elected. Woodward Avenue was paved with cobblestones and Michigan Avenue was paved out to about Third Street with cobble stones and the rest of the paved streets of the City of Detroit was paved with cedar blocks, cut six inches in length and stood on end and filled in between with gravel and tar. So that was practically the City of Detroit and their ambition to add to industry it seemed to me as I remember them about the two-man industries with the Peninsula Stove Company on Jefferson Avenue and the Scott and Dillon Tobacco Factory on Fort Street. As I remember those were the two main industries as far as employment was concerned. And I don’t know maybe it might be just a little bit noticeable to feel that instead of annexing the City of Dearborn or the City of Springwells or the Village of Springwells or the City of Fordson the mayor of the City of Detroit’s got new idea now having the people that live off in another town and work in Detroit is to tax them so he gets the revenue without the expense of maintaining the support of the requirements of the utilities facing and firing etc. They have a new way of getting anyway. MR. ARNESON: Had that idea been thought about years ago?MR. KARMANN: No, not quite.MR. ARNESON: Not too many people lived in one city and worked in another, I suppose, except for people that lived inMR. KARMANN: It never would have been brought about years ago. It couldn’t possibly because the attitude of the people in those days were, well, you keep your own doorsteps clean and I’ll clean mine. MR. ARNESON: Springwells is rather unique in this situation whereas I understand it three times as many people worked in Springwells as lived there because of the Ford plant.MR. KARMANN: That’s right.MR. ARNESON: So if that ever been planned at that time that would have been quite lucrative but I’m sure the times weren’t ready for something like that, of course, they’re not ready for it now either they probably never will be. He’s got into a lot of hot water about this.MR. KARMANN: Probably all of these changes from the Township of Springwells and the annexation of the City of Detroit, did create interest, turmoil to a certain extent. It wasn’t as great then as it is now, perhaps, because the citizenry and the tax payers, farm owners were a little further apart and the relied quite extensively on their public officials. For instance, the supervisor of Springwells Township was continuously reelected for some 22 terms that I know of. His name was Marvin D. Miller.MR. ARNESON: Were they 1 year terms?MR. KARMANN: Yes, they had the election usually every Spring and he would still be there if he were alive and if the area where he lived would not have been annexed to the City of Detroit. But when they annexed Addison Switch, Addisonville as we sometimes called it, took that from Springwells Township and added to Detroit, then we had to look for a new supervisor and the supervisor that they chose was Charles Horger, son of one of the old original Horger family and Charlie was chosen as the Village president of the Village of Springwells when we incorporated the village and I was elected on the, we would call it, the Council, the Commissioners. Served for two terms on the Village Council. Then, due to the fact of the prohibition area and the conditions of activities in the Township and there were a lack of Police Department, Police force and many other requirements. The issue was brought up as to incorporating it as a City of Springwells. MR. ARNESON: Mr. Karmann, do you think if Detroit would have had foresight years before the time that Springwells was incorporated they would have been successful in annexing that area if they had started a number of years before they did?MR. KARMANN: No, I don’t think they would have because the experience that we experienced in our own town Springwells as well as Redford Township and some of the others that had annexed and joined the City of Detroit they didn’t get anything in the line of return for their annexation for 10, 12, 15 years afterwards. It was just laid idle with the exception that they had to pay the city addition to their state and county taxes for the improvements were slow in coming. Water mains were not extended and road conditions were not maintained and repaired, culverts and bridges etc. were neglected, they drifted right backwards for years before they would be finally taken over and worked upon and developed more of less by real estate operators who would provide for many of the improvements in addition to the sale of the lots as subdivided to agricultural areas. So much of the improvements of the new annexations was done by the promoters and developers that developed certain sections and areas. MR. ARNESON: How did you happen to get interested in city government, you say you became a councilman or a commissioner as they were called in those days? How did you happen to get interested in that? Had you been thinking about it for many years or?MR. KARMANN: No.MR. ARNESON: Did people influence you that way?MR. KARMANN: I can’t say as I did but when the Ford people came out and bought our old farm, our old homestead, and all the others in the area, why, we were like pigeons in the barn when the barn was torn down. We had to go somewhere else to find a new place and a new line of endeavor and activity etc. So in addition to that , why, the incorporation of the Village was instigated and I did play a part in that and I think it was perhaps who Mr. William T. Gregory picking out people who looked as though they might be somewhat able or capable of forming leadership and I think that perhaps was it as much as anything else. MR. ARNESON: Now, who was Mr. Gregory?MR. KARMANN: Mr. William T. Gregory was a social representative of Mr. Ford rather elderly, dignified, fine appearing, well spoken man. His name was William T. Gregory, the T. stood for Ten Eyck and the Ten Eyck family was where Mr. Ford purchased the land for his new home Fair Lane. That’s on the old Ten Eyck estate where William Ten Eyck Gregory it was, was born and companion and more of less of a playmate and a fellow partnership relationship between William T. Gregory and Fred Gregory, brother of William T. Gregory, was purchasing agent for Mr. Ford in buying up all the farm land that they did acquire there. I heard William T. Gregory tell the story of taking over his brother, Fred’s office when Fred died. He ran out of so many elaborate cancelled checks that had been paid for land here and there and he asked Mr. Ford if he wouldn’t please take a day or an afternoon off and go over those books because if he was going to assume his brother Fred’s office activities, he felt that he’d like to have Mr. Ford know some of the things that were in there and William T. Gregory told me this himself, he said Mr. Ford come in and he looked at them and he said are these the books that Fred had? He said, yes. And you want me to tell you what to do with them? He said, well , yes, he said I’d like to have you look them over. There are some extravagant accounts. He said, you take them down to the boiler room and tell the man down there that I said he should put them in the fire box. So he just folded them all up and taken down there and burned them. He said that was the way he looked over the books. He had that much confidence in my brother Fred and I hoped that he would have as much in me and he sure did. So we had things like that that we ran on to him occasionally and that added a little bit of humor to the turmoil of gangling and arguing over what Ford wanted. Another instance while we were operating the City of Springwells during the depression we were just at the verge of using script to pay the municipal employees and talking about the how to overcome it or what to do about it. I asked Mr. Ford as a mayor as to whether he couldn’t find room to employ the people that lived in the City of Springwells and due to the fact that his plants and industry was there. Well, no, Joe, he said, we make cars and sell them all over and he said we can’t just hire the people from Springwells because the Springwells people couldn’t buy cars enough to keep us going. He said, I’ll tell you what to do, tell your City Assessors to put another million dollar valuation on the Ford Industry and then based upon the tax return, that took us out of the red and we didn’t have to use the script. And that increased valuation was never taken off, instead it gradually grew and grew and grew till it caught up with itself and surpassed it. And we’ve always had in the City of Dearborn as it is today a fine taxation base in that we don’t have to go ask our neighbors to come in to sacrifice part of their pay to help keep us going as far as Dearborn is concerned.MR. ARNESON: Well, that’s very interesting. Well, now with Springwells incorporated were there certain problems that came up that you didn’t foresee at that time? I’m not too much familiar with what happens when cities incorporate. Were there certain problems that developed?MR. KARMANN: Yes, there was a tremendous problems that developed. Real estate activities based upon their known facts that the Fords were going to move their Highland Park Plant out there and also the Tractor Plant from West Dearborn was to be moved down at the so-called Rouge Plant and the sub-dividers would buy farms out of the area over in Greenfield Township particularly and some over in Dearborn Township and develop them and they had just temporary homes on the bigger share of these lots. They were just, well, today they call them slum areas shacks and shanties no sewage, no water and the problems that we had with sanitation all these little towns and ditches county ditches and branches of the Baby Creek and Roulo Creek were all open sewers and it was a problem to finance the construction of sewer system was one the big major things. Of course, where you had an awful lot of people housed in a congested area we have police problems and troubles but we had to establish a Police Department.MR. ARNESON: You had no Police Department at that time?MR. KARMANN: Nothing more that a township constable and the county patrol. That would be the police and then, of course, we had school problems that came up. Children were running delinquent; it was a problem of school activities. So we consolidated all the little country schools in the township into one School District and sponsored that movement. I was serving on the school board at that time. So when we drew the new charter for the City of Fordson they provided that a man couldn’t hold two publics in the same town. They had to cut the voting of the two positions off so that eliminated me of one, a little bit of revenue. Now the salary that was paid to the mayor at that time was $300 a year and I ain’t too sure but what we didn’t live as well then as we do now. $300 a year was the salary and in order to have a stenographer or secretary or somebody to type and write the letters, they kind of thought it’d be better if I had one of the girls in the clerk’s office and I said I’m afraid that the girl in the clerk’s office and the clerk himself might get too wise on what was transpiring in the mayor’s office between the Ford’s request of these developments and these changes and promoting these changes of names from Springwells to Fordson. That was a bitterly fought political battle but after it carried and the name was changed every hock shop, meat market, grocery store and blind pig, you see this was in a prohibition area and we had lots of them. They all went under the name of Fordson – Fordson Hotel, Fordson Barber Shop, Fordson Garage. Mr. Ford came in one day and he said, Joe, we got to stop this and I said, what do you mean by this? This name Fordson. He said we tried to stop it and they said they claim they’re not naming it after Edsel and myself. Legally they are naming it after the city and we can’t do a thing about it. And I said, well, I don’t know what we can do about it. He said let’s put the two towns together and eliminate the name Fordson. Edsel and I would be awfully happy to get rid of it cause it’s a disgrace to us. So he said you got a job to sponsor the movement of consolidating these two towns. Well, I said, man that’s going to be some battle here. People from both sides will be opposed to it. Well, he said maybe we can enlighten them on what we’ll do for them – we’ll build a police headquarters, we’ll build a fire department headquarters, we’ll build hospitals if they need them and when they need them, we’ll build office space for when they need them. So I got started on a new field of endeavor. When I left office of the Mayor of the City of Fordson was the consolidation of the two towns and that lasted for a couple of years before we finally got that consummated. And this old scrapbook that I have here that I’ve kept of the speeches of many of the people that participated in the promotion of the consolidation and the objections thereto has really most fascinating, and most interesting and really to hear some of the remarks today of what oppositionists had to say then and who triumphed the most and who profited the most and it’s really amusing. So I referred my old scrapbook and many of these items that I collected in order to serve my memory and I’m really happy to be able to extend to you what assistance I can in bringing up-to-date the historical value of the promotional proceedings pertaining to the City as it is today. MR. ARNESON: We do appreciate that. Incidentally, do you know, Marion, if we happen to have copies of these letters in our files? Would it sometime be possible for us to make copies of some of these letters or are