Cameron Currie & Co.

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 charged with fraud, though I assume that he was never prosecuted for it. The case dragged on for nearly a decade before creditors large and small received various percentages from 20-100% of their losses back.

Detroit News, June 24, 1909

Currie seemingly lost no esteem within the club and reigned as one of the longest serving governors in its long history dating back to 1891. Which makes me think that there was a pyramid scheme involved and that these already rich men profited in some way or another. One day when I'm real bored I'll dig into this matter further.

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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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