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www.mybaycity.com December 25, 2010
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William L. Clements, seated right, Back row, from left, Dr. R.D. Smith, R. Perry Shorts, James O. Murfin, E.C. Shields; front, Mrs. Esther Marsh Cram, Junius E. Beal, Alexander Ruthven.

Bay City Historical 'First:' U-M Regents Meet Here in Tribute to Clements

Gala Dinner at 20-Room Center Avenue Mansion Hosts Ann Arborites

December 25, 2010       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

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After 24 years as a Regent of the University of Michigan, William L. Clements of Bay City had been defeated.

The Democrats had swept in in 1932 on the coat-tails of Franklin Roosevelt and Republican regents like Clements were rudely and suddenly ousted in the spring election of 1933 after years in power.

His fortune, made through construction of huge cranes at the Industrial Works, was nearly gone. Sales had fallen as the Depression deepened. The stock market crash has sapped more resources.

His First National Bank of Bay City had failed while Mr. Clements had been on honeymoon in Europe in 1930 with his second wife, Florence Kathryn Fisher. He was no longer able to pay for expensive artifacts he had been donating to the university for years.

The library he had built in 1923, the William L. Clements Library of American History, stood majestically on South University Avenue in Ann Arbor.

But he could no longer afford to donate the most crowning achievement of his collecting career -- the papers of the British generals commanding in the colonies during the Revolutionary War.

He had acquired those papers in a series of amazing coups at high cost, sending Randolph Adams, library director, to London, and working through agents in Britain. He even made the long journey by ship to inspect some of the papers personally.

One prize collection, the papers of Gen. Thomas Gage, nearly was snatched away when Adams let the information slip to a prominent Harvard historian, Samuel Eliot Morrison, before the deal was done. The tale hit the front pages of the Detroit News and The New York Times but Adams got to London just in time to secure it with a 10,000 pound deposit with Lord Henry Gage, descendant of the general.

The papers of Sir Henry Clinton, Lord George Germain and Lord Shelburne already were reposing in wooden boxes in his library at the northeast corner of Center and Park in Bay City.

Gage was British commander in chief in North America 1763-1775; Clinton was British commander in North America 1778-1782; Germain was Secretary of State for America during the War for Independence; and the Earl of Shelburne was first lord of the treasury and leader of the house of lords, later prime minister.

Those papers later would be valued at approximately $6 million, and today no doubt many multiples of that figure -- perhaps billions.

The Board of Regents, in tribute to Mr. Clements' contributions to the university, both as a regent and as a donor, decided to meet at his home in Bay City. It was an unprecedented off-campus meeting, marking the end of Mr. Clements' career as a regent.

It was the last meeting of 1933, held December 1, and was properly heralded with front page newspaper stories and a formal picture of the board.

While the regents met (receiving gifts and lowering tuition for the music school from $60 to $50 a year, in addition to lauding Mr. Clements) the ladies played bridge at the home of Mrs. Robert Eddy and tea was served informally.

The next day Kitte Mitchell, society page editor, gushed on about the dinner held for regents, university officers, wives and guests.

As the regents conferred in the ornate, mahogany paneled library in Clements' huge mansion, the Albert Kahn designed Garra Tighe at 2201 Center Avenue, all around them lay the priceless treasures that would reveal secrets none could imagine.

Clements, broken and heartsick over his inability to complete his donation to the library, died in 1934.

A wealthy Detroiter and fellow book collector, Tracy W. McGregor, put up $100,000 of the $300,000 purchase price Clements' estate trustees put on the papers. The university paid off the balance $15,000 a year.

"The last of the great 'classic' collectors of Americana was gone," wrote Margaret Maxwell in her 1973 book "Shaping a Library: William L. Clements as Collector."

In 1941, Carl Van Doren wrote the results of several years of research in the Clinton Papers in a book entitled "The Secret History of the American Revolution." Commented Ms. Maxwell: "The whole story of Benedict Arnold's treason and his wife's involvement was related correctly for the first time."

Mrs. Clements (the former Kate Fisher, daughter of railroad and