Author: Jeremy W. Kilar
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814320730
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 372
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Book Description
Michigan's foremost lumbertowns, flourishing urban industrial centers in the late 19th century, faced economic calamity with the depletion of timber supplies by the end of the century. Turning to their own resources and reflecting individual cultural identities, Saginaw, Bay City, and Muskegon developed dissimilar strategies to sustain their urban industrial status. This study is a comprehensive history of these lumbertowns from their inception as frontier settlements to their emergence as reshaped industrial centers. Primarily an examination of the role of the entrepreneur in urban economic development, Michigan Lumbertowns considers the extent to which the entrepreneurial approach was influenced by each city's cultural-ethnic construct and its social history. More than a narrative history, it is a study of violence, business, and social change.
Author: Brian C. Wilson
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 0870139703
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 144
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Book Description
As Brian C. Wilson describes them in this highly readable and entertaining book, Yankees—defined by their shared culture and sense of identity—had a number of distinctive traits and sought to impose their ideas across the state of Michigan. After the ethnic label of "Yankee" fell out of use, the offspring of Yankees appropriated the term "Midwesterner." So fused did the identities of Yankee and Midwesterner become that understanding the larger story of America's Midwestern regional identity begins with the Yankees in Michigan.
Author: Jean Lamarre
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 9780814331583
Category : French-Canadians
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
The first major study of the migration of French Canadians to Michigan during the nineteenth century and their substantial impact on the state's development.
Author: Willis F. Dunbar
Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
ISBN: 9780802870551
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 788
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Book Description
This standard textbook on Michigan history covers the entire scope of the Wolverine State's historical record. This third revised edition incorporates events since 1980 and draws on new studies to expand and improve its coverage of various ethnic groups, recent political developments, labor and business, and many other topics.
Author: Jeff Alexander
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628954701
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 299
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Book Description
Muskegon is a derivation of a Native American word meaning "river with marshes." Jeff Alexander examines the creation, uses of, devastation, and restoration of Michigan's historic and beautiful Muskegon River. Four of the five Great Lakes touch Michigan's shores; the state's shoreline spans more than 4,500 miles, not to mention more than 11,000 inland lakes and a multitude of rivers. The Muskegon River, the state's second longest river, runs 227 miles and has the most diverse features of any of Michigan’s many rivers. The Muskegon rises from the center of the state, widens, and moves westward, passing through the Pere Marquette and AuSable State Forests. The river ultimately flows toward Lake Michigan, where it opens into Muskegon Lake, a 12 square-mile, broad harbor located between the Muskegon River and Lake Michigan. Formed several thousand years ago, when the glaciers that created the Great Lakes receded, and later inhabited by Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians, the Muskegon River was used by French fur trappers in the 1600s. Rich in white pine, the area was developed during the turn-of-the-century lumber boom, and at one time Muskegon Lake boasted more than 47 sawmills. The Muskegon was ravaged following settlement by Europeans, when rivers and streams were used to transport logs to the newly developing cities. Dams on rivers and larger streams provided power for sawmills and grain milling, and later provided energy for generating electricity as technology advanced. There is now an ambitious effort to restore and protect this mighty river's natural features in the face of encroaching urbanization and land development that threatens to turn this majestic waterway into a mirror image of the Grand River, Michigan's longest river and one of its most polluted.
