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“The
Tribune List of Persons Reputed to be Worth a Million or More” was
published by The Tribune Monthly magazine as its June 1892 edition. This
list contains 4,047 names of American millionaires by state and city. It
does not list fortunes or estimates except where known facts about
estates were available. It indicates the lines of business in which the
fortunes were made and in some cases the main enterprises in which they
were invested at the time. The Tribune list of 1892 was the first
complete listing of American millionaires and thus constitutes a
valuable basis for the study and analysis of wealth accumulation and
wealthy people in America during the Gilded Age. An incomplete list of
1892 millionaires and millionaire estates, including all Tribune 1892
nominees already in the AW database will soon join the roster of
Encyclopedia of American Wealth’s historical lists. As with all our
lists, the 1892 list uses the data of the American Wealth database and
thereby exceeds the information content of the original historical list.
This basic list will be completed gradually as the AW database grows,
with specific geographic areas (cities or states) being treated
periodically. The extract containing the 42 listed millionaires of
Detroit in 1892 is just the first of many extracts to come, until the
whole list is complete.
Detroit is so thoroughly associated with the automobile industry, the
impression is easily gained that all of Detroit’s large fortunes were
derived from the motor car business. Yet in 1892, four years before
Charles Brady King and Henry Ford, each on their side, built their first
gasoline powered carriage, there were already 42 Detroit millionaires
recorded in the famous Tribune list. Obviously none had derived his
wealth from the still unborn automobile industry, but some were active
in the very fields that attracted the skilled mechanics so much needed
to the early automotive development. The same and others would be ready
investors for the nascent car industry.
Founded by Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac in 1701 as Fort Pontchartrain du
Detroit (ie lying on the straits), Detroit was essentially a French
settlement, well beyond its conquest by the British, after the French
and Indian War in 1760. British occupation was immediately challenged by
the Ottawa Indians, as their chief Pontiac led a raid and subsequent
siege of the Fort, which lasted 153 days and was unprecedented in
British Indian warfare. The British did eventually triumph over the
Ottawas and Fort Detroit, as it was henceforth called became a strategic
military stronghold as well as a fur trading outpost.
In 1883, after the Americans won their Independence War, Detroit was
theoretically to be surrendered to the United States, but it took
another thirteen years, until the fort was officially transferred under
application of the Jay Treaty. It then became the capital of Wayne
County in the Northwest Territory. In 1805, Michigan Territory was
established and Detroit became its capital. In that same year, a fire
destroyed all but one of its houses. An entirely new city was then
planned and the necessary real estate transactions conducted to allow
it. Under the leadership of ‘Judge’ Augustus Brevoort Woodward, who was
himself inspired by L’Enfant’s concepts for the new federal capital, a
system of hexaganol street blocks, with at its center the Grand Circus,
from where alternatively 200 feet and 120 feet wide avenues ran
outwards, was planned.
Detroit had 400 settlers, mostly descendents of the early French
families, by the time it came under US control. Consequently, [governor]
Hull and Woodward’s plans for rebuilding the city were ridiculed as
desperately overambitious for such a small settlement. They were
nevertheless partially executed, as witnessed by Grand Circus Park and
Woodward Avenue, which was widened from its original 66 feet to 120 in
the 1930’s. In 1817, the Catholepistemiad, forerunner of the University
of Michigan was founded and in 1824, a city government was established,
its seal bearing the motto : “We hope for better days”. Under the influx
of migrating farmers, mostly from New England, the population of
Michigan grew at annual rates of 13% during the 1820’s and 21% during
the 1830’s. The city grew at a slower rate during these years, as the
immigrants were motivated essentially by land for farming and forestry.
At the outset of Civil War, Detroit had a population of 45,000 and an
emerging class of merchants and entrepreneurs, who would make up the
city’s first roster of millionaires. Among them, but not on the 1892
list, were David Joseph Campau, descendent of one of the French pioneers
who settled in Fort Pontchartrain in the first decade of the 18th
century, ‘General’ Lewis Cass, whose position of territorial governor,
Secretary of State and US Senator certainly did less to make him rich
that a fortunate investment in Detroit real estate, and Eber Ward Brock,
an early shipping magnate and ironmonger. In 1864, Ward and some
partners pioneered the making of Bessemer steel in their Wyandotte mill.
