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Vintage Photo Shows Early 1920s Farmington Switchboard Operators

Operators connected Farmington area residents while working on the second floor of the Farmington State Bank building, now the Village Mall.

This week's AT&T cellular phone outage got us thinking about a time when all phone service was delivered across wires, rather than through the air. Our featured historical photo, published in Farmington: A Pictorial History, by Lee Peel, shows two young women operating the Farmington switchboard sometime during the early 1920s. Their office was on the second floor of the Farmington State Bank building, which is now the Village Mall, at the corner of Farmington Road and Grand River.  You can find Peel's book at the Farmington Community Library. To learn more about current events, browse through the list below. We've also included a list of events for which you'll have to register or buy tickets later in the week.  Check our calendar for …

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Farmington Past

What Were They Thinking?

Records of the first Farmington Township meetings show what was on the minds of early settlers.

Imagine for a moment that you are a pioneer in Farmington Township. You have left your past behind and moved away from family and friends in a well settled area in New York to a vast unpopulated wilderness in an unknown spot in a new land. In your new home there are few roads, no police, no courts, no churches, and no stores. The nearest settled areas are miles away over primitive roads that are often impassable. So when there was enough population to legally form an independent township, the inhabitants took a day off from their daily chores and met to hold a township meeting where they were able to vote on measures that were of highest importance to them. So what was on their mind? What were they thinking? Fortunately, records of that …

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Brian Golden

9:24 pm on Saturday, February 4, 2012

Interesting, John, there was no provision for horses getting loose. I guess the people of the township were used to each others "horsing around"!   more ›

Farmington Past

Mills Provided Power in Farmington Township

At one time, eight mills operated in the Farmington area.

When Farmington Township was first settled in the 1820s, there was no Detroit Edison, or Consumers Energy. Virtually all the power needed was supplied by the pioneers themselves, in the form of muscle power from either animals or people. Houses, wagons, clothes, shoes, furniture, plowing the fields and more were all built and accomplished through sweat and hard work. The first businesses set up in what would become the Village of Farmington included a shoemaker, blacksmith, and wagon maker, all completing their tasks by hand effort. But not everything could be done by hand. The principal source of large scale power in the frontier in those days was water power. One of the great attractions of Farmington Township to the early settlers was …

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Farmington Past

Firefighting in Pioneer Days

A local pioneer's book relates the tale of a tavern consumed by fire.

In thinking back to all the hardships the pioneers faced in settling this area, one aspect can be easily overlooked: The public services we take for granted today were totally absent. There were no police or fire departments to look after the safety of the settlers. Even after the roads were improved, the area lacked a formal fire department, and even the simplest of fires often completely consumed the buildings. In fact, buildings were designed with this in mind. Doors and window shutters, which were expensive items, were often mounted on two-leaf hinges, which allowed them to be lifted off their hinges once opened. Firefighters were simply your neighbors who would usually turn out at the first sign of a fire, to make an initial …

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The Importance of Taverns in Pioneer Days

Centrally located, these gathering places hosted festive occasions and government meetings.

When the first land owners started settling in Farmington Township in the mid-1820s, all they found upon arrival was a vast virgin forest, crossed by some streams and a few Indian trails. They got to work immediately clearing a few acres of their land for subsistence farming, and using the felled trees to construct their small log cabins. As each settler established his farm, they cut crude roads to their property down the section lines along the “line of blazed trees” left by the surveyors in 1817. There were no churches, town halls, police stations, or shopping centers. So whenever a meeting of all the inhabitants was needed, or when elections were held, this was done initially at private homes. For the first three years of settlement, …

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Farmington Past

Steamboat Perils on the Mississippi

A book excerpt provides a look at 'one of the most fatal steam-boat disasters' in history.

One of the popular ways to travel to the Northwest during the pioneer surge was by steamboat. Today, we think of that mode of travel as a leisurely sail across lakes and rivers on a quaint craft out of a Huckleberry Finn story. The following excerpt from a book titled (in part) Remarkable Shipwrecks of the World, by R. Thomas, A.M. published in 1852 gives quite a different image: LOSS OF THE HELEN McGREGOR. The following is a description, by a passenger, of one of the most fatal steam-boat disasters that has ever occurred on the western waters. "On the morning of the 24th of February, 1830, the Helen M'Gregor stopped at Memphis, on the Mississippi river, to deliver freight, and land a number of passengers, who resided, in that section of …

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Farmington Past

What Happened to Farmington Township?

As two cities developed, very little remains of the original township.

If you read early histories of the Farmington area you will often see references to Farmington Township. But today the term is not used at all. So, what did become of Farmington Township? Here is the story: The Northwest Territory, which included present day Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, was ceded to the United States as Part of the 1783 Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War. The British, however, never handed over the area until 1796, then took it back again during the War of 1812. We finally took permanent control of the land after the war in 1815. In order to sell the land to settlers, the entire area first needed to be surveyed. A rectilinear system of townships each 6 miles square, was laid out …

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Farmington Past

Lumen Goodenough, a New Kind of Pioneer

Moving to Farmington in 1918, Goodenough hired architect Marcus Burrowes to build 'Longacres'.

The 19th century development of Power’s Settlement in Farmington Township followed the fortunes of the roads it was built upon. At first, a couple of stores, a post office, a public house, a shoemaker and a blacksmith shop were all that existed at the settlement’s original center at Shiawassee and Farmington Roads. The settlement grew, keeping pace with increasing road traffic until the Plank Road Act of 1850 relocated the town center south to Grand River. Once the plank road was in place, traffic increased and so did the local businesses. The number of residents also increased, resulting in residential additions to the town center until, in 1866, Farmington became a Village. Then, in the 1870s, something unforeseen happened, the railroads…

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Farmington Past

The 1796 Surrender of Detroit to the U.S.

A circuit rider judge's notes on the Northwestern Territory provide insights into Michigan history.

“Burnet’s Notes On The Northwestern Territory”, written by Jacob Burnet (1770 – 1853), provides very interesting insight into the surrender of Detroit and is quoted below. He was a circuit rider judge who was a personal witness to many significant early events in Michigan’s history. His book was published in 1847 based on a series of letters he wrote starting in 1837. The Revolutionary War ended with the Treaty of Paris, signed in 1783, which granted the Northwest Territories to the United States. Since there was no pressure from the local inhabitants to hand over Detroit, and since most of the Indians in the Northwest Territories supported the British and vigorously resisted American movement into the territory, it remained in the hands …

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How Roads Change the Landscape in Farmington

Pioneers in the 1820s had only two ways of travel: by water or by established trails.

When the first pioneer settlers came to Farmington Township in the 1820s, the only two ways travel was accomplished was either by water on rivers and lakes, or via the long established Indian Trails. What is now the City of Farmington had its start at the intersection of the North-South Orchard Lake Trail and the East-West Shiawassee Trail. This location is today’s Shiawassee Road and Farmington Road. Since roads bring travelers, and travelers need lodging, services, and supplies, the early settlers in Farmington were quick to take advantage of the existence of these major travel routes by establishing these businesses at or near this intersection: Dr. Ezekiel Webb Log House & Post Office – 1824 George W. Collins Store – late 1820s Steven …

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