The Yondotega Club

I did a casual eBay search for Jere Hutchins after reading an article about his self-published book from 1939, A Personal Story, which bemoaned that he never knew Detroit except how it reflected by the company he kept at the Yondotega Club and decided that I was on the right track. Detroit News, September 19, 1938 A further column by Malcolm Bingay commemorating his life shortly after his death cemented my purchase of the $11 book. Whereby he recalls Jere's press conferences in which he mocked the reporters by stating: "Good morning, gentleman. I have some good news for you today. My arson squad burned two orphan asylums last night. And this morning - I have just learned - my dynamiters were successful in blowing up three excursion boats, just packed in the rolls with happy little children."  Detroit Free Press , February 26, 1943 He finished the story by saying that he also robbed a blind man of his cup full of begging money. All in jest, of course, to highlight the on...

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.

Detroit News , March 18, 1934 This is a snippet from a longer column The Social Scrapbook by Marian Eddy Standish which seems to be fraught with error. Nonetheless, there was an opera house fire but it appears to have been in 1897 and not 1895 and the same Yondotega Club house was standing long before 1934 and was occupied by the club in 1891. As far as I know there was no convent on that spot either but there was one in the vicinity of 452/1014 East Jefferson where the William McMillan house stood. That home was used for the early meetings of the club and according to Doris McMillan, his daughter, it was a boarding house before she turned it into the Sign of the Mermaid Book Store in 1925.  The Academy of the Sacred Heart was located at 318 East Jefferson and the first official Yondotega Club house at 518 East Jefferson. Though there seems to be some confusion online that both were located at 518 which further muddles the information. But the article was written in 1934 so who...

Detroit News, April 10, 1906 In my attempts to search for non-Thomas Jerome stories on the Yondotega Club which aren't boring I have found myself failing miserably. Unless one wishes to hear about the time the body as a whole challenged their 10,000 tax bill in 1938 and subsequently lost while being probed of their secret activities. But everybody knows that story who has searched around on the Yons. So back we go to Thomas Jerome. In April of 1906 Vesuvius had an eruption and Jerome was an eyewitness to the cataclysm having a front porch view of the spectacle. Co-owner of the Villa Castello, Charles L. Freer, who was back in Detroit. expressed little concern for Jerome's safety as he was situated out of the reach of its expulsions. There is a mention of another Detroiter, author Roy Rolfe Gilson, who had planned to spend his summer on Capri with his family but changed course with the event. He was seemingly a minor novelist and unlikely a Yondotegan.

Depending on which source one cites, Thomas Spencer Jerome and Charles Lang Freer were bosom buddies of the closest nature in the truest sense or the intimate one. From supposed found incriminating letters to their removing to Capri being a honeymoon of sorts, the speculation that they were sexually involved seems more akin to prejudiced nuance than fact.  Personally, I think they were more likely involved in sexual escapades similar to Freer's friend Stanford White, the renowned architect who was murdered in 1906 by the jealous husband of a young woman whom White had been accused of raping. White, like another of Jerome's Capri inner circle friends Norman Douglas, was known to pursue adolescents. While Douglas preferred young boys White was enamored with more mature girls. While the social norms around 1900 allowed for adults to marry young girls, laws were in place to prohibit sexual contact between adults and children. Likewise, for homosexuals and libertines who flocked to ...

Detroit Free Press , March 18, 1943 During WWII even the millionaire clubs supposedly were affected by rationing and curfews though I hardly believe this to be true. Nonetheless, manager of the club Edward S. Thompson told the Free Press, "We are limping along on meat. Naturally, the members don't like it." Seeing as most members were engaged in war work it was a major inconvenience for them to travel back home to Grosse Pointe for lunch. Not to mention the fuel rations which caused them to ground their yachts and share rides. As far as curfews were concerned, Mr. Thompson shot down any chance of impropriety at the club: "Goodness, no, the midnight curfew won't affect us at all. We've blown out the candles long before 12. Our membership is--er-elderly gentlemen, whose days are somewhat over. They never stay late and more. They'll never know there is a curfew." Detroit Free Press , February 22, 1945

Detroit Free Press , December 10, 1944 I mentioned this blurb in reference to women being in the Yondotega Club before and finally happened across it again. Her name was Judy Bosson and new to Detroit went to the wrong club went attempting to meet some friends and ended up sitting in the Yondotega Club for an hour or so before members politely ejected her. I don't know if her or Kay Winans, who was the original intent of the article were wives of members but since the latter was set up outside on the porch of the establishment during a Christmas seal campaign she was either afilliated by marriage or good business sense. Judy died in 1967 at the age of 45 but I can find no obituary. Detroit News , August 1, 1948

Having completed the translation of Carlo Knight's The Advocate of Tiberius: The tormented existence and almost tragic death of Thomas Spencer Jerome and learned much more about Jerome's paramour Yetta Rupp, it's time to dig. We know that she ended up in Alameda, California by 1935 and was living with a woman named Anna Whitehead. Who I believe now was not her so-called "partner" but actually her sister (born 1868). The fact that a widowed woman by that same name was living in Portland in Multnomah County at the same time as Yetta's appearance in the voter rolls seems to corroborate this. Anna died in New Orleans in 1954 and listed in her record are the same middle names of her parents that Yetta used on her voter registration. It's interesting to note that John Leonard Rupp and wife Augusta Wilhelmina Lange named two of their 15 children using their middle names and another son was given the name John just to confuse things further. I did locate an ar...

John King Books, like most reputable book stores, has free book racks in the atrium of their colossal warehouse. After I purchased my ephemera I partook of the offer to take as many free books as I wished. Within the books The King's Minion by Rafael Sabatini (1930) and Treading the Winepress by Ralph Connor (1925) was the book trade label "The Sign of the Mermaid".  Intrigued, I did some research. It traces to a bookshop at 1014 E. Jefferson Avenue of Detroit. The book store by that same name opened around October 23, 1925 and was operated by Doris McMillan Pittman (later Hoover), granddaughter of Senator James McMillan, in the converted home of her late father William C. McMillan. The Yale Alumni Weekly , October 23, 1925 Her initial business partners were E. Byrne Hackett, Phelps Newberry and Edwin K. Hoover (later her third husband). Newly graduated Yale alumnus Clayton Morse, Jr. was the manager. An article in The Yale Alumni Weekly from October 23, 1925 stated th...

Yetta Rupp has as much connection with the Yondotega Club as I do up to this point in my investigation but one never knows what will be uncovered. Here is the immigration manifest from the S. S. Finland upon her return from Capri in 1915. In Jerome's will he left her $20,000 (roughly $670k in today's terms) and usage of the villa for one year, which would have expired on April 12th of that year corresponding with his death the previous Spring. Detroit Free Press , June 4, 1914 On the manifest it states her address to be the Union Trust Co., which I believe was a commercial building but Jerome likely had an office there as he also listed 812 Union Trust Building on his passport application in 1897: Regardless of where she eventually resided she was set up for life if she managed her money wisely. I've yet to find her in the 1920 or 1930 censuses but she does curiously show up in the 1940 Alameda, California census residing at 1930 Filbert Street, which appears to be an apar...