there things that you wouldn’t , these speeches or would you rather not have them copied this time or what?MR. KARMANN: Well, as far as I’m concerned I have no objections to them being copied.MR. ARNESON: We have a new copy machine at the Museum and it would be possible for us to easily copy these.MR. KARMANN: Even in these speeches, these lectures pertaining to it, many of these public speakers that took part in these programs were advised by their lawyers not to use first names and you will notice in these speeches, in these reports that they refer to the sponsors of the organization of consolidation activities as they. They tell us this, and they tell us that and I’m opposed to it. Now I’ve got the names of the people that were doing the speaking and as long as we have the official records of what they had to say, I can’t see as they could be any liable suit instigated by members of the family because most all of these people are dead and gone. I really think I’m about the only one left. But I think it would be fine if you would, I think they should be recognized as being acquired from Mr. Karmann’s personal Museum or personal library. Now I don’t, I can’t compare with Douglas MacArthur but in maintaining a library of his mementos or Harry Truman orMR. ARNESON: You have a large one here, it’s larger than most people in the world.MR. KARMANN: Well, I will say about this, that the , my collection of historical items was the instigation motive of establishing the Dearborn Historical Society and I’m just as proud of that institution, not due to the fact that I was the first president of it, but that it has come along so nice, so well, and the cooperation between Greenfield Village and the Greenfield Museum has been so outstanding that and rewarding that I feel just as proud of that as I can be. MR. ARNESON; While we’re talking about the Society, would you like to elaborate a little bit on the organization of it, the founding of it? Let’s see that was about 1940 I believe.MR. KARMANN: 1941.MR. ARNESON: I guess they started talking about it in ’40 though. Some of the personalities involved?MR. KARMANN: I think there was about 6 of us that attended the so-called Camp Fire in the evening similar to what Mr. Ford used to attend with Burroughs and Firestone etc. and we had roasted sweet corn talking about the future, looking off into the darkness of the evening and wondering what was going to happen with the area in the future that we decided to look into the matter a little bit and see if there wasn’t some way that we could have a reoccurrence of this kind of a program some evening to talk about those things of the past and relate some of our experiences of our boyhood days and some of the people that were there were Miss Iris Becker for one. She was nothing more or less than just a young school girl, just starting to school, but I had employed her mother as a school teacher when I was on the Springwells board of education and her father was also employed him as a teacher or an engineer. That was the beginning. Then we had a daughter of one of the old, old families of Dearborn. Now I’ll just have to stop and think of their names for just a moment if I can but they had owned and operated the Northview Cemetery and this granddaughter of, gosh I just can’t say his name. MR. ARNESON: It will probably come to you a little later.MR. KARMANN: I will say that she was married to a man by the name of Haigh, Paul Haigh. Paul Haigh’s daughter married a young man by the name of Richards.MRS. FORBES: That’s Florence Haigh Richards?MR. KARMANN: Yes, that’s right. So I think it was about two weeks after that we had another meeting and had such a fine time at the first one that we had a number of other people that joined us. It was the beginning of the discussions and the advisibility of their organizing our Historical Society for the purpose of collecting and preserving the old For Dearborn name and recognition etc. That was the part of the procedure to assist in the incorporation of putting the town towns together. Now the political battle was that strong that we didn’t dare dast tell the folks what we intended to call it after we had them consolidated. So we consolidated the two towns and then we didn’t have no name but the legal advisers both from Dearborn and from Fordson advised to institute a name on the submission of a charter to operate the new city and one of the first paragraphs in the new charter was the incorporation and operation of the consolidated Cities of Dearborn and Fordson is to be known as the City of Dearborn. So we had them consolidated and then we had the schools write essays on the names and one thing and another but the name was already amongst men like these gentlemen that on the naming committee already had the name designated when we put it on the charter was the issue was to be shall this charter be adopted, yes or no, the name went along with it. So that is how the baptism and the christening and the identification of the little new baby of the City of Dearborn as it is was adopted. MR. ARNESON: Do you think otherwise, Mr. Karmann, there would have been trouble with the name as far as people in Fordson were concerned? Naturally there is pride in a name over the years. Maybe some of them would have rather had it called Springwells then since it was Fordson for such a short time. MR. KARMANN: That’s right. In order to appease and somewhat console some of these people that were outstanding people and this photograph I have here, this original committee were opposed to it. They all were opposed to it. When I told Mr. Ford that some buddies and old friends of his was opposed to the thing. Why, he said, have them come up here just to a dinner and or a luncheon at noon and I’ll talk to them. They seemed to think that it was my idea as a politician that I wanted to do these things and Ford wasn’t involved in it at all. That he wasn’t even interested in the thing and I told him that. We got to a point here where you got to come out from under cover here if we are going to get anywhere with the thing. And he said you have them up here for dinner. So I invited this Charlie Clippert, Charlie Sorenson, Albert P. Ternes, Ernest G. Liebold was Mr. Ford’s secretary. Mr. Ford was to be there and myself. Now those are the people on this picture. Well, they agreed to go with me with the exceptions of one – John H. Schaefer had the old Schaefer Roadhouse on the corner of Schaefer Road and Michigan Avenue at that time said he didn’t want to have a damn thing to do with it. He said Springwells was good enough for him and he didn’t want no changes, he said he went a long ways to call it Fordson. Well, anyway when we got up there for the dinner why Mr. Ford wasn’t there and we were sitting in his office room talking with Mr. Liebold and Mr. Ford came in and he stopped immediately got inside the door he said, well, what’s going on here today, they got this dignified looking delegation up here? And Charlie Clippert stood up and he said, well, Henry, here’s what we’re up here for. Our illustrious young Mayor down there seems to have the bright idea of consolidating the City of Dearborn and the City of Fordson and making one big city and he’s predicted the dredging of the River Rouge and that there was going to be ocean vessels coming up there with coal and iron and limestone, automobiles and Ford products going out and he said you’d have a hard job getting through the cattails now with a rowboat much less dredging the Rouge program of that kind. So he said we just wanted to find out what you thought of this thing. Well, he said, Mr. Ford said well I don’t know too much about what’s going to happen in the future but whoever suggested this idea, he said, that’s a bright and brilliant one. He said I can’t see but what we can’t make that thing work. Well, Albert P. Ternes said he didn’t think that rural area of land would support the new City as large as that with so much agriculture. Mr. Ford took one step over and met Mr. Ternes and he said, Hal, you won’t be able with your big lumber yard and coal yard down there on Michigan Avenue to supply the needs of the building activity that’s going to take place in that new town if it’s adopted. And he said for you, Charlie, he said you ain’t going to be able to manufacture brick enough, you won’t manufacture brick enough for us alone much less the home builders, etc. Boy, those men just stood there and gasped. So they decided, well, they’d have their dinner and went back into the dining room and were shaking hands in good fellowship and by God, Henry, if there’s anything I can do to help you just let us know. Well, Henry said talk to Joe, he’ll guide you along here as to what we’re doing. Of course, that is where I got accused of taking down these speeches with the stenographer and the next morning they were on Liebold’s desk so I got a lot of credit out of it so secretly but never very much hopedly on the activities of their development. Now those are all the things that caused a lot of loss of sleep to meet this one and I’d meet people on the road, on the street they just absolutely refused to talk to me or even say good morning and I’d say good morning and walk right along and now I’m retired and came out here, I can live happily and the memories of my participation in the accomplishment of one of the finest and greatest things that ever took place and I was the one and the only Mayor that the City of Springwells had and I was the first one that the City of Fordson had. Then the second one I refused to run due to the fact that we were sponsoring the consolidation of the two cities. MR. ARNESON: There was no Mayor from the time of 1921 to ’24 then?MR. KARMANN: No.MR. ARNESON: Well, who acted as the president chairman?MR. KARMANN: Township supervisor. That was under the jurisdiction, you see, the Village was always under the supervision of the Township Board.MR. ARNESON: I see, and then there was a president that was in charge of that wasn’t there? One of the men acted as president or so?MR. KARMANN: Yes, well, that was the superviore, he was in charge. That was Charlie Horger.MR. ARNESON: Let’s see, about anything else about consolidation that we haven’t covered so far. Anything Marion you want to bring up concerning the consolidation?MRS. FORBES: I was wondering if you could tell us a little more about some of the families that were your neighbors and early families in East Dearborn like you mentioned the Horgers, the Ternes and Clippert the brick. Perhaps you could give us a little more information on those families. MR. KARMANN: Well, I will start on some of them over on the Miller Road because the Miller Road had become one of the main arteries leading into the Ford Rouge Plant, sometimes called Gate 10. That turned off of Miller Road and one of the outstanding well founded and well respected old families that lived on the Miller Road was Nick Schnider. Now that family was so well known and their sons and the daughters is one of the daughters is the wife of Anthony Esper,, Councilman Esper; and another one was the wife of Frank Reuter, another old established family. Well, there was Charlie Roulo’s family. MR. ARNESON: Well, now when you mentioned the Schnider family, what did Nick Schnider do in life? When you do mention the people if you’d mention their main occupation over the years. Some of them may have been farmers first and maybe later on they went into business. MR. KARMANN:All right, we’ll try and do that. Also Alec Schmidt was a former, I did mention Charlie Roulo, didn’t I? Charlie Roulo was another farmer. Then we had the Zeuner, Fred Zeuner family that were farmers. And we had John Daigel; he was a market gardener; he had a smaller tract of land but was a market gardener and he had a son that turned out to be the president of the Daigel Iron and Bridgework Construction manufacturing steel girders and columns, etc. bridgework. They were known as the iron men. Then we had the Flemmer family. They were down at the intersection of Baby Creek and the Rouge River. Then we had the North of Michigan Avenue we had the Horger family. Now there was about four of five different Horger families; all brothers related. Then we had the Terneses of which there was several members of the Ternes family. We had a member of the Hisorical Society.MRS. FORBES: The Horger family were they farmers too?MR. KARMANN: Yes. H O R G E R. Now we have a lady on the member of the Historical Society by the name of MacDonald. MacDonald people had brick and tile manufacturing establishment. They didn’t farm it very much but they did manufacture drain tile for farmers. Parker, Parker Thayer was for many, many years the old Township clerk. He was an insurance writer. And I spoke about Anthony Esper on the Council. His father was a farmer and farm insurance writer. MR. ARNESON: Was Mr. Thayer interested in education later on too because one of the schools was named after him I believe? At least that family.MR. KARMANN: It was named in honor of the family. They had a little one-room school house built on the Thayer farm that the Thayer’s had given for the schoolhouse. So when they built new modern schools they just carried on the name. We have a number of schools that have that same name. Speaking of schools, we had the Miller School on Michigan Avenue about midway between the City Hall as it is now and the Miller Road. That’s where Mrs. Karmann went to school.MRS. FORBES: Isn’t that named after a family?MR. KARMANN:Yes, that was named after Edward Miller. He was a township Ed Miller was a township justice of the peace for many, many years, many terms. Then we had as I say there my wife’s