The Opera House Fire of 1895... err 1897, the Academy of the Sacred Heart and the Yondotega Club

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 knows what information the author was using.

Either way, the description of the nuns looking like witches in their long robes on the roof attempting to quell remnant fires is a spectacular visage. Especially so considering that it was a five story tall building.

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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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