On To Richmond - part 2

Sanford Stone/Weller House

Date Visited:  June 2, 2019

Stop:  #3


After “invading” the Richmond Center for the Performing Arts, it was on to our next target.  We continued east on Churchill Street until it ended at Main Street (M-19).  We made a left onto Main Street heading north for about 170 feet and turned right onto Washington Street.  Heading east again, we drove for 1.5 blocks until we reached our destination.  The historical marker for the Sanford Stone/Weller House was located on the north side of Washington Street, about 130 feet east of Stone Street.  The marker is located in a nice neighborhood, across the street from a Little League baseball field, which brought back memories of my coaching days and the hours spent on similar baseball fields throughout the lower half of Michigan.  But again, I digress.

This is a private residence that is totally fenced off by a little white picket fence, so you can only get as close to the marker as the fence will allow.  This was our first visit to a two-sided historical marker, with Side 1 providing the background of the original owner of the house (Sanford Stone), which he built in 1878.  Side 2 describes the history after the Sanford Stone House was sold to Mabelle Streibig Weller in 1920.  The Wellers remodeled the home, which was originally built in an Eastlake style house, to a more modern Colonial Revival style.  The Wellers also renamed the home Roseburn Place after Mabelle’s mother.  The home remained in the possession of the Wellers’ ancestors until 1993 and is now owned by a private businessman.

The home is really beautiful, on a fairly large lot compared to other homes in the area, with mature trees, well-kept landscaping, and a really nice sun porch on the west side of the house.  It would have been really interesting to see the inside of the house, but obviously that was not possible.  I could imagine sitting in the sun porch and listening to the sounds of kids playing on the baseball fields across the street.  With that thought burned into my memory, it was time to move on to our next destination – our first winery visit!!!

#michiganwinesandsigns #michigan #history #michiganhistory #historyisbetterwithwine

On to Richmond

Richmond Center for the Performing Arts
Date Visited:  June 2, 2019
Stop:  #2

When Virginia seceded from the Union prior to the American Civil War, one of the first acts of the Confederate government was to move the capital of the Confederacy from Montgomery, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia, a mere 100 miles from the United States capital in Washington, DC.  From that point on, a popular battle cry of the North was “On to Richmond,” which was also the name of several military campaigns designed to capture the new capital before the Confederate states were recognized as an independent nation by the rest of the world.

My wife and I embarked on our own “On to Richmond” campaign by invading Richmond, Michigan, instead of Richmond, Virginia.  Richmond is a small city (pop. 5902 as of 2017) located on the border of Macomb and St. Clair counties.  It is also the home of two Michigan Historical Markers.  Since Richmond was on our way to our main destination, Sage Creek Winery, we had to stop and visit them!!!

The first marker we visited was the Richmond Center for the Performing Arts, located in a very nice neighborhood.  We approached the site from the west via Churchill Street.  The marker is located on the northwest corner of Churchill Street and Parker Street and marks the location of the First Congregational Church, built in 1887.  Sometime after 1973, the church was sold to the Richmond Community Theatre, which converted the interior into a performance theatre and restored the exterior of the building.  The day we visited, the Center was getting ready for a performance of The Follies, so we were unable to enter the Performing Arts Center and check it out.  Despite the increased volume of people going to the performance, there was plenty of parking on any of the streets in the area.  We stayed long enough to snap a dozen pictures our so, and then headed on to our next destination.  Our next blog will focus on visiting the second marker in Richmond.

#michiganwinesandsigns #michigan #history #michiganhistory #historyisbetterwithwine

A Boo-tiful Day to Visit a Cemetery

Crawford Settlement Burying Ground
Date Visited:  June 2, 2019
Stop:  #1

June 2 was a gorgeous Spring day in Michigan, which if you live here, you know that was a rarity.  It was a perfect day to begin our Michigan Wines and Signs Quest.  My wife had been asking all weekend to visit the Sage Creek Winery so I referred to my newly constructed Wine and Sign map and noticed that there were several Michigan Historical Markers between our home and the winery.  Our first stop would be the Crawford Settlement Burying Ground.  

Not sure visiting the dead is an uplifting way to begin a quest, but that was our destination as we headed east on 26 Mile Road.  The actual name of the cemetery is Meade Cemetery and is located 0.6 miles east of North Avenue on the south side of 26 Mile Road.  I had not discovered the errors of the sign locations yet, so we had no real idea where the marker was located.  We pulled into the cemetery and headed south on the dirt road all the way to the rear of the cemetery.  No sign found yet so we turned left and caught the next dirt road heading north.  We came to the end of that road when I happened to catch the sign out of the corner of my eye, located at what looks to be the original entrance to the cemetery.  We parked and walked a short distance to the sign, which is only a few feet off of 26 Mile Road.

It was very humbling to be standing amongst war veterans from every major American war since the Revolution.  Many of the gravesites were marked with small metal signs indicating the war in which the deceased had fought.  The headstone for John Crawford, the founder of the cemetery and himself a war veteran from the Revolution, is a few short feet south and west of the Michigan Historical Marker.  You could easily spend an hour or so walking through this historic cemetery looking for the gravesites of our war veterans.  Beyond that, there was not much else to see or do there, so we hopped back in the car and headed to our next destination.

#michiganwinesandsigns #michigan #history #michiganhistory #historyisbetterwithwine

A School of Fish?