folks. They were his name was Louis Chase and the Maples family at the road was named after we had a number of those Maples living along the old Maple Road known as Billy Maples, Schube Maples, Leander and Charlie Maples and that would take perhaps the entire stretch of Maple Road to Michigan Avenue down to the River Rouge and as we went west of Michigan Avenue why we would have a number of Espers and Theisens. The first names we had one of them that was a County Treasurer, Henry Esper for a number of years. His father’s name was Peter Joe Esper. Then on the corner of Southfield Road or Reckinger Road and Michigan Avenue that was a family there by the name of Mat Esper, Reckinger rather, Mat Reckinger and his home was right where the new Ford office is there just off of Michigan Avenue and Southfield Road. They were farmers also. And there’s Bart Schlaff that works in the Mayor’s office that has been there under John Carey for Mayor, Clyde Ford for Mayor. He is a descendant of the Mat Reckinger family. His mother was a daughter of Mat Reckinger and she married a John Schlaff and this Bert Schlaff is now the third generation of that particular family. Quite outstanding and well known throughout the entire area. Now of course we have John Haggerty. John S. Haggerty and Clifton Floyd Haggerty. They were both bachelors. John Haggerty was the Secretary of State for 35 straight years and now we have a hard job keeping one there for one term. John had the big brickyard manufacturing plant. Furnished a lot of brick for a lot of the homes. For Ford Motor Company buildings. MR. ARNESON: Yesterday I stopped at the site where the old St. Joseph’s Retreat used to be. I thought I would pick up a few bricks there for the Museum that came from this sire and , of course, one of them had JHS or no, JSH Haggerty JSH, yes. MR. KARMANN: Well, John left his estate to the Salvation Army. He retired and lived over there on Camp and Centre Road and died here a couple of years ago and his estates have been left over there. But you speaking about brick I’d like to show you one that I’ve got. MR. ARNESON: Fine. All the Haggertys were bachelors then?MR. KARMANN: Yes, oh yes. I built this house out here. I tore down an old house on the Ford estate right back of the mansion on the opposite side of the Rouge and in the cellar wall the foundation this brick was encased in the foundation of the wall and I didn’t notice it at the time till I come to laying the brick out. If you can tell me when did Mr. Ford scratch his name in the brick, when the kids were playing around the brickyard? Because that little house was an old, old ancient old house and Myron Stevens, the Dearborn City Clerk for years that lived in that house and he said he never knew how it could have been laid in that wall but that monogram H Ford certainly is an indication to me that that was Henry Ford. MR. ARNESON: Well, would he have written his name like that if he was going to scratch it in?MR. KARMANN: I don’t know.MR. ARNESON: It’s possible part of the building could have been repaired at one time and he could have.MR. KARMANN: Possible could have.MR. ARNESON: One of the bricks happened to be used could have been one he could have scratched his name then at the source of origin. That’s possible. MR. KARMANN: Well, I thought it would be a souvenir at least. That’s an old hand made brick. It’s just a fraction of an inch wider and a fraction of an inch thinner and standard length of a standard brick that was made by Haggerty and Clippert. Now unless you’ve got a question.MR. ARNESON: Any other families you want to mention for the record?MR. KARMANN: Well, it would be pretty hard to.MR. ARNESON: Yes, there are so many of them. MR. KARMANN: Yes, so many of them but the entire Township of Springwells was more or less agriculture farming. MR. ARNESON: Yes, Now one of the main industry in the early days would have been brickmaking and tile making wouldn’t it?MR. KARMANN: Oh, Yes. MR. ARNESON: Would you care to comment on brickmaking?MR. KARMANN: Brickyard? Yes, the brickyards followed the strata of the soil. They can’t make brick out of any run of dirt at all. It has to be more or less certain quality of clay and they went all through the eastern end of Springwells Township starting I think the one furthest west that I know of outside of the ones up in Dearborn were the Wagner Brickyards was years ago and then they had one down on the banks of the river south of the Greenfield Village area known as Greisel’s (?) Brickyard and the house that my grandfather built, the brick was made there at Greisel’s Brickyard down at the bank of the Rouge just east of Greeenfield Village. Then the one’s along Michigan Avenue was the Porath Sons Brickyard, Clippert’s and Lonyo’s, MacDonald’s. Then let’s see there was a couple more that were down in there that, I really think of the names just offhanded is pretty hard to do. MR. ARNESON: Were many of these companies in business at the same time?MR. KARMANN: Oh yes. They were in the brick business at the time my father was born, that is thereMR. ARNESON: Well, a lot of these bricks of course were going to Detroit, weren’t they?MR. KARMANN: Yes.MR. ARNESON: Springwells at that time didn’t possibly have enough bricks for all thoseMR. KARMANN: Well, not only that. Michigan Central Railroad had sidings in as a good share of these brickyards and they would ship them by freight car. Now if they wanted to send brick we’ll say to Jackson they’d load a car there at Springwells and it would be sent off the train at Jackson, Michigan. So the Springwells brick were known on all over the country being shipped down Toledo way on the roads going down that direction so it was a great business but as the excavating of the clay, more or less ran out, then they began to use them ponds and those spaces for City dump and the brickyard people would charge a certain amount for a load of trash that was brought to the dump and they got as much out of filling up the hole as they did taking the brick out in the first place they had it going and coming. MR. ARNESON: They filled up a hole that could have been dangerous someday.MR. KARMANN: And today subdivisions and buildings of all kinds are on top of those old excavated brickyard ponds. MR. ARNESON: I guess the layer of clay deposits in Dearborn is quite thick in some areas.MR. KARMANN: Yes, it could be.MR. ARNESON: I heard in some areas there’s as much as a hundred feet or so. There’s that much clay.MR. KARMANN: Well, they’re taking out the clay when the brickyards were in constant operation. They didn’t have very much water but if they renovated or discontinued the taking the clay out of one area they soon filled up with water and they were quite a hazard. They had quite a lot of problems there with the youngsters going swimming even skating breaking through the ice etc. MR. ARNESON: I suppose there were a few drownings in those days.MR. KARMANN: There was a few drownings. Some were law suits. Courts decided that it was an attractive nuisance and they had the fence up and do everything possible to prevent these damage and liable suits.MR. ARNESON: Well, other than brickmaking and farming in the early days, what else was there in the way of industry before Mr. Ford came along?MR. KARMANN: Well, I think one of the most interesting ones that gave some of the farm boys some employment especially during the winter months would be the Haggerty Newton Ladder Company, manufacturing of ladders. MR. ARNESON: Did you know about that, Marion? I’ve never heard about that. MR. KARMANN: Step ladders and foot ladders and they had great piles of choice of straight grained lumbering material at the intersection of the Pere Marquette Railroad at Miller Road and Michigan Avenue. That was a very, very capable going concern. Then they moved that company out to Ypsilanti. They couldn’t get help enough to operate a ladder factory down there and it’s still in operation here in Ypsi. That’s right. The Newton Ladder Factory. And Charlie Newton was engaged as a purchasing agent for Mr. Ford’s antique collection. Mr. Newton travelled all over the country, gathering items of interest for Greenfield Village and he was only one of a staff of a half a dozen.MR. ARNESON: Well. Did he start out gathering these things before the Museum was even built?MR. KARMANN: No, after it was built.MR. ARNESON: Any other industry of mention at all?MR. KARMANN: Well, of course, the farmers they had milk production too that was from the cattle and hog to distributing points – ten-gallon milk can but now, of course, that’s done away with your hardly ever hear or see of it of the milk cans on a trapped decked Democrat going down to the milk station. But I don’t think there was any other industry of any great amount in the township. There may have been some I think they had a slaughter house down on Dix Road right near the cattle yard but that was long before it was annexed to Detroit. That part, of course, went in the annexation. It quite interesting to know that down Fort Street a way and Jefferson Avenue the Township of Springwells ran down to oh Fort Wayne was in the originally was in the township of Springwells, oh yes. The Solvey (?) Process Company a lot of wholesale merchants had wholesale fruit and vegetables and materials and supplies along Jefferson Avenue that they catered to the navigation on the Detroit River, boat delivery brought up from Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, points on up even over as far as Chicago. A lot of the supplies were picked up there that would be brought in by train and then would be furnished on the ship.MR. ARNESON: Well, how was Springwells affected by World War I? Every community in the country was affected by it cause it was a big war for its time. Well, how did that affect the operation of the government and so on?MR. KARMANN: Ford turned over their entire holdings, their plant there to the Federal Government for the operation of the manufacturing of the submarine chasers these so-called Eagle boats. And the old homestead that my grandfather had built was used by the Navy as a Commandant’s Headquarters office and the barracks they were and the athletic ground and the chain buildings for operating these boats were located on the old Karmann farm and the I was the Ford Motor Company at that time and transferred to the Navy and was in the department of maintenance and supervisional inspection, things I like, of the construction of these Eagle boats. The day the Armistice was declared the plant went on strike. Everybody quit and all marched downtown Detroit from Dearborn on foot, walked all the way down Woodward Avenue and joined the City of Detroit in a parade out Woodward Avenue and of all the crazy acting people that you ever saw in your life they were all out on the streets all celebrating the Armistice Day, no more wars. That was the end of World War I. Now the Ford activities there was all based on a cost plus return. They had no way of figuring what they would need, where they would need it or what they would want so they were operating on cost plus bases. They had something like 90 thousand people employed at that time.MR. ARNESON: 90 thousand?MR. KARMANN: Yes, 90 thousand. Some big payroll. My pays sometimes I didn’t collect for 3 or 4 months at a time. Then they paid in gold coins except in small change. MR. ARNESON: Well, you still have some gold coins?MR. KARMANN: Still have some.MR. ARNESON: Technically, they’re illegal to keep but as long as you don’t circulate them I guess it’s all right.MR. KARMANN: No, they’re not in circulation and they’re souvenirs.MRS. FORBES: There was something about the depression times. You just mentioned it briefly with the avoiding of the script. MR. KARMANN: Yes, I’m very glad you brought that up because that was really something. It got to a point during the Winter it was the hardest, you know, for fuel and supplies and Mr. Ford said, well, let’s take it. Let’s take some of that vacant farm land we got over there at Greenfield Road and Michigan Avenue and he said sign each one of these people that will make applications for a garden plot. So they had the surveyors survey it off in equal size plots for planting gardens and the farm operating division of the Ford outfit under Ray Dahlinger furnished the tilling of the soil the plowing, the disking and getting it all ready for the seed beds and much of the seed was furnished by the Ford people and this time of the year they would be setting out little set onions and sowing lettuce early crops and June peas and it was really a tremendous adventure. Then when the crop came on they had more material than they could use themselves so he built them a little canning factory on this Reckener Road and that would be just west of the big new office there slightly west on Southfield Road. That canning factory was running day and night doing up the surplus crops, canning of beets and carrots and tomatoes and stuff that was raised at and that helped out an awful lot butMR. ARNESON: And that was done at no charge to the people, they just brought it there?MR. KARMANN: Just brought it there, no charge at all. Now Mr. Ford’s philosophy and I talked to him quite a little bit because I was in the Mayor’s office and there’s people come on the City Hall steps in great mobs and wanted to help. He said you will learn not to give people anything. Now he said there is times when perhaps you will have to give them something to do where they can earn the thing and he said and you don’t destroy their incentive. He said we have learned already years ago people come and ask won’t you give this or do that to help us and he said what