The Yondotega Club

I don't know anything about spark plugs or much about patents so I won't bother commenting on this mention of Yetta Rupp, housekeeper-mistress of Yondotega Club co-founder Thomas Spencer Jerome - and her sister Anna Whitehead being each one-quarter assignors on a patent by John H. Doak of Portland, Oregon.

Detroit News , May 3, 1959 The obituary for longtime steward Edward S. Thompson. These workers had to have gotten a pension, right? One would hope so considering their employers.

I found and purchased this envelope off eBay from the Cameron Currie & Co. stockbroker firm of Detroit which was sent to James W. Hoban, an assistant postmaster in the city, and quickly learned of the mean business involved. Sometime around 1908 the company went belly up and it was found that they had held onto the exchanged stock of customers, including Mr. Hoban, and in the process left the clients in 1,000,000 arrears causing many personal bankruptcies and hardships. Detroit News , August 7, 1908 Hoban at the time is listed in a dubious position because he held both stock exchanged and purchased without payment and thus his share had not been returned by the court. The web of fraud did not leave his fellow Yondotega Club brothers in the clear as Charles Lang Freer was apparently owed $50,000 and others such as Mr. Newberry, Carpenter and Hendrie in the tens of thousands. Currie, for his part, claimed to be an innocent victim of malfeasance within the company but was later charge...

As I have harped upon for some time now, one of the founders of the Yondotega Club, Thomas Spencer Jerome, bought a villa in Capri, Italy along with co-founder Charles Lang Freer, and became an author of Roman history, writing tomes of manuscripts but only managing to published one book in his lifetime. Though he died shortly before its publication and didn't really get to realize the fruits of his labor. Several other heavily edited publications have been released but this was the only official book he put out. I have started to read it on my YouTube channel and will do so in its entirety. 

John C. Lodge, great uncle of the flying pioneer Charles Lindbergh, was at the Yondotega Club when news broke at 4:30 PM on May 21, 1927 that he had completed the New York to Paris flight. The city erupted into cheers and honking horns upon hearing the news.  Before his worldwide fame Lindbergh had come to his influential uncle for funding and was turned down because Lodge feared that he faced a certain death in attempting the flight. Lindbergh's mother, a chemistry teacher at Cass Tech High School in Detroit, reportedly refused a $100,000 offer to star as "the American mother" in a movie shortly after his sudden fame. The day after the flight she was in class ready to teach but the students were in such an uproar that plans were scrapped for the day and an assembly was held to cheer on Evangeline Lindbergh. She was stoic while holding a large bouquet of flowers and made no speech or acknowledgement believing that she had no part in her son's accomplishment.

Detroit News , January 28, 1902 This is another mention of the James Van Dyke house being used to remodel the Yondotega Club property. The other stated that the bricks from the aforementioned home were used to construct the walls around the clubhouse. The Van Dyke house was one of the first in Detroit constructed with brick.