List of Michigan State Historic Sites in Chippewa County

Transcription

Pete Lemelin: Jacob Smith set up his shop there and he became very, very good friends with the local Chippewa indian chief, Chief Naomi, almost brothers. So Jacob Smith was given the name Wabisan as his indian name and all of his 5 children were all given indian names as well. When the, during the battle of 1812, he actually fought against his indian brothers for the English and he almost died during those battles. They found him out to be a traitor and basically chased him back to Detroit. Uh, afterwards he repaired those relationships. So much so that the treaty of 1819, Jacob Smith spoke on behalf of the Chippewas during that treaty-on behalf of Chief Naomi. And during those negotiations he was able to negotiate 7,000 acres of land dividing into 11 different tracks set along the Flint River for indian purposes. When it came time to appropriate who those 11 tracks belonged to, he listed his childrens' indian names. So that's how Flint essentially was originally owned, as the first landowners of the English era were Jacob Smith through the Treaty of 1819 in a backhanded kind of way, listing his children but their indian names. That was fought in court for about 40 years, but it didn't hold up to be true. We also have Maria Smith, another one of Jacob Smith's daughters. Married somebody by the name of Colonel Thomas Bayless Whitmare Stockton. Colonel Stockton was actually the founder of the Civil War Brigade here in Flint, Stockton's Independent Regimen. It's a great story. He went to Washington, went to talk to Lincoln. Lincoln sent him to the Secretary of War. The Secretary of War sent him back to Michigan saying 'if the governor there agrees, then sure, we'll oblige.'. He talked to the governor at the time who told him, if you raise the funds, we'll be happy to do it too. So essentially no, because that's what he was looking for was funds. The union army lost the battle of Bull Run. Stockton immediately went back to the Secretary of War who immediately said 'forget your governor, do it, we need you now.' So that's how Stockton's Independent Regimen was formed. So, we also have another great tie in to national media or a national event. When Colonel Stockton moved here from Wisconsin, he had a slave by the name of Rachel. It was then at that time that there was a precedents in the courts called "once free, always free". If a slave moved to a northern, a free state, that ensured them their freedom at that point in time. Rachel, when Stockton moved here to Michigan, he sold her to a slave carrier down in Missouri. She said her and her son were free because they actually moved into Michigan territory before being sold. It went all the way to the Missouri Supreme Court and she won her and her son's freedom during that Supreme Court ruling. That case was then later used in the Dred Scott trials. So it's a very interesting tie in to Flint there. What happened was, we'll talk a little bit about Billy Durant here as well. Billy Durant, you can't talk about the history of Flint without mentioning him but he is not at the cemetary. He is actually buried at a private cemetary in his hometown. When Billy Durant was here, he owned, along with Dallas Dort, the Dort-Durant Carriage Company, largest manufacturer of carriages in the world. He actually, Billy Durant, had to be convinced by the men of Flint--Cummings, Whiting, Ballenger, a lot of names that you'll find. They had to convince Billy Durant to get on board because he thought that the automobile was a direct competitor and didn't want any part of them. So once they convinced him to get on board he obviously he jumps in with two feet and whatever he did and the rest is history. That's how General Motors really became grown. And essentially what happened, in 1903, Billy Durant went and saw Whiting back in New York. He had the Westen-Mott Wheel Company and asked him to come and move, uproot his factory and move to Flint, which is essentially what he did. He, once they were able to bring Buick in, the Weston-Mott Company parked themselves directly next door and that's really the start of vertical integration for General Motors. But to get an idea of the type of person that Charles Stewart was this is a story that I think really kind of identifies the type of person he was. Before he moved to Flint, the wheel company that he ran really wasn't doing all that well so he went on a sales trip and he went down south. Nobody wanted to buy wheels. Everybody wanted to buy axles. So he came back with over 2,000 orders for axles, even though they'd never made one. And he made them to their exact specifications and that's exactly how that business grew is because every supplier that he went to wanted something different and he was able to do that for them. He had an engineering mind and the ability to put that into a production, which was really quite rare. So, he was quite a genius in terms of an engineering mind being able to produce things. Charles Stewart Mott later became the director of General Motors for many, many years. Served on the Board of Directors there, kind of known as the dean of the directors of General Motors. Really helped the U.S. government through World War I being able to supply what they needed through the Flint factories here and started the Mott Foundation in 1926. Through their efforts they've been able to donate millions of dollars annually around the world. They've been able to sprearhead the idea of community schools, which was something that really caught fire during the 1930s, 40s. That changed the way we do school today. And really enough can't be said about what he does, who he is, and what he continues to do everyday for the people of Flint, Michigan.