we do he said we do give them a job, an opportunity to earn that they can a buy and acquire what they need. That reminds me of a little story that I probably would have overlooked. One day there was a Indian, a fully dressed Indian came to the office and the girl from the outer office came in and she said Mr. Karmann there’s an Indian out there wants to see you. I said and Indian? She said, yes, well I said send him in, I’d like to see him. So in he came and he could talk fairly good English and he said his name was Sam Mondoge (?) Mandokee and he came from the Indian Reservation out at St. Joe, Michigan. And I said, well, what’s your mission down here? What are you doing down here? He said I travelled around and tried to get an appointment, a meeting with Mr. Ford and he said someone told me that the Mayor down there has a pass to see Mr. Ford any time, any place, anywhere and he said I came over to see if you could make it possible that I could see him. Well, now I said I’ll tell you that’s a hard thing to do. There isn’t anybody that can go in directly and see Mr. Ford. They usually have to make an application for an appointment with Mr. Liebold. If Mr. Liebold deems it advisable why he will admit him. Well, he said I presume I won’t get any more help here and I said, well, what do you want to see him about? Well, that I don’t want to tell everybody. I said, well, then man I can’t help you much but he said I’ll tell you what it is, he said you know lots of people don’t have no confidence in the Indians. They think he’s looking for something for nothing and that he drinks it up and just ballyhoos it away etc. but he said I’m the chief of the reservation and he said we need a little church out there. He said we got one but it’s been falling down and it was just more or less a shaggy outfit to start with and he said the warriors petitioned me to call on Mr. Ford for some help to build the church. So I said how much help do you feel you gotta have, maybe we won’t even have to go to Mr. Ford. Well, he said we thought that with what we could dig up amongst our salaries and if Mr. Ford could give us $300 that would build our little building and the painting and things we could do ourselves. I said you have quite an interesting story, now I’ll see what I can do for you. I won’t do it right now but I said where are you going to stay tonight? And he said I don’t know. Well, I said you come down to my place and you can sleep in my little log cabin by the fireplace and I want to visit with you tonight and talk a little bit something about your race of people and your accomplishments etc. He’d be awfully happy to do that. So I sent him down home and when he got down there, Mrs. Karmann prepared lunch for him. She thought she had someone right out of the wilderness but anyway he stayed there that night and in the meantime I had called up there and told them what I had and then this man Jones, he attends these meetings quite often, he’ll probably remember the lingo. He belongs to the Historical Society. He was the outer office boy up there at the Ford’s office and I told him to connect me with Ernie Liebold and maybe if I told Ernie Liebold what I had and he said, well, I think maybe Mr. Ford would be kind of glad to see him, he says, send him up here. I said I don’t know whether he’d find it. Well, he said bring him up then and you’d like to come up here and I said all right and next day I took this (?) Indian and goes that Ford office and Mr. Ford was waiting. So the Indian told him the story, the same as he told it to me. Why, he said, Ford said how big a church would you anticipate? How many people you got in your tribe up there? So he gave the number that he had a couple of hundred but he said they don’t all attend church he said some of them have interests elsewhere. Ford, he got a chuckle out of it. Now he said I’ll tell you Mr. Mandokee he said I’ll have somebody come up there and look into it and find out. You don’t seem to me as though you have much of a church for $300. Well, he said we thought we could get by with it and he would have some of them in the wood lot cutting the wood etc. So the Indian went back and wanted to know from me what he should tell the tribe when he got back. And I said well tell them just what Mr. Ford told you. He’ll have somebody look into it and that you fellows were worth the ____________ had you junk and rubbish and stuff cleared away so it’d be nice and attractive looking area where you want to put your church. I said you got to expect that some of these Indians are lazy. He said they all are loafers, he said any of them does keep their place clean and you have to go up there and straighten up because he’s just liable to come in there and well I hadn’t heard him for a month or more. And I got a couple of bows and arrows hanging up there that he brought down came back down to my place and he said I wanted to bring you a souvenir for what you done for me. And so I said I didn’t do anything, what happened? He said they came in there, man, he said with trucks, with loads of lumber and shingles and paint pails and posts, cement posts and says they’d build us a whole new church and didn’t cost us nothing. He said we didn’t get nothing but we got a beautiful little church. He said it’s all painted white, it’s got a bell on it and that Indian was so enthused and the world and Noah didn’t care and that’s the first time that I’ve told that story to anybody myself. That’s right.MR. ARNESON: Is the church still standing there?MR. KARMANN: I don’t know whether it is or not. This was over 40 year ago but I imagineMR. ARNESON: You never gotten back in that area?MR. KARMANN: No, I never really went and called on him.MR. ARNESON: It would be interesting to see what has happened.MR. KARMANN: The thing that I did get was a report from somebody up there who is a secretary that wrote and told me that Sam Mandokee had died in the tuberculosis hospital. He died with TB so I did get that information.MR. ARNESON: Many Indians did die of tuberculosis in those days.MR. KARMANN: Well, I don’t know too much about it but I imagine they could have because hospitalization and medical care and things and especially that race of people they were hardy, they lived outdoors, slept outdoors, are everything and anything , you know, but now with these Indian Reservations and the Indians schools they have been brought up-to-date to where they have some of the finest talent and capable people in action, government affairs, government offices. MR. ARNESON: I suppose if this Indian had asked for a large sum of money, Mr. Ford would have turned it down?MR. KARMANN: Oh, sure.MR. ARNESON: But he asked for such a small amount or modest amount that Mr. Ford got really interested, isn’t that right?MR. KARMANN: He gave them a chance to earn it some ways. Now Ford did a lot of those things not only with the Indians. You take this St. Alphonsus Cemetery, St Alphonsus Catholic Church on the corner of Schaefer Road and Warren Avenue. He came by there and a lot of these old neighbors were buried there in that cemetery and he was looking at it so he checked with the father of the church and his name was Klick (?), Johnny Klick. Spoke about the looks of the thing. He said let’s clean it up and put a fence around it he said this running across really…………….. so the Ford people went down there and got it fixed. Wrought iron (if I remember) fence around it and they did the same thing with Mount Kelly, Catholic Church on Cherry Hill Road and oh, that would be, Outer Drive. You see there’s a fence around that. Ford built that then too. MR. ARNESON: There are many nice stories like this that you hear of Mr. Ford that the average person never hears about. Well, I guess he didn’t make it public or didn’t want to be public and he didn’t have to do it. He could have turned the Indian down. He could have said we won’t bother to build a fence. MR. KARMANN: That man gave away in the form of helping people to help themselves more than what these people do who give these grants to the big universities. And I don’t know maybeMR. ARNESON: You’re actually doing more for somebody when you do that. You help them get started. That was basically the philosophy of the Marshall Plan in World War II to get these countries on their feet again. MR. KARMANN: There’s another little story he told me one day when I was in there. He said you know you got this to contend with on hiring help, he said we have that too. He said if you figure on employing a clerk for one of the departments, a stenographer or secretary or a man for the police force or anything, he said, when you run your announcement that for application he said make a set a date of the time etc. and just before the time comes up, he said, you take the side of your desk and either take a little folder or a couple sheets of paper and put it on the floor where the guy can’t help but either step on it or fall over it, one or the other. Then he comes and sits down and tells you about his college education, his qualifications and rambles on on what he can do and we he can’t do and he didn’t pick that thing up, he says, well, now we have other applicants and we’ll interview them and we will let you know as to whether you passed the examination and requirements etc. or we’ll have you in for an interview. But he said the first one that comes in and sees that thing there and he stops and picks it up, puts it up on the desk or on your desk, well, he knows it doesn’t belong there, he’s the kind of fellow to hire because in his work you make up your mind that he doesn’t pass over everything, anything that’s out of order out of place is going to turn out to be a very good employee. That worked, I tried it just for the novelty of it and it worked. So one day he called up and he said what are you doing? And I said nothing, why, and he said come on over and have breakfast with me. Well, I said where and he said over at the old home over on Ford Road. And I said you mean your old homestead and he said yes and have breakfast over there and he said I’m the cook, come on over. So I went over, guy out at the gate opened the gate and I drove in, he saluted me and I went in and Ford came over and opened the door, he said come on in, breakfast is about ready. So I said all right and I sat down at the table, we chattered on about the activities of the City and one thing and another. We had scrambled eggs and bacon and homemade bread, she had somebody somewhere he got somebody to bake him a couple loaves of homemade bread and we had homemade bread, scrambled eggs and bacon. He said you don’t drink coffee do you? I said yes I do. Well, he said I didn’t make any for you, he said I didn’t think it was good for you. We were drinking water. That’s all right with me, I said, I drank a lot of water I don’t drink anything else. He said I know you don’t. But we had a very nice visit and talked about the future and so forth but you know the man was so preyed upon by people that were bothering him for contributions and gifts and assistance and everything else and he just had to be guarded with guards at the gates and at the offices and everything else and so forth but I have always prided myself on one of his very, very close friends and acquaintances. My old pass that he gave me I took that down to Greenfield Village to Dr. Shelley. He said that’s good anywhere anytime as long as you’ve got it you can go to any of the Ford interests or Ford industries or anything else, he said I never saw one like it before. I said you didn’t meet a Joe Karmann before well, he said, I’m glad to have met you now, I’m coming out there to see you. He’s coming out one of these days. Now do you have any other questions I can help you out with?MR. ARNESON: Well, We were talking before aboutMR. KARMANN: Can you shut that tape off anytime? Well, luncheon is to be served in the dining room.MR. ARNESON: Sure. All right.MR. KARMANN: If you don’t shut that off, you’ll have it on your record.MR. ARNESON: All right, we’ll stop at this point. ****************************************************MR. ARNESON: Well, now after a wonderful luncheon, Mr. Karmann, we’dlike to resume our interview this afternoon and I want to know if you could tell us something about the present City Hall at Michigan and Schaefer and Maple, those three streets. How this came about. I imagine it was quite an expensive building at its time. How did it all come about that the City had that City Hall and where was the City Hall prior to that?MR. KARMANN: Well the activities of the development of these township of Springwells, Village of Springwells and the excitement and participation by the electors due to a point where the hall that we were using at that time was far, far too small. That was the old dance hall at this John H. Schaefer Road House. That was on the corner of Schaefer and Michigan Avenue. But Schaefer Road at that time did not go south of Michigan Avenue. You know it was a dead end at Michigan coming down from the North and right across the street of Michigan Avenue on the south side was a small subdivision with several fairly large lots. A division of a piece of the Walker estate that had been divided and each member of the family had a small plot of land about an acre or acre and a quarter or something like that in each parcel. So the township board discussed the advisability of building a building that would accommodate the people and in anticipation of the future, why they had a conference with a real estate representative that had a sign on these small parcels offering them for sale. So the Township board took up the issue with him and he instigated an option