In the same year, John Stoughton Newberry and the McMillans (all on the
1892 list) established the Michigan Car Company in Detroit, laying the
foundation of the city’s foremost industry, prior to the automobile. It
is said, that Henry Ford was employed as a mechanic by the Michigan Car
Company, before starting to tinker with his freewheeled carriage.
In 1906, railway car construction was still Detroit’s largest industry,
its output being still twice that of automobile manufacturing, the
distant second. By that time, the Michigan Car Company had merged twice,
in 1892 with the Peninsular Car Co (founded in 1879 by Frank J. Hecker,
also listed by the Tribune) and again in 1899, as it became a
substantial part of the American Car & Foundry Corporation. Other
industries flourished in Detroit during the Gilded Age and each produced
its 1892 millionaires : Christian H. Buhl in coal and iron; George Henry
Hammond in slaughtering and meat packing; Daniel Scotten and John J.
Bagley in tobacco and cigar making; Theodore H. Eaton, Jacob S. Farrand
and Alanson Sheley in drugs and chemicals; Traugott Schmidt in tanning
and leather products; E.W. Voight and Hiram Walker in brewing and
whiskey distilling; Dexter Mason Ferry and C.C. Bowen in seeds.
Railroads and street railway tycoons are also part of the 1892 roster of
millionaires. James Frederick Joy participated with John Murray Forbes
and John W. Brooks in the reorganization (or privatization) of the
Michigan Central Railroad and led the group’s westward railroad
operations, including the consolidation and extension of the Chicago,
Burlington & Quincy, for many years. W. K. Muir was an executive of the
Canada Southern Railway and a promoter of Detroit’s street railways,
along with his brother-in-law George Hendrie.
The most widespread activity in Michigan though and the one which
created the largest number of millionaires, was lumbering and dealing in
pine lands. David Whitney, the richest man of Michigan made most of his
fortune in pine lands, before investing a large part in Detroit real
estate. Other Detroit lumber millionaires included : William C. Yawkey,
whose grandson Thomas Austin Yawkey would move to Boston and own the Red
Socks; Russell Alexander Alger, who would succeed James McMillan in the
U.S. Senate, and his partner Martin S. Smith; Thomas Witherell Palmer,
who was in business with his father-in-law Charles P. Merrill of Saginaw
and his wife Lizzie, Merrill’s daughter; Simon J. Murphy, whose heirs
controlled the Pacific Lumber Company for decades; Francis Frederick
Palms, who inherited a lumber fortune from his father, which he shared
with his half-sister Clotilde (Palms) Book, whose mother was a Campau;
and David Ward, a cousin of Eber Brock Ward.
Lumber fortunes further made up most of Michigan’s forty eight 1892
millionaires, not living in Detroit .
Of the old French families, just William B. Moran (a descendent of the
Morands) was a millionaire in 1892. His holdings were essentially
inherited Detroit real estate. Other fortunes essentially derived from
Detroit city real estate were the Brushes’ (represented by Alfred
Erskine Brush and his niece Lillie Thompson), Bela Hubbard’s and George
Van Ness Lothrop’s, but most Detroit 1892 millionaires made part of
their fortune in city real estate. They were also directors of the
city’s foremost banks, but some fortunes were essentially made in
banking : William A. Butler’s, Edward Kanter’s and William B. Wesson’s.
Some descendents of the 1892 would invest into the nascent automobile
industry and thereby enlarge their inherited wealth. S. J. Murphy’s son
William would thus be the main backer of Cadillac and James F. Joy’s son
Henry, a large shareholder of Packard. By the turn of the Twentieth
Century, the families of these Gilded Age millionaires made up Detroit’s
fashionable society, although strictly from a residence point of view,
they were Detroiters no longer, having for the most established their
permanent dwelling in Grosse Pointe. There, on the land where the early
French settlers had established their farms, they would soon be followed
by two sets of automobile millionaires, the founders (to which we can
count the Edsel Fords and the Dodge widows) and the managers (A.P.
Sloan, C.F. Kettering and the like).
To know more more about Detroit’s early non-automotive fortunes or other
facts about the wealthy American families of the past, browse through “
Encyclopedia of American Wealth “, notably :
- AW Historical
List " Detroit millionaires in 1892 "
- List of Michigan's
forty eight 1892 millionaires, not living in Detroit
- Updated AW wealth classification lists for individuals
1875,
1900 and 1925
- Profiles of wealth individuals and families at “Encyclopedia
of American Wealth”
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