The Case of the Missing Sign

Byers Homestead

Date Visited:  August 24, 2019

Stop:  #48

We left Mill Race Park on West Commerce Road and knew exactly where our next destination would be – right across the street.  We could see the Byers Homestead from the parking lot at Mill Race Park.  We anticipated a relaxing time walking around the grounds of the homestead, reading the historical marker situated somewhere on the grounds, taking our requisite photographs, and then sauntering on to our next destination.  However, it was not as relaxing as we thought as we encountered yet another mystery on our Michigan Wines and Signs quest.

Although we could see the Byers Homestead across the street, the main entrance to the site was off of Tamworth Street, about 470 feet east of the historical marker at Mill Race Park.  So, we jumped in the car and drove the short distance and parked.  The actual homestead is a fairly large area and we had no idea where the actual historical marker was located.  As we have done on all of our historical marker visits, we used out Gold Source coordinates, but were not surprised that the sign was not there.  So, we set out to explore the grounds in hopes of locating the marker. 

We walked across Tamworth Street from the parking lot and approached the big red barn, which now serves as a Country Store and Candy Shop, only open on Sundays from noon to 5:00 pm.  We have since learned that the barn was built around 1900 as a small carriage house and horse barn, or as a utility barn.  It is also believed that it served as a blacksmith shop at one time.  It looks like your typical red barn – Dutch Gambrel roof and rustic post and beam construction – but a lot smaller.  This seemed like a logical location for the historical marker, so we searched around the whole barn to no avail.

West of the barn is the farm house, so that seemed like the next logical place for the historical marker.  On the way to the farm house, we passed several out buildings:  Grannie’s pantry, the duck barn, and the dress barn among them.  We have since learned that Frederick Pecks built the farm house in 1849.  He lived there for 60 years until his death in 1908.  His daughter, Grace Germaine, was the next occupant of the farmhouse.  She is the last confirmed resident as well.  It’s a classic early Victorian white farm house structure, and we enjoyed taking pictures of it from every conceivable direction.  But, much to our dismay, there was no historical marker there, either.

We looked for the marker in the park that lies south of the barn and farm house.  We even walked out to the Byers Park sign on Commerce Road in hopes that the historical marker was out there.  The walk offered a scenic look at the farmhouse and grounds from across a pond, but it offered up no historical marker.  At this point, we were stymied, and decided that we were not destined to see that sign on this particular day.

Of course, once I got back home later that evening, the first thing I did was get on the internet and look for any clues that might explain the mystery of the missing sign.  Sure enough, I found a couple of resources that mentioned what happened.  One source stated that the main building on the homestead site had fallen into disrepair and had become a safety concern, as well as having dangerous mold growing inside the building.  So, the state of Michigan removed the sign.  Another site simply mentioned that the sign was returned to the Department of History, with no additional explanation.  And a third source came from an interview with a Co-Chair of “Friends of Byers”, Cheryl Quinn, for from The Spinal Column, a news weekly for western Oakland County.  In the article, Cheryl states that “there used to be a residence where June (Byers) lived but it had no running water. The Township had it condemned and taken down and when that happened the state came in and took back the marker.”

But, if we had found the sign, it would have told us about the early history of the area.  The site on which the Byers Homestead resides is said to be the location where the first white pioneers settled in this region.  Abraham Walrod, a German immigrant from New York, built a log cabin here and eventually the Village of Commerce sprung up.  The current farm house replaced the log cabin in 1849.  Many of the settlers who came to the area traveled via the Erie Canal, which had opened in 1825.  They named their village Commerce in hopes of becoming a major business center.  Over time, two generations of Byers lived at this homestead.  June Byers eventually assumed ownership of the property, and in 1998 sold it to Commerce Township.  The Friends of Byers Group, established in 1992, handles the maintenance of the grounds and conducts fundraisers to keep preservation activities moving forward.  One of their objectives is to have the Historical Marker returned to the site.

Since we never actually saw the historical marker, we cannot officially cross this site off our quest list.  It will not be the last marker we will encounter that is no longer where it is supposed to be, but more on that in future blogs.  In any event, we did enjoy our visit to the Homestead, and we were very impressed with the hard work that the Friends of Byers Group and other volunteers have done to keep the site looking great and preserving this very important historical site.

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