from the members of the family that owned the parcels. But even that was somewhat debatable, some of them didn’t want the City Hall down at a dead end intersection of Schaefer Road and Michigan Avenue that the northern area of the township folks felt that if they had it up at the corner of Warren Avenue and Schaefer Road it would be a four-way intersection and that would be a more convenient and more popular location for it. But in trying to deal with the folks that owned the property up at the intersection of Warren and Schaefer the price would be considerable bit higher and in order to bond the township for sufficient money to build there, of course, was trying to acquire the most economical deal that they can make so after the discussions and arguments and debate, why it was put to a vote and they voted to locate it at the intersection of Schaefer Road as it is now and Michigan Avenue. That only took, if I remember correctly, three of the parcels of the entirety. Mr. Joe Neckel had one of the parcels on the corner of Maple and Michigan then there was one old original members of the Walker family that had his portion there that didn’t want to sell his and his was between the piece that Mr. Neckel had and the property that was available for the City Hall. So they acquired those three parcels and built the City Hall on it and then later condemned the property of Mr. Walker’s to add to it and included the Neckel property. And that was paid for by the Township based on the condemnation juror’s appraisal of the property. I don’t just remember the exact amount but it seems to me it was somewhere around $70,000. That was paid for the Walker, Neckel property to add to the land the grounds and of course there was some wooded area on it, some of the trees had been taken off of the Neckel and Walker piece but the three where the City Hall was there was no trees on that at all. That was clear and that ran out in back down to the next street in back of the City Hall. So that was the acquisition at least of the property there. MR. ARNESON: About how much did that did it cost altogether to build the buildings. All those buildings were built at one time? The old safety building? MR. KARMANN: The Police Station was originally in the basement over the City Hall and the Fire Station was built sometime later when we acquired and organized and established a Fire Department. Then the Police Department building was built later. That was the last one of the three that are there. So that would cover the buildings that’s on it. *****************MR. ARNESON: (This is almost to the end, I’ll turn the tape over). ******************MR. ARNESON: We have been talking, Mr. Karmann, about the City Hall. About how long did it take to build that building and also why was that type of, sort of , Colonial Architecture selected? Any particular reason for that?MR. KARMANN: Well, I think the colonial architecture, the reason for it was more or less that the people who led the citizenry of the Fordson side of the City were elderly people, old timers that came from other some of them from Germany, some from Poland, some from England and I think that due to the fact of their taste of architectures were brought with them from their native countries and that’s where they put them all together more or less is what they came up with from the architect’s method of drawing it. So I think that perhaps was the reason why it was designed that way although that had been remodeled a couple of different times, there had been another floor level added to it up at the attic which was the original attic and the attic was moved up as far as the interior of the building is concerned and the offices has been revamped more or less in order to make more room for the various departments, better operated you know.MR. ARNESON: And then what became the Safety Building later on when was that added?MR. KARMANN: The Safety Building?MR. ARNESON: The one that faces Maple there.MR. KARMANN: That was built on several years afterwards. That was built I think during more or less during the term when Mr. Yinger was Mayor. The Police Department grew to the point where they had to have a different sections and the cell blocks had to be bigger believe it or not. The bigger the town got the more population they had, why the more patrons we had for irregularities and arrests and the courtrooms had to be provided for otherwise they were using the Council Chamber for the court proceedings of the two justice departments. So I think that that was more or less being necessary before expansion purposes as far as the Safety Building was concerned.MR. ARNESON: I believe Mr. Yinger was Mayor for just about a year, or so, wasn’t he?MR. KARMANN: Yes.MR. ARNESON: When you decided not to run again then he was elected and he was elected and he was Mayor until the consolidation went into effect in 1929. MR. KARMANN: That’s right. And then Mr. Yinger died. He didn’t finish his term.MR. ARNESON: That’s all right. Why don’t you come over this way, Mr. Karmann, we would like to ask you a few questions. If you are to move your chair over here. MR. KARMANN: Then, let’s see, Clyde Ford I think succeeded Mr. Yinger. MR. ARNESON: Yes. What type of a man was Mr. Yinger? We haven’t heard too much about him and we have very little in our files about him. Is he an old Dearborn name?MR. KARMANN: No. He was his occupation was an auditor for the New York Central Railroad and he was brought in due to the fact of his experience of finances more than any other reason that I know of at that particular time. He was a finance man and the deputy treasurer was a deputy under Mr. Yinger down at the railroad department. His name was Ralph Trotter and Mr. Trotter was employed in the treasurer’s office, the city treasurer’s office. Mr. Kaiser was the city treasurer. William A. Kaiser at the time that Ralph Trotter was engaged. And it was through Ralph Trotter’s recommendation that he recommended the name of Mr. Yinger although Mr. Yinger lived in the Fordson area but his occupation was down at the railroad depot. MR. ARNESON: I understand at the time that you didn’t choose to run again I guess you sort of followed Calvin Collidge’s thoughts on running for more than two terms? That’s what I read in the paper, in one of the clippings that we have. Did you feel that if you could do more as a councilman that as Mayor in this work toward consolidation?MR. KARMANN: I had already been approached relative to the consolidation deal and they wanted to make that more or less of an enterprise of which it was. Quite of length and I couldn’t possibly run with the hounds and rabbits too so speaking that the one branch of promotional activity had to overcome the objectional group of elements that I felt as though I had just too much time to be affiliated with the City directly as an official and made myself somewhat disliked with a lot of the electors. There was some question in my mind as to even though I might want to be a candidate again as to whether I could be elected or not because there was so much opposition to the entire procedure.MR. ARNESON: What would you say, on how should I word this? What was one of your biggest disappointments either as Mayor or through your years living in Springwells or Dearborn later on and then also I asked you what was one of the most satisfying things that happened to you while you were in public office? If you care to comment on that.MR. KARMANN: Yes, I think that the satisfaction of the promotion of the big program and a big deal of that kind I think as far as we knew at that time in history there were only two other occasions where a similar procedure had taken part in the country. One of them was up at in Minnesota where two cities were consolidated: the other one was in Saginaw. And then there was the City of Dearborn and the City of Fordson being consolidated was the third one at that time anyway I don’t know whether there’ve been any others since or not and people acquired a lot of correspondence up at the city clerk’s at Minnesota as well as up at Saginaw. Did quite a lot of traveling in connection with this. The expenses of operating was bigger than what the compensation was and couldn’t go on forever without going through bankruptcy probably and still support the program that you started out to do and more or less for the benefit of someone else and Mr. Ford in particular. Mr. Ford was awfully careful to not to be accused of buying some public official to promote his own private personal requirements. He’d put you in a position where you could see what was coming and what you could do if you would take part in it and I think one of the happiest moments of my life was the day of the election and the votes was counted and the issue had carried. I was very, very liberally rewarded amidst a lot of fire and argumentation and activity both ways and I felt very, very well pleased. So I thought that that probably would be pretty near enough for any one man like Calvin Coolidge as you say. I think that that was a very, very rewarding and I have felt quite proud of it and I’ve sponsored other activities since outside of governmental activities that was accomplished due to the fact that I had experience in that particular proceedings. MR. ARNESON: I imagine as the 1930’s and ‘40’s came along and you saw Dearborn developing that gave you a lot of satisfaction too to realize this really did become successful. In the 1920’s it’s hard to look to the 1960’s and did you think that Dearborn would be as fine a community as it is today?MR. KARMANN: Yes. I did think that. In fact I had sufficient information to practically guarantee it. Now after the thing had been consummated and talking with Mr. Ford about a number of things that I thought should be done, one of the outstanding ones was the fact that taxation meant an awful big part of the possibilities of the City going on advantageous and it came to my attention in the department of the board of City assessors that a tremendous amount of Mr. Ford’s property was not in our township. For instance, the navigation division of his big ships on the Great Lakes were not registered in Dearborn. They were registered, I’m quite sure it was Maryland, known as the Port of Call. Now the port of call was where the ships were recorded and where they were taxed for taxation purposes. So I spoke to him about that and he said, well, we’ll change that. So within a couple of days we received the notices from the Treasury Department that the port of call of the Ford Motor Company ships would be at Dearborn, Michigan, and as far as I know they’re still recorded there and we had a number of other things the finance activities of the community – banking was another thing we felt that there was all of the new residence and the homeowners, people that business operators had to go to Detroit to do the depositing or make their loans or acquire their mortgages or meet their contracts so there was 10 of us got together and organized a bank, known as the Springwells State Savings Bank and as the times grew on and they changed the name from Springwells to Fordson some of our members of the board of directors of the bank just wouldn’t go along because they were opposed to this change of the name from Springwells to Fordson. But Springwells was wiped out and still they would not change the bank’s name to Fordson. MR. ARNESON: Now where was this bank located?MR. KARMANN: Right straight across from the City Hall on the corner of Neckel and Michigan Avenue.MR. ARNESON: Where the present Manufacturers Bank is?MR. KARMANN: No. MR. ARNESON: That spot?MR. KARMANN: No, one block west, corner of Maple and Michigan Avenue. Manufacturers Bank now is on Neckel and Michigan. MRS. FORBES: Who were the 10 who formed the bank?MR. KARMANN: Beg your pardon?MRS. FORBES: Who were the 10 who original formed this bank?MR. KARMANN: Well, there’s the members of the directors was the commissioner of the Department of Public Works, Joe Henn; myself; Cliff and Floyd Haggerty, Anthony M. Esper, I just can’t name the rest of them offhandedly. MR. ARNESON: What year was this? Some of these things we can check up on. What year was this?MR. KARMANN: That I can’t give you.MR. ARNESON: Approximately?MR. KARMANN: Well, I couldn’t even give you that much. MRS. FORBES: Well, it was still Springwells. Springwells Township or was it the Village of Springwells? MR. KARMANN: It was the Village.MRS. FORBES: It was the Village. Well, that gives us a date right there.MR. KARMANN: And getting into the banking business we wouldn’t have money enough to operate the bank unless we had the people that would patronize it so we started in at the City Treasurer’s office. When tax collection time came we asked the treasurer to recognize the new bank and make the deposits of the funds deposit it in the Springwells State Savings Bank of which he did and that money came in we’d have a chance to loan that out new homes and new businesses and so forth to get that started. Then we got the treasurer of the Board of Education to do the same things – school taxes that was paid over to the treasurer of the Board of Education they patronized the same bank and asked Mr. Ford to make a transfer of some of his money Highland Park or from elsewhere in the bank. He did that. Somethings like $500,000 in one deposit which put the bank in a financial position to where it grew at one time to where it had three different branches of one on Warren Avenue, another one on Eagle Avenue and another one down on Dix Avenue. But they wouldn’t go along with the name of Fordson State Bank so they adopted the Union State Bank name due to the fact that we were