Our Format.  Our intent is to provide short snippets of each of the wineries and signs we stop at during our quests, rather than write one blog about the whole day’s adventure. Hopefully that will make for easier reading. Also, I would like this to be your definitive resource for the exact locations of each sign we visit. What I discovered while researching the locations of all Michigan Historical Markers is this: it often appears that the author took a map of Michigan and threw a dart at it, and then that point became the location of whatever sign they happened to be thinking about. Case in point:

The website I use as my “gold source” for Michigan Historical Markers showed a marker in the middle of Lake Michigan. Thinking it may be the marker for an historical offshore lighthouse, I clicked on it for more information. Much to my disappointment, the marker was assigned to The Norwood School. Why would a school marker be located in the middle of Lake Michigan? My wife deadpanned that they could be marking the location for a School of Fish. Thinking that highly unlikely, I did more research and found that the Norwood School was actually located 19 miles south of where the gold source website had it located. I have found numerous errors since, and each reference website I look at seems to have copied the location from the same gold source website I am using. This is frustrating because each visit now could lead to a wild goose chase. To fix that, I am in the process of locating the exact coordinates (latitude and longitude) for each sign. An arduous task at best, but hopefully one that will make it a lot easier for others who want to visit signs without wondering if the location they are driving to will actually be the location of a real sign. My recommendation would be to copy the coordinate I provide into your GPS app of choice, and that should lead you to the exact location.

Besides offering the correct locations of the signs we visit, our intent is to also provide some additional information about visiting the sign – where to park, is the sign visible from the road or will you have to take a short walk to get to it, and any other tidbit of information we learn that may make it easier for you when you visit. We’ll also provide pictures to help with the visual context of the sign’s surroundings.

If your visit yields information different than what we described in our story, please contact us and let us know. Sometimes signs will be moved, or temporarily taken down for construction purposes, so we would love to hear about your experiences and how they may differ from when we visited.

Regarding the wineries, we will provide its location as well as the URL of the winery’s website so you can find out more details about the winery. We will share our thoughts and observations about each winery, what we liked and what we didn’t. We are by no means expert wine tasters, so we will not offer critiques on the quality of the wines, but we will share what wines we liked best based on our personal preferences. Hopefully we will provide enough information to spark your interest so you will visit these wineries and experience them for yourself.

Every. Word. Of. Every. Sign.

Signs.  I love reading signs.  Especially signs that have anything to do with history.  I
have been mocked for years by family and friends for my obsession with reading every word of every sign in museums and historical sites that we visit.  Where my wife sees a big wide-open field of grass, trees, and shrubs, I see an historic Civil War battlefield with lots of historical signs and markers to help me visualize the action that took place on that field.  Nirvana for history geeks like me, another excuse to catch a few Z’s due to boredom for my wife.

Wines.  My wife loves wine.  Her passion for wine was stoked three years ago by friends of ours who invited us on a Wine Tour in the Leelanau Peninsula of Michigan, near Traverse City.  I, on the other hand, am NOT a wine drinker, but I went along for the ride.  Where I see a big wide-open field of vines and shrubs and trees, my wife sees grapes and cherries and peaches and apples and the potential they have to be ingredients in delicious tasting Michigan wines.  Nirvana for wine lovers like my wife, another excuse to long for the sweet taste of a cold beer for me.

Wines and Signs.  The obvious and natural result of combining our respective passions into a singular quest.  The quest – to visit every winery and read every Historical Marker in the state of Michigan!!  The purpose of this blog is to share our experiences while on this quest.  Over 1700 official State of Michigan Historical Markers and over 200 wineries.  Will we succeed?  I hope you will join us on this ride and see if we do.  Please feel free to offer your thoughts, and we would be very happy to answer any questions you may have or provide more details if needed.

The Birth of Michigan Wines and Signs

I love quests, and my family and I have enjoyed many quests over the years.  Many years ago, we did an Amusement Parks and Civil War Battlefield quest, mixing fun (for the kids and wife) with learning about American history (for me and my daughter).  Other than traveling during the hottest months on record (we were at Hershey Park the day the thermometer hit 109 degrees F), our trip was quite enjoyable.  There was a sense of adventure that made the vacation more palpable than any vacation we had taken before.

Some of our quests were stupid simple – sample an alcoholic beverage at every Land in Epcot Center,  (adults only!!!) – while others were quite lengthy and challenging in nature – our quest to visit every lighthouse in the state of Michigan.  Regardless of the quest, they all served as a huge bonding experience for our family as we all rallied around the adventure of finding the next lighthouse or reading the next battlefield sign.

With the kids now grown and gone, we have not had a quest of any relevance lately – other than my quest to lose weight, which currently stands at 41 pounds since March 3, but I digress.  I started tinkering with the thought of seeing historical markers in the state of Michigan.  In the past when I had thought about this, there were no reliable sources that could tell me how many markers existed and where I could find them.  But that was years ago and I hoped that that had changed.  Much to my excitement, I found at least 3 sites now that have fairly good lists, with one site capturing every official State of Michigan historical marker.  I even found an iPhone app that has some of the markers identified (but as I have since found out, well short of the +1700 markers that exist in the state).  Armed with that information, I now just needed to wait for an opportunity to spring our next quest on my wife.

It only took a couple days.  My wife started hinting about visiting a couple wineries in the area, and as usual, I was not overly excited about spending a Sunday driving around doing that.  So, I figured I would throw out a counteroffer – I’ll agree to go visit some wineries, if she would agree to visit some historical markers along the way.  I explained my vision of our new quest, and she surprisingly did not tell me to go perform a hurtful act on myself (trying to keep the blog PG rated).  

With the quest now defined and agreed to, my wife suggested that we should record our exploits.  I only intended to tick wineries and markers off a list, and maybe record some info on a PowerPoint slide to share with my wife and the kids.  But she was thinking BLOG.  Why not share our exploits with others?  Well… I’m not very social media savvy – I have never owned a Facebook account, or Twitter, or Instagram, or Exchange-O-Gram – so this proposal seemed quite daunting.  But just like that first winery trip, I am going to go along for the ride and see where it takes us.