Peter Lafferty
Old Days in Detroit with Peter Lafferty
“Peter Lafferty talks of persons and the days gone by; how things looked at the Lafferty’s place (when it was a farm); ancient Dudra; Joseph Campau’s peculiar methods and strange vehicles.”
Peter Lafferty, upon whom the gray days of three score are encroaching, is the retentive receptacle of the folk-lore of the Lafferty family, who have lived upon the banks of the Detroit for many years. Peter keeps a corner store where Fort street crosses McKinstry avenue. It is an unpaved avenue and a paved street; but one of these days, says Peter's clerk, the avenue will be paved. [addendum: McKinstry Street lies one block west of Clark Street.]
Peter does not pretend to be exact as to dates and names, indeed, he failed to recall the first name of his ancestor, his grandfather, to whom the old Lafferty farm belonged, now lying between Twelfth and Fourteenth streets, and beneath long blocks of brick buildings, with Thirteenth street running along its back like a spine of cobblestones. Every Detroit boy with a touch of gray in his whiskers, and who is even not yet a granddad, knows where the Lafferty farm was; knows where the big elm tree was and that it was at the Lafferty farm. Not, of course, where the big hollow elm used to be, as that was on the back of the Ludden farm, now a part of Elmwood, and the finest part of that famous cemetery is the Bloody Run hollow.
From all that Mr. Lafferty had ever heard concerning the weather in this part of Michigan; from all that he himself experienced, he does not believe that weather history in the past would furnish a parallel to the astonishing fact of three open winters in succession such as we have had the last three winters, with this winter the third of the open trio. "It was the rule," said he, "when we had an open winter to have it followed by a severe winter; never two, let alone three, open winters in succession." And he looked inquiringly out of the grocery window as though expecting an answer to the meteorological conundrum from the atmosphere.
He took a natural pleasurable pride in recalling his descent from the old pioneer who looked out upon the blue waters of the Detroit from his log cabin door, with nothing disturbing the placidity but the prows and paddles of the voyageurs of the canoes of friendly Indians or still more friendly French visitors whose coaches were their bark canoes.
Peter's father name was Peter, and most of the latter's brothers and sisters, save the family of Joseph, his uncle embracing two daughters and seven sons, have been gathered to their fathers, save Celeste Lafferty, who still lives on the old Lafferty farm, no longer a farm, in a brick house on Fort Street between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets.
Peter Lafferty the present Peter's father, was a silversmith, who learned his trade as the first apprentice to silversmithing in these parts with the first silversmith that ever clanked his tiny hammer in Detroit. The silversmith's name was Birzey, first name not remembered, who with his apprentice, Peter Lafferty, used to melt silver dollars in a pot and then with great ingenuity and skill, turn them into breast pins and earrings for the squaws and for the noble red man himself, who had quite as much vanity as the squaws. The shop was on the farm, on the old Monroe, or river road, now Woodbridge street, and there were meadows on both sides of the road all the way up and down the river. Indians were thick and the silver trade was good; the aborigines were particularly plentiful in their camps on the old Lafferty farm, now known on the maps as the LaFontaine farm. On Sundays, the French and Indians attended religious services at old Mr. Riopelle's log house on the same farm.
The only gunsmith was Penoy Lafoy, that was not his proper first name, but that was the name he was generally known by. He repaired and made the guns for the government and did odd jobs in the gun line for the hunters. And pretty nearly everybody was a hunter in those days, what with the myriads of ducks on the river, plenty of quail and wild turkeys; not very many bears, but lots of deer; fact is, deer would come in your back yard when the winter was severe. Lafoy's shop was located just the other side of where the Backos planning mill is situated. This gunsmith had seven daughters, one of whom Mr. Lafferty's father married. Fort Wayne was not built in those days, but a long time afterwards. Lambert Lafoy, a son of the gunsmith, was chosen by Gen. Cass as his secretary, as Lambert was then the only scholar in Detroit and he used to go with Gen. Cass down to Washington because General Cass was attached to the government and had to be in Washington a great deal.