taking in so much money that we couldn’t loan it out as fast as we took it in so we would go down to the Union Trust Company and buy obligations from them that they were holding on business enterprises and so forth for periods of six months at a time and then when they come due why you’d go back and pay the loan from the Union Trust. We were getting along very nicely in the baking business until the bank holiday came and all the banks were closed why we came very nearly losing everything but of course the law provided that the directors was doubly obligated for the financial position of the banking institution and we had to pay back in a special assessment in order to save the bank from going into bankruptcy and the assets that was held by the bank was purchased by the Bank of Detroit and Dearborn. The Dearborn State Bank then turned into the Manufacturers National Bank or adopted that procedure and that was another Ford movement in order to save the banking situation from disgrace as far as bankruptcy was concerned. That would about cover my experiences as director of a bank. MR. ARNESON: Of course, we all have disappointments in what happens in our communities. Are there any that you would like to comment either when you were Mayor – things that didn’t happen that you wanted to happen or as you look back years later?MR. KARMANN: I think the most important thing was for the Mayor to keep ahead of the department heads that weren’t any different then than they are now as far as I know of wanting to direct their department based upon their own judgment and their own decisions instead of making application to the council and the Mayor for their recommendations as to the activities that would be carried out in various offices. For instance we had an occasion where the commissioner of public works felt that they would need some additional utility equipment in the line of trucks and the council had agreed to accept sealed bids on the furnishing of the City with a number of trucks to be used for hauling of refuse and rubbish and things of that likes and the Public Works Department usually does have them but just before the time to receive the bids and open the bids why one of the commissioners on the streets came in and said to me, “Mr. Mayor, I don’t know whether you know it or not but he said I just can’t knowing you he said I can’t set by here and watch this thing happen.” I said well what are you talking about, what’s happening? I said the commissioner of the department of Public Works has had plans and specifications drawn up that would cover just one model of one make of truck and that was a White truck built by a company for commercial purposes and he said I know that the friend that you are of Mr. Ford’s and the Ford people are building trucks right here in our own home town and paying taxes and paying for the purchasing price of them that well I said Charlie, his name was Charlie Krueger – street commissioner. I said well Charlie are you sure of that, he said sure I am. Well I said we won’t let that happen. So I got back up to Dearborn and saw Mr. Ford and told him what was going to happen, that they had finagled and got together and was going to buy White trucks tomorrow night at the council meeting. So he said are you sure of it? And I said yes. He said well I’m going to tell you what you do. He said you let them go ahead and receive the bids and let them open them and see what prices they quote then you rise and ask for the floor and recommend that they cancel all the bids that you will furnish the necessary trucks for a dollar and he said we’ll see what happens. Now he said we’ll have some fellows in the audience there to see what’s going to happen so we’ll know. Well, I thought that was kind of unusual but I carried out the instructions and when the bids was open and they were about to make the motion to award the contract to the White Construction Company and I arose and said gentlemen I recommend that you pass a resolution rejecting all these bids for these trucks because I will furnish you ten trucks for a dollar. Henry Ford’s brother, John, was on the council and John didn’t know anything about it either so he got up and he said where in the world are you going to get ten trucks from for a dollar. I said that don’t make any difference where I get then from I’ll furnish the trucks for a dollar for a year. Why, he said I’d like to see that and I said all right take a recess for 15 minutes and go out in the backyard and you’ll see I got the trucks out there waiting for you. So they move, to take 15 minutes recess and off they went to look at the trucks the Ford Motor Company had 10 trucks lined up there to drive each one all brand new ones and parked and I said here are your trucks for a dollar a year. But now those kind of things made enemies of me, you see, I was disliked for doing those things and I think Mr. Ford realized it but he caught them in the act of putting over something that shouldn’t have been done and from then on they knew they were being watched and, of course, as he said my reports would be up to Mr. Ford’s office the next morning. But it didn’t necessarily have to be me it was people in the audience there that did that and that was their job and their business. Now we had another one that was similar to that - - - a fellow come in one day and he said what kind of heating plant have you got? Well, I said a coal furnace in the basement. Why? And he said you want to get some coal it won’t cost you anything and I said I don’t know about that, I said, I never got anything in my life that amounted to anything that didn’t cost me something. Well, he said there’s going to be a carload of coal set on the siding down on Schaefer Road opposite Gate 5. We’ll be unloading that night we’ll bring you over a couple of loads if you want them. Well I said no I don’t want any of it and I thought that was stealing a carload of coal so I thought that we ought to do something either go tell Harry Bennett or Mr. Ford about it and I didn’t know but that Bennett might be in on the deal so you could never tell who was taking part in those kind of things so when I went up and told Mr. Ford what was going to happen that they were going to steal a carload of coal at night he kind of acted at least I thought he acted as though I should run the city instead of them but he said I’ll tell you what you do, you go back and go down to that yard master and tell him to send three carloads of coal out there tonight he said and we’ll see what happens. So I went down to the yard master at the switching yard in the Ford Motor plant then I asked for the yard master and told him. He said what’s the idea of sending three carloads of coal out there on Schaefer Road siding as it was a team track where they could drive up with a private racing track. I said I don’t know anything about it excepting I want you to put three carloads of coal up there. Well, them three carloads of coal stood there for three weeks if they stood there a day and nobody touched any of it, well, they come to get the coal they saw three carloads there they were suspicious and nobody ever took any of the coal. It was just his way of belittling activities that were irregular that ordinarily a man was with detectives down there and picked the fellows right up for stealing the coal and so forth but he didn’t like that kind of publicity and he had a way of analyzing human beings and human nature that I have never seen anybody since that.MR. ARNESON: That was clever.MR. KARMANN: That was clever and it worked. But sometimes those things works to the inconvenience of the other fellow that carries out the wishes. MR. ARNESON: There’s one more thing I want to ask you before Mrs. Forbes probably has a question. I know she’s been making a lot of notes there, Were any of the officials of the Graham-Paige Ford Company active at all in the community affairs? Or did most of these people live elsewhere?MR. KARMANN: No, there wasn’t any other.MR. ARNESON: I would think that there was a pretty large plant in those days and MR. KARMANN: There wasMR. ARNESON: It must have been important that some of theseMR. KARMANN: No, I think that as far as I can remember they did not take part in anything with the exception of when we had the Board of Review meeting and the tax rolls were open for public inspection the Graham-Paige people would put in their appearance the same as Ford Motor Company would and any other organization. We had quite a lot of other industries in the Fordson angle of it and at no time did we ever had any inconveniences or any recommendations of being assessed too high or they were very, very agreeable. We had another big industry there the Detroit Seamless Steel Tube Company, The Detroit Twist Drill Company, The American Sand, Line, Brick Company that manufactured white brick out of sand and line and there was the Graham-Paige people, oh, there could have been half a dozen other ones that I just don’t bring to mind at the present time but at no time did we have any interference in any way, shape, or form.MR. ARNESON: Would they have been the second largest tax payers at that period of time in Dearborn?MR. KARMANN: Oh yes, yes.MR. ARNESON: Well, did they ever give things like Mr. Ford gave to the City from time to time – a piece of land or things like that?MR. KARMANN: No.MR. ARNESON: Of course, the only land they had was where their plant was.MR. KARMANN: That’s right, that’s right.MRS. FORBES: On the early businesses you mentioned most of them that I have checked in here excepting Universal Products Company.MR. KARMANN: Yes, Universal Products was a big manufacturing outfit.MRS. FORBES: Well, we covered those pretty well earlier and, of course, the Detroit Edison is mentioned as being quite significant here. The Board of Education and the Board of Commerce when it was Fordson did the schools didn’t right away did they consolidate in Dearborn and the Fordson?MR. KARMANN: No. That took place even after I was gone. I don’t know just when that did take place. At the time of the consolidation of the two cities the two school boards were far apart that they absolutely would not agree to even participate in any thought of consolidation until the fact came up that Fordson end of the city had all of the taxable valuation and they had all kinds of money where the Dearborn end of it were so deep in debt that they couldn’t possibly borrow any more from a bonding standpoint, the bonding limits had reached the danger point and then they consolidated the schools in order to get some of the industrial valuation school tax to operate the school system. So then they worked that out I think very satisfactorily. MRS. FORBES: In discussing your early days in Fordson I didn’t get the location of the first post office. Now I gathered it wasn’t even in Springwells, it was in Detroit. Is that correct?MR. KARMANN: Yes. In Springwells the first post office that I knew of was down there at Lumley Avenue where the old toll gate was and we’d have to go down there to get our mail. We didn’t ____________and some years after that why we got rural free delivery this RFD and that post office was out of West Dearborn.MRS. FORBES: I’m afraid I am not familiar with Lumley Avenue. Where was that? Is there still such a street now?MR. KARMANN: Yes. The streets are still there.MRS. FORBES: Well, we can look that up readily.MR. KARMANN: Oh, it’s a half mile this side of Central Avenue, Detroit. Central, of course is a mile or so this side of Livernois Avenue. Those were the most important intersections across Lumley. MR. ARNESON: Anything, Marion, that you want to any other Dearborn names in that period that you had any notes on? Yes, we would like you to come over here Mrs. Karmann.MRS. KARMANN: I’d rather not.MR. ARNESON: One particular thing I would like to ask you about was school days in the early days. What a school was like. You’ll have to come over here though so you’re near the mike. MRS. KARMANN: Well, it was just a one room school and all eight grades were in the one room but it would hold possibly around 40.MR. ARNESON: Would you give the exact location of where the school WAS for the record?MRS. KARMANN: Well, it was down on Michigan Avenue, at Lois, wasn’t it? At Lois where the Miller School is now it was on Michigan and then they built the school in back.MR. ARNESON: About how many children were going to school at that time?MRS. KARMANN: I would say around 40. First through the eighth grades yes. Just one teacher. MRS. FORBES: Was it a man or a woman – teacher?MRS. KARMANN: Sometimes a man; sometimes a woman.MRS. FORBES: What subjects did you cover?MRS. KARMANN: The 3 R’s I guess. Oh, we had oh, I can’t remember anymore it was so long ago.MR. ARNESON: How about the names of some of these teachers? Do you remember any of their names. Some of the better known ones anyhow.MRS. KARMANN: I think my last teacher was Smith and I think she’s still living. Clara Smith, Marion Maples was before that but I’m sure she has passed away. MR. ARNESON: Would she still be living in East Dearborn?MRS. KARMANN: No, not anymore. I don’t know just where she would be living now. MR. ARNESON: She wouldn’t be living in this area?MRS. KARMANN: Oh no. She’d be in the Detroit area. MR. ARNESON: She’d be a nice person to interview about schools in the early days.MRS. KARMANN: I did have her last address that I knew of upstairs so I could give you her I think I can.MR. ARNESON: We’d appreciate that. When did school start in those days? Nine o’clock in the morning or what?MRS. KARMANN: Nine o’clock in the morning till four in the afternoon.MR. ARNESON: Did most everybody go home for lunch of did