Query Mayor, Drys Demand / Dry Inquiry Invited by Yondotega Club

Detroit Times, October 14, 1927

This is a threefold post about Prohibition, privilege and a political race. John C. Lodge, running for the umpteenth time as mayor, beat out incumbent John W. Smith in the 1927 primary, to which the latter believed it was his support for ending Prohibition that caused him to lose.

Detroit Times, October 23, 1927

His famous quote ensnared the good old boys at 518 East Jefferson into the fray: "My own belief is that the prohibition law is an unjust statute and the thought that it is wrong for the man in the factory to have a glass of beer in a saloon and right for the gentleman in the Yondotega Club to have their daily highballs is repugnant to my sense of justice."

Detroit News, October 13, 1927

Which then elicited calls by the dry enforcement agency for the mayor to act against the Yondotega Club. Days later, Chairman Cameron Currie, welcomed inquiry, investigation and a trip down to the clubhouse for a look see. Seeing as Lodge was a member, as Smith pointed out in a WJR radio interview around that time in challenging the 111 man body's sobriety during Volstead, nothing seemingly came of the situation.

Detroit News, October 17, 1927

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P. O. Surveying Detroit Needs

Detroit News , October 8, 1929 This is a long article about the Postal Service but our concern is with Arch Coleman, the first Assistant Postmaster-General, who recalled in his visit back to the town that he grew up in, that he was born in the house which was the first Yondotega Club at 302/518 East Jefferson. An article by the Free Press seemed to suggest that he was born nearby.

Yondotega Club Beginnings Told

Detroit Times , March 12, 1939 I will start this blog at the same point of introduction that I had to the Yondotega Club: this short snippet in the Detroit Times from March 12, 1939 that I dug up while researching the Sign of the Mermaid bookstore which opened in 1925 and was owned by Doris McMillan Pittman (later Hoover), daughter of William McMillan and granddaughter of Senator James McMillan. Not only had she reclaimed the home that she grew up in from obscurity but she revitalized and made it a profitable venture. Unfortunately for Doris, her eleven years of ownership came with widowhood, the accidental shooting death of her teenage son, a second marriage to her store manager Clayton Morse, Jr. that failed and ultimately her own untimely death in 1936. The Yondotega Club would have been afterthought to that very research had it not been for the fact that her father founded the club in that very house and her first husband, grandfather, uncle and business partner - Phelps Newberry...

The Ex-Libris Bookplates of James Frederic Joy and His Son Henry Bourne Joy

These are the ex-libris platesreally things found in volume (IV.) of Turner's History of England from 1830 featuring at least one Yondotega Club member: Henry Bourne Joy, who was the first president of the Lincoln Highway - which built roads from New York to San Francisco - and later became president of the Packard Motor Company. His father James Frederic Joy was a railroad magnate, friend of Abraham Lincoln and congressman from Michigan. To boot, there is a main road in Detroit and the western suburbs named after him (Joy Rd.). Besides the plates, the most interesting thing in the book is the marginalia, which I've yet to determine exactly whose it is. It would be great if it were one of the Joys but nearly a hundred years has passed between the latter's death so the likelihood is probably 50/50. Maybe not so ironically, I found this book at an estate sale just off of Joy Road (8634 Hazleton) in Dearborn Heights five years ago or so.

The Yondotega Club

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