Mr.Lafferty guessed there must be as many as four or five thousand people in and around Detroit in those days, and there was no talk of street pavement or sewers and there were no street lamps. As for carriages, they had what Mr. Lafferty called a "Tombreau", a high-box cart on two wheels, which the Americans afterwards called a dumpcart. These were nice carriages with a French pony hitched to them and the ladies and gentlemen seated in them. Dudes in those days despised Kentucky jeans, and sported corduroy pants and high hats, with particular stunning neckties. There were vehicles used, however, that were sacredly confined to ministers and doctors, and a plain citizen would entirely lose his head if he ever got into one of them. These were the calashes. They were on two wheels, with leather springs and a leather cover. Mr. Lafferty's memory only served to recall three of the happy possessors of these luxurious turnouts: Frank Baubie, of Windsor; Joseph Campau and Dr. Hurd of Detroit. They were extremely high toned, the vehicles.
Mr. Lafferty did not know that there were any Chippewa indians around those days. He remembered plenty of Hurons and plenty of "Peius" as he spelled the name of the tribe. Fact was that right around where he and the reporter of the Sunday News were sitting, and as far up as Twenty Fourth street, was the locality known as the Peius hill, taking its name from the twin facts that the land rolled there, and sloped to the river, and also that here was the camping ground of the tribe. They camped on both sides on the Monroe road; that was a plank road with the planks eight feet long.
His father, Mr. Lafferty incidentally interjected, moved down to Ecorse from the old farm and there the narrator was born, one of a family of three girls and two boys. The indians did not have very many amusements, once in a while a game of ball, and sometimes they joined the French in the same game, common knocking and running around on bases and driving the ball. Frenchmen top, spinning tops, a good deal, yes, even the grownup men, for peg-top was a great game. The young indians were very fond of the bows and arrows, not only as an amusement, but getting small game. They could hit a squirrel with an arrow every time at quite a long range; squirrels were very thick all around and sometimes even inside the city limits of those times. The old French settlers did not raise on the farms but little more than what served to carry themselves and the cattle and horse over winter, as there was no place to dispose of extra produce. When forty acres were cleared on the farms back from the river, it was a big average clearance. They raised their own sheep and took the wool to the carding mill.
The first carpet store started in Detroit ruined two or three firms; Mr. Lafferty thought the first man who sold carpets was a man named Wendell. He busted. But when Luther Beecher, of the Biddle house, came in, he made some money on carpets. But old Joe Campau wouldn't have anything to do with the new fangled carpets. He regarded good colored rag carpets as good enough for anybody, and declared a decided penchant for Indian mats. Those Indian mats, by the way, would be highly appreciated in those days of a growing taste for the rug farm of carpeting. They were woven of the small round reeds that grew along the river margin in many places, such as that near the mouth of the Rouge River, and were quite definitely colored by the tasteful squaws. There are plenty of them left yet in that splendid wilderness of reeds below and adjoining the Rouge, but the busy squaws are things of the dreamy past.
Old Joe, according to the grandson of the older Mr. Lafferty, always looked at the darker side. They called him eccentric because he would not let his wife and daughters go when he wanted to hold on. They wanted to be stylish and he wanted to go in the old familiar way which he loved. He didn't care to change and would not if he could help it. Old Joe's front door was cut through horizontally in the middle like a mill door. He had it arranged in this way to enable him to lean on the bottom part and look out on what was going on in Jefferson Avenue. He would occupy that coign of vantage for several hours. He would keep the young merchants under close observation; and it was a favorite pastime of his to draw conclusions from their action , and prophesy which would fail and which would succeed. If a young merchant put on any style, old Joe would be sure to predict his downfall. Old Joe's patience used to be tried by Frenchmen coming to get employment with him. They would always get it, but they would never be back after one day. He had a pile of stones in the back yard which the hired man was sent to wheel and pile in one corner, and when this was finished the old man would set him to wheeling and piling the same stones into the same corner they were at first, and so on til 6 o'clock, when the man took his pay and never came back again.
One day, a Frenchman came along and said he saw some shingles loose on old Joe's house, and Joe set him to work to repair it. Old Joe brought a ladder and sent the man up and took the ladder away. It was only ten minutes work, and when the man got through he began to call out to get down. But old Joe heard him swear, but he did not touch the ladder. The day was cold and the man had to stamp his feet and whack his arms to keep himself warm, and swear to keep his throat warm. The roof was a steep one and one step off the ridge would send him head over heels into the street. So he staid there until 6 o'clock came, when old Joe brought the ladder to bring him down and paid him. If the man ain't dead, he remembers old Joe.
(Addendum; Peter Lafferty was born in 1831, date of death is unknown.)
