Michigan

Often overshadowed by its larger neighbors, Monroe County offers a rich tapestry of history for those willing to look.

French-Canadian settlers left behind legends of monsters, ghosts, and witches. In war time, the community answered the call to arms with more soldiers per capita than any other county in the nation and proved a suitable hometown to take refuge between gun shots from none other than George Armstrong Custer. Like most communities, its sordid past reveals crimes and tragedies--including body snatching. More recently, a partial nuclear meltdown brought the city to the brink of disaster, but Monroe not only survived but now thrives.

Join local author Shawna Lynn Mazur for a trip through little-known and forgotten parts of Monroe County's past.

The history of Jackson County, Michigan, brims with colorful characters and noteworthy episodes nearly lost to time.

Jackson abolitionists used their barns, houses and hidden compartments to harbor freedom seekers traveling on the Underground Railroad. One even repelled an armed posse from Kentucky. A prominent druggist murdered his mother in 1889 and a jail guard in 1893.Evidence suggests he murdered his father too. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt traveled to Brown's Lake for relaxation in 1935, but a media mob had other plans. A popular Blackman Township roadhouse has a longstanding tradition of entertaining pioneers, stagecoach drivers and mobsters, but its secret guests are even stranger.

Join local historian Linda Hass as she delves into these and other entertaining and often-overlooked stories.

Discover the Motor City before the motor: a muddy port town full of grog shops, horse races, haphazard cemeteries and enterprising bootstrappers from all over the world.

Meet the argumentative French fugitive who founded the city, the tobacco magnate who haunts his shuttered factory, the gambler prankster millionaire who built a monument to himself, the governor who brought his scholarly library with him on canoe expeditions and the historians who helped create the story of Detroit as we know it: one of the oldest, rowdiest and most enigmatic cities in the Midwest.

Recovering the past of Furniture City More than two centuries of overlooked history flow through Grand Rapids like the river for which it is named. The first city surveyor dabbled in seances while platting out neighborhoods and streets. When a river dredging project left a mountain of stone tormenting residents, the ordeal pitted them against city leaders. Humane society agents uncovered horrendous conditions at the city pound and successfully brought about reform and much better conditions for the animals. Grand Rapids native and city archivist Matthew A. Ellis delves into the layout of streets, the manufacture of materials used to build the city, local food trends, and more.

Flint is a city full of legacies overshadowed by tragedy. Read the stories of the innovations and surprising elements of the city's past.

In the shadow of Flint's success as an industrial hub and the tragedy that is the water crisis that came to a head in 2014, the fascinating past of Flint has been largely forgotten. Local author Gary Flinn showcases the obscure and surprising elements of the Vehicle City's past, such as local Civil War hero Franklin Thompson who was actually Sarah Edmonds in disguise; the city's most prolific inventor, Lloyd Copeman, created the electric stove, flexible ice cube tray and automatic toaster; and even Thread Lake's Lakeside Amusement Park that offered seaplane rides and a giant roller coaster partly built over the water before closing in 1931. Flinn offers the reader the often-overlooked but fascinating history of Flint, including how the 2014 water crisis was a half century in the making.

Michigan established St. Joseph County in 1829. It was a fertile land with an abundance of fresh water supplied by the St. Joseph River. The county's colorful past is the result of forgotten locals and visitors. Hezekiah Thomas fished for diamonds in Corey Lake. Saloon smasher Carrie Nation sold miniature hatchets at the county fairgrounds. The United States Congress recognizes the village of Colon as the Magic Capital of the World, and Lakeside Cemetery is the final resting place of more magicians than any other cemetery on the globe. Author and historian Kelly Pucci digs into the entertaining and often overlooked history of St. Joseph County.

From the tale of a fiery nineteenth-century male suffragette to the forgotten founder of long-distance telephony, local author Laura Bien reveals the bizarre, baffling and oft-overlooked tales of Ypsilanti history. Scratch your head as Eastern Michigan University honors the area's onetime Potawatomi residents and its teacher school acculturates native children to white ways. Consider the earth closet, "? an indoor, nonflushing, composting toilet that's quite possibly the least popular invention in Michigan history. Witness a young artist's rise from Cleary Business College, which began as a penmanship school, to national fame or trade verse with Ypsilanti's unofficial nineteenth-century poet laureate, a poor farmer who became pen pals with John Greenleaf Whittier."