they stay right there? It was too far to go, wasn’t it?MRS. KARMANN: Too far to go home for lunch. Only those that lived right across the street from it they’d go home for lunch but most of them brought their lunch MRS. FORBES: What kind of equipment did you have? What kind of school equipments?MRS. KARMANN: Believe it or not those days they furnished out books for us. We didn’t have to buy our own books. They furnished the books. MR. ARNESON: Was the McGuffey Reader still used at that time?MRS. KARMANN: No I think we had the Harpers Readers at that time.MR. ARNESON: Then you had little slates?MRS. KARMANN: Yes. Earlier and later, of course, it was the paper.MR. ARNESON: Well, in the early days paper was just too expensive too. We interviewed Clara Snow some time ago and she was telling us that in the early days paper was just too expensive even though it was available so they used the slates because slate could be used over by just wiping off the chalk. MRS. KARMANN: And then we had the black boards up at the front of the room used for demonstration purposes.MRS. FORBES: Would the school end earlier like in May because of its being an agricultural area or did it run through to June?MRS. KARMANN: I don’t think it went on until June but those that couldn’t go early why they were excused or those that had to stay out sooner were excused. We didn’t have to start on a certain day in September and move through the end of the term because we were truck gardeners really growing vegetables and things to go to market and we had to be working at that before school let out.MR. ARNESON: Being the wife of a Mayor at one time wasn’t it sort of difficult at times where your husband was away a lot at meetings and sometimes late hours, had to go out to dinner meetings and so on.MRS. KARMANN: Well, you have to expect that when your husband is Mayor. No, it wasn’t too bad. Then we had the one son and we were together pretty much. MR. ARNESON: It wasn’t hectic then being the wife of a Mayor.MRS. KARMANN: No, not too bad. Then we had the telephone where if he was going away or anything then he’d give me a ring and let me know about it. I’d know about what time to expect him back. MR. ARNESON: What changes that’s come about in Dearborn has pleased you the most? Would you agree with Mr. Karmann on this?MRS. KARMANN: Yes.MR. ARNESON: Or can you think of other things from the standpoint of a lady’s viewpoint?MRS. KARMANN: No, I think that he had covered it very well.MRS. FORBES: I wondered what significant changes in maybe just the community itself that you felt were outstanding in its growth? From a farm community to a village? And to a City?MRS. KARMANN: I really wouldn’t know exactly. Of course we got better roads and viaducts and things that we didn’t have before. It really grew awfully fast. MRS. FORBES: Overnight practically, didn’t it?MRS. KARMANN: Yes.MR. ARNESON: How long have you folks been married? You must be married quite a while since you were sort of childhood sweethearts?MRS. KARMANN: We were married the 26th of March 1912 so we have been married 52 years last month. MRS. FORBES: And you have just the one son?MRS. KARMANN: That’s right.MRS. FORBES: And maybe we should get his birth date now.MRS. KARMANN: On his father’s birthday the 21st of October 1913.MR. ARNESON: Well, that was a nice birthday present, wasn’t it?MRS. KARMANN: Now he has a son born on both their birthdays.MRS. FORBES: Oh, I remember his saying something about that at the Society meeting.MRS. KARMANN: The three generations.MRS. FORBES: What is your son’s complete name?MRS. KARMANN: Norbert Armond Karmann. And then when his son was born he said if that happens on that day Joseph will be its name and it was. MRS. FORBES: Did we get your complete maiden name? I don’t think we did.MR. ARNESON: I believe, yes. Is Chase Street, is that named after your family?MRS. KARMANN: It could have been. MR. ARNESON: You don’t object to giving your birthday, do you?MRS. KARMANN: Second day of August 1888.MR. ARNESON: I think some of these things we do have in our records but we like to have it here on tape from you.MRS. FORBES: Where were you married?MRS. KARMANN: In at my our home, my folk’s home and that’s Springwells on Maple Road. We lived right by the Ford Motor Company’s office is just right close there. MRS. FORBES: Could you tell us where your various homes have been in your married life? Where you made your home?MRS. KARMANN: Well, we’ve been just down on Maple Road and then now out here. We’ve had three brand new homes during our married life. MR. ARNESON: You lived on Lanson was one of the streets. MRS. KARMANN: Yes, it’s just off of Maple Street. The first one we really rented for three years and then we built a home on Maple but that’s how far down is that, Joe? Where Ford Motor Company used to be - - south of Michigan, yes.MR. KARMANN: 2 miles from Michigan Avenue, almost down to the RougeMRS. KARMANN: Then I moved to Lanson and then from Lanson here.MR. ARNESON: Was if difficult at first that after you acquired this land and moved out here to actually move out here since your roots were deep in Dearborn’s past?MRS. KARMANN: No. It came gradually. We were out here weekends and then we were out here a little longer and we still had the property down there.MR. ARNESON: You never regretted it?MRS. KARMANN: No, No.MR. KARMANN: Never regretted it and I don’t know whether you can hardly say that we are looking forward to the time when it comes that we’re to go to our last home and that will be in Northview Cemetery down in Dearborn. We have a family plot there that will take care of that last move.MR. ARNESON: I guess we didn’t get it on tape your actual foresight into the Rouge River becoming an artery for the benefit of economy of old Springwells. We mentioned it briefly when we came this morning but would you like to give a few moments on that for the tape?MR. KARMANN: Well, I think maybe I can tell you this that you have observed today the school bus unloading our big bus load of school children here participating in the Karmann Nature Center Program for children. It has always been not alone mine but Mrs. Karmann as well idea as Mr. Ford said We’ll never have to worry about our nation our future lies in the advancement and the education of children. And that has come true in our experience in so many ways and in order to accomplish some things sometimes we even use the children. It was not un-common for the coming up of election or an issue that required votes was to talk to the children and today I meet men and women full grown who says I member when you came over to our school years and years ago I was just a small kid and you delivered a couple barrels of apples over there and each one of us youngsters at the school had an apple and a sack of popcorn and we thought that was just so generous and we never had an apple since that ever tasted like those did. Now that was just a branch of becoming acquainted more or less with the children and they would go home and tell Dad and Mother that, well, the Mayor if it was during my administration or even though it was when I was on the Village council or when I was on the Board of Education. It was recognizing the youngsters and that has always stayed with me and when our big issues of consolidation was up, we had an excursion boat come up the from Detroit docks come up the River Rouge and loaded at the City’s Municipal dock down there opposite Dix Road and load those boys and girls thousands of them on the boats to take them down to Bob-Lo for an excursion trip celebrating the opening up of the River Rouge to navigation. The catering to boys and girls and that program of the dedication of the navigation on the River Rouge was one of the rewarding features that was accomplished that I felt was the completion of the particular accomplishment. Now there was a lot of times that at meetings and public speaking programs even as late as when Orville Hubbard was elected Mayor. For nearly a year he would have me down there attending what he called his breakfast club meetings and he had the Department Heads to attend these meetings and they were held over sometimes at Mt. Olivet Church and sometimes at some of the other churches and have deliver a talk or speech on the things that we have predicted and what we expected in the future and he as far as Mr. Hubbard is concerned he always gave me an awful lot of credit. He said I so many times I’ve been so surprised to find that the re-commendations and the promotional accomplishments of the developments some wheres along the line you’ll see Joe Karmann’s name attached to it. And that has been quite rewarding over all of these years. Now I can’t say that about some of the other fellows that was Mayor after I was and followed through on some of the activities but Mr. Hubbard has always recognized the fact and he does even in Lodge work. Once in a while I run into him at one of the Lodge organizations that I belong to and so does he. MR. ARNESON: He’s a member of the Moose too, isn’t he?MR. KARMANN: I rather think that he probably is. It could be. But he’s also a member of the Independent Order of Oddfellows and he is also the master Masons and of which I was and I sometimes think I was even a member of the Knights of Columbus although not officially but I had experiences dealing with the Catholic religion and the Catholic people up around Warren Avenue and Schaefer Road. That was a very, very dyed-in-the-wool catholic area and the finest old farmer neighbors that ever had lived there and many times that I took part in their program and this bank that you talk about we had advanced them a loan to build the new church that they have there and they met their obligations and paid it and it was just wonderful so in a public office it pays you well to and it and it doesn’t alone pay you it broadens your bigotry attitude towards race and religion and color and all these things that so much of us squabble today. We didn’t have any of that kind of thing down there in those days, none whatever. Everybody knew the others and we did have at one time a very interesting program. We had a man come in there by the name of Garner. I can very well remember his name and he was a rabble-rouser if there ever was one on religion and he was just holding campsite meetings and attacking the catholic church and some of the members of the St. Alphonsus Church came down to see me to see what we could do about it. Well, I said I don’t know what we can do about it, it’s probably more or less a legal matter, we’ll have to talk to the corporation counsel and Mr. Henn was one of them. He was commissioner of the Department of Public Works and a fine, catholic member of that particular church. And I said I don’t know, Joe, his first name was Joe. I said I don’t know exactly what can be done but it don’t seem to me that there could be too much interference if the thing burnt down, one of these nights and it did. That same night. The tent burnt down. The honorable Rev. Mr. Garner came in to see me in the morning and he wanted an investigation created and I said go to it help yourself and God I’m at a loss I don’t know anything about it. I did hear of it this morning. The fire department reported that to the office that your tent had burnt down but I said as far as I’m concerned I don’t know nothing about it, I didn’t see anybody, know of anybody burning it down but I said if I was in your place, Mr. Garner, I’d move out before something happen to you. These people just don’t need your rabble-rousing condemnation of people’s faith and belief. We’re getting along really nice here without you. So he did. I don’t think he ever came back. But sometimes it’s just things like that would seem just interesting and exciting at the time and years and years afterwards you gain information. I had since found out that who did burn the tent. That has not been able to be kept secret all these years and I didn’t tell him to do it or I don’t know whether Mr. Henn did or not but the coincidence in connection with the thing a couple of young fellows from the church did burn it down and they’re both dead now and have been for fifteen years or more. So it would be altogether out of order to say that they did it because a dead man sure has no chance to defend himself or deny it. We had a number of things actually would happen that way and I suppose that’s human nature. I was telling down there at the meeting about the balloon that my opponent had one time, hoisted up over Jim Casey’s Real Estate office on a light cable and this balloon was probably, oh, twenty feet across filled with helium gas. They run that thing up in the air there for the opponent of mine who is also dead and that thing floated up there for about two days. Well, all of a sudden some deer hunter off a half a mile away shot a hole through it and down it came. Well, I was accused of shooting down the balloon of which I did not do and I didn’t know then but, My God, it was 25 or 30 years after that before a fellow was telling me he says remember the balloon they had over Casey’s office? I said, yes. He said you know who shot that down? I said I didn’t know until right now. He said I was sick in bed and I said to my wife bring me my old deer rifle. And he said, by God, the first shot he said the balloon began to stagger. That was the end of that. Well, the election was a day or two away and I was elected and my opponent was defeated and he was quite a heavier drinker and they had him up to St. Joe’s alcoholic treatment and poor fellow, he died. I think I’m the only one left from down there that has survived. But in order to go over these things they