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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 - were also members of the most exclusive private club in America.

As fate would have it, the same store - John King Books - where I picked up the two books with trade stamps from the Sign of the Mermaid also provided the only available copies of the club's publication The Book of the Yondotega Club. All things being signs demanding a deeper investigation. Not that I expect to find any foreboding secrets about the sect but there is plenty enough public information out there to compile some interesting facts.

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