Author: Michael W. Nagle
Publisher: Wayne State University Press
ISBN: 0814341276
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 286
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Book Description
Examines a major Michigan timber baron and political figure who also founded a coal-mining empire in Kentucky. Near the turn of the twentieth century, "Pine King" Justus S. Stearns was Michigan's largest producer of manufactured lumber and the owner of a prosperous coal mining operation headquartered in Stearns, Kentucky, a town he founded. Over the course of his career, Stearns would own at least thirty manufacturing businesses—making everything from finished lumber to kitchen utensils, game boards, and motors—as well as hotels, a railroad, and a power company. He was also an active member of the Republican Party who served one term as Michigan's secretary of state and a philanthropist who gave a great deal of his wealth to causes in both Michigan and Kentucky. In Justus S. Stearns: Michigan Pine King and Kentucky Coal Baron, 1845–1933, author Michael W. Nagle details Stearns's astounding range of accomplishments and explores the influence of both paternalism and Social Darwinism in his business practices. Nagle begins by addressing key events in the first few decades of Stearns's life and his initial foray into the lumber industry. Subsequent chapters explore Stearns's political career, his timber operations in Wisconsin, and his coal, lumber, and railroad operations in Kentucky and Tennessee. Nagle also details the ancillary businesses that Stearns founded or purchased in the early twentieth century, even as his Stearns Salt & Lumber Company served as the anchor of his Michigan holdings, while Stearns Coal & Lumber did the same for his operations in Kentucky. The final chapter offers an overview and analysis of Stearns's lifetime of accomplishments, including his impact on the town of Ludington, Michigan, where he maintained a residence for over fifty years. Nagle makes extensive use of primary source material from several historical archives as well as contemporary newspaper accounts, court documents, company records, and other primary sources. American history scholars, as well as general readers interested in Michigan's lumbering era and Kentucky's mining history, will enjoy this biography of an exceptionally influential businessman.
Author: Thomas R. Cox
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 548
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Book Description
With The Lumberman's Frontier, Thomas Cox has reconstructed a groundbreaking history that stands apart from all previous studies of American forests. Forests were ubiquitous in early America, but it was only in selected areas that trees, rather than farming, attracted settlement. These areas constitute the lumberman's frontier, which appeared first in northern New England in the seventeenth century, followed by upstate New York, the Allegheny Plateau, the upper Great Lakes states, the Gulf South, and the Far West. The forest frontiers generated capital and building materials important in the nation's development, but they also left a legacy of environmental problems, class and urban-rural divisions, and economic frictions. The 1930s marked the end of the lumberman's frontier, but these consequences continue to shape attitudes and policies toward forests, most notably the questions "Whose forests are they?" and "How and by whom should forests be used?" Drawing upon recent work in social and economic history, as well as a wealth of historical data on forest industries and individuals, The Lumberman's Frontier neither glorifies economic development nor falls into the maw of gloom-and-doom. It puts individual actors at center stage, allowing the points of view of the workers and lumbermen to emerge. The Lumberman's Frontier will appeal to students and scholars of forestry, public policy, and environmental history, as well as to general readers interested in the history and settlement of the United States.
Author:
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1118649737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 470
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Book Description
The fifth edition of Michigan: A History of the Great Lakes State presents an update of the best college-level survey of Michigan history, covering the pre-Columbian period to the present. Represents the best-selling survey history of Michigan Includes updates and enhancements reflecting the latest historic scholarship, along with the new chapter ‘Reinventing Michigan’ Expanded coverage includes the socio-economic impact of tribal casino gaming on Michigan’s Native American population; environmental, agricultural, and educational issues; recent developments in the Jimmy Hoffa mystery, and collegiate and professional sports Delivered in an accessible narrative style that is entertaining as well as informative, with ample illustrations, photos, and maps Now available in digital formats as well as print
Author: James Bruce Smith
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Urbanization
Languages : en
Pages : 742
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Book Description
Author: Carol McGinnis
Publisher: Genealogical Publishing Com
ISBN: 9780806317557
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 518
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Book Description
This is one of the finest statewide sourcebooks ever published, a remarkable compilation of sources and resources that are available to help researchers find their Michigan ancestors. It identifies records on the state and regional level and then the county level, providing details of vital records, court and land records, military records, newspapers, and census records, as well as the holdings of the various societies and institutions whose resources and facilities support the special needs of the genealogist. County-by-county, it lists the names, addresses, websites, e-mail addresses, and hours of business of libraries, archives, genealogical and historical societies, courthouses, and other record repositories; describes their manuscripts and record collections; highlights their special holdings; and provides details regarding queries, searches, and restrictions on the use of their records.