can’t all be so solemn. There’s a little bit of humor if you want to see it but they all created commotion. People would followers of one or the other, you know, would take it to heart and they wouldn’t hesitate to point a finger at you and tell you you did this or you did that and you shouldn’t have done this or you shouldn’t have done that which probably had nothing to do with it at all. MR. ARNESON: Not to change the subject but what are your early recollections of the interurban coming out to Dearborn? Or to Springwells in those days?MR. KARMANN: Well, that’s going back to my early, earlyMR. ARNESON: Yes, that would be around, what was it, around 1900 or there abouts?MR. KARMANN: Yes, it could have been just about.MR. ARNESON: Would that maybe have been about 10, 12, 13 somewhere along in there? Do you have any recollections of that? What the people thought of it? Did it change the community quite a bit in those days?MR. KARMANN: No, I don’t think it changed our community much at all. It did furnish some transportation for some of the people but there were too many of them that didn’t have any place to go to on the interurban excepting to Detroit and they would use it for that purpose. But there were quite a lot of activity. I rode the interurban from where it passed Maple Road which I had to walk from my home down there on Maple Road up to take the interurban to go to West Dearborn to High School. And the High school had two rooms (I think) in the school, one upstairs and one down. MRS. FORBES: Was there a downstairs school?MR. KARMANN: Yes. And the principal and the teacher and the whole works outside of one or two teachers, Mr. Salisbury I think you probably have their name on record down there at the Village, Societies, Museum. But the interurban that it seemed as though that never was too much of a success. They had a franchise to run through different townships going West, I think they went as far as Kalamazoo and back. Several of the old original conductors and motormen that operated those cars that I know of are still alive. Dale Smith who served on the Detroit City Council for a number of years was one of the conductors on the interurban line.MR. ARNESON: He’s living in Detroit I suppose?MR. KARMANN: Yes, he lives in Detroit and he after they abandoned much of the interurban line he was made street railway commissioner of Detroit. Then we have another conductor that lives over here in this neighborhood by the name of Renton, Herbert Renton and he’s quite an elderly man now also and there was another one by the name of Renton that lived down in Dearborn that just died here a couple of years ago, a lame man, Roy, Roy Renton. I don’t know whether they have his name on the old register or not. But Roy Renton was born the second farm house from here down here on Ford Road. MR. ARNESON: In those days the railroad didn’t have a stop in Springwells did it? There was no stop off it.MR. KARMANN: The Michigan Central?MR. ARNESON: The Michigan Central, you’d have to go down to Detroit to board it.MRS. FORBES: West DearbornMR. ARNESON: It stopped in West Dearborn.MR. KARMANN: Well, my recollections was that they did have a depot and a stop area at the intersection of the railroad and Greenfield and I can still picture the building but how much patronage they got from it I don’t know because it was all farm area and that little depot stood down there on the side of that railroad but shipments coming in like the spring of the year when the folks or neighbors would receive parcels by express pertaining to catalogue purchases from Chicago or seeds from seed companies and have them delivered by express to that station but just what the name of it was I don’t remember as to what the name of it was because it was on the boundary line between Springwells Township and Dearborn Township. And we have a man that’s just a little older that I am by the name of Bill Schrader that was born and raised down there in Dearborn Township and he stopped in here just a few days ago to visit with me about the old days and the old times at high school because we both went to the high school at the same time and he had a briefcase with him and he had a tremendous amount of old pictures of activities in Dearborn itself. MRS. FORBES: He was in the Museum just a short time ago.MR. KARMANN: Was he? I told him to go down there and seeMRS. FORBES: He said he would come back again.MR. KARMANN: Well, now he has the acquaintanceship of a tremendous amount of people from the Dearborn side of things and some of course from Springwells but we were talking about that stop in that depot and he said that as far as he could remember he was only down there once. Went down there with his father from Lavalia (?) to get a train to going into Detroit but he doesn’t remember what he went into Detroit for. But he had got on the train there at Greenfield and Michigan Central there.MR. ARNESON: To change the subject now did you know Lytle Ross and Lizzie Ross fairly well?MR. KARMANN: Yes.MR. ARNESON: Any comment you would like to have about them as individuals since they are important to our Museum since one of our buildings was given to us by Miss Ross?MR. KARMANN: One of the things that I could never possibly forget I also told you earlier in our conversation that I did quite a lot of hunting and trapping for spare time in the wintertime. And one time I was on Mr. Ross’s farm property and he came down horseback riding a horse and undertook the right to run me down with his horse to get off his property. So I could never forget Lytle Ross after that. But he of course was single, and old bachelor, and so was his sister a maiden girl and they lived awfully much individually by themselves. The neighbors got a very, very littleMR. ARNESON: Many people have told usMR. KARMANN: With anybody and they minded their own business unless something really affected them in some way or another why you wouldn’t even get much of a chance to have a conversation with them. Well, that was my experience with them but we did have a man that was accepted by them as a very good friend and that was the former chief of police of the Village of Dearborn – Fred Faustman. Fred Faustman did go over to the Rosses quite frequently and I think Fred was more or less of an engineer or an instigator in convincing them that they should leave their property to a historical organization of some kind so that part of the old Ford area could be preserved and retained. MR. ARNESON: I never heard this before about when was this that he made that suggestion to them?MR. KARMANN: Oh, that would be a long about the time that quite shortly after the consolidation of the two.MR. ARNESON: Oh, that early. I see. I understand Lila Hole’s husband had something to do too with Miss Ross giving the property to us. He was a postman for years, delivered the mail there and I guess he often spoke to her about what she’s going to do with her property someday but this man was instrumental too perhaps in some way.MR. KARMANN: Fred Faustman?MR. ARNESON: Fred Faustman.MR. KARMANN: Fred Faustman even went farther than what Mr. Hole did. Fred saw to it that they had groceries and supplies. I know he did. He would get them and take them over there and he cut Lytle Ross’ hair and shaved him. So I know that Fred was even closer than what Mr. Hole was. MR. ARNESON: Did Mr. Ford ever speak about the Rosses in conversation with you in private conversations? One time he tried to buy the land there and they refused to sell to him. Did he ever bring it up in later years?MR. KARMANN: No, I don’t know as he ever did and neither did I because there’s where that picture of individualism come in. He, Mr. Ross would resent it Mr. Ford’s position more than anything else as he seemed to think that he was a dominating over employees and had them doing his work and his labor while he’d be piling up the riches and all that line of stuff that ordinarily you wouldn’t want to get into a conversation with him because he seemed to be somewhat bitter with all the rest of human race entirely. It was my experience.MR. ARNESON: I guess in later years their relations improved somewhat.MR. KARMANN: When he became helpless and he had to accept assistance from others then of course he wasn’t quite as independent as he was when he could come and go as he saw fir or as he pleased. Then he had an old horse and a wagon and a few one-horse gardening tools there that he use and once in a while he would plow a little garden for somebody else down the street and would work the ground up for them and things of that like or a little compensation whatever is was when he would even go and do the work without problems of having any conversation with the people that engaged him to do it but he caused no trouble for anyone he was a very they just lived by themselves.MRS. FORBES: You mentioned the City’s Municipal dock on the Rouge, was the Springwells or Fordson?MR. KARMANN: Yes, Springwells.MRS. FORBES: It was Springwells.MR. KARMANN: Now that Municipal dock turned out to be, let’s use this map here just a little bit if I can find it. I don’t know what this line here is supposed to be on the map but the Baby Creek entered into the River Rouge at a designated point and when they closed it in and made a drainage area out of it the footing at the outlet of it was made into a dock as well as the concrete outing (?) and of course this map doesn’t show the island. City of Dearborn has an island down there on the River Rouge that when the Rouge was dredged it cut straight across instead of following all these curves. Right about in there where that point is they cut across there with the new channel leaving an island on the opposite side. So we’d have to go over into Oakwood which is now Detroit to get on the bridge to get over to our island but they may have made some changes down there since that that I don’t know anything about but I still think they still have the island.MRS. FORBES: It’s just known as a part of Dearborn not as a separate name?MR. KARMANN: No, it would still be Dearborn.MRS. FORBES: Is there anything on the island?MR. KARMANN: Just a couple of little homesteader cottages.MRS. FORBES: Is there still a dock down there?MR. KARMANN: Oh yes the dock is still there. The last people that I knew of that used that dock to any extent was that oil firm that had that big oil tanks down there, let’s see, I think their name was Dawson, Dawson Oil Company, had gasoline storage tanks down there and they would come in there from, I think, it would be I’m not sure from Russia gasoline. They were foreign boats I know that delivered the oil there for Dawson Oil Company.MR. ARNESON: In regards to the Centennial last year were you satisfied that the centennial justly paid tribute to Mr. Ford the way it was conducted? It was quite a big event last year in Dearborn’s history and a lot of us put a lot of perspiration.MR. KARMANN: I don’t know how young people of your age so many of you that took place in assembling that program and the committee work and so forth to bring out and bring in so many different features of which was all common knowledge to Mr. Ford and to people like myself of similar age and it was just out of this world to think that you could do it. But I can’t think of a thing that could have been done unless it would have been some small little detail of some little particular thing. It would have been could have been maybe would have been but it could have been to have seen Henry Ford as I’ve seen him in his younger days as a mechanic in overalls should’ve had an old fashioned engine there and had Henry coming out of the old fire pot where he’d had been inside expanding the flues with soot, dirt and grease. Now a lot of people had an idea that Ford was always dressed as we see him in movies and in pictures but he wasn’t. He was really a workman and I have seen him in just that kind of a position but even if you had shown that today to the younger people today they wouldn’t have known anything about what he was doing in there whatever for what it was all about so it could very easily had been passed over and without any harm done and there was a number of things like that that would be minor details that society couldn’t possibly accept because it has grown away from it today.MR. ARNESON: Of course, the pageant that evening covered some of the highlights of his life just so much you can cover in an evening so the highlights I guess what the committee thought would be of interest, you know.MR. KARMANN: But it’s awfully hard for a man that has had the experience that I have had to sit in the audience and listen to these folks up there that do take part in the program and they can talk to keep still. It just seems as though I can’t do it I’ve got I don’t know if it’s any value to anybody else but there’s some things that had happened and did take place and it hasn’t always been to Ford’s consideration but that has been the purpose of the centennial was to pay tribute to Henry Ford and you just cannot get away from it. That man’s name will always be in history somewhere, some home always. As far as I know it will never pass out. MR. ARNESON: I think we covered quite a bit today. We’ve taken up a lot of your time. MR. KARMANN: Well, my time is yours.MR. ARNESON: We’re very appreciative of you today, Mr. Karmann, and Mrs. Karmann and these are some of the things that we did want to have in our record and someday we’ll have it in typed form and we’ll be able to use it in our Museum work. I think with this we’d like to close for today and thank you once again.B. Miga3/197164-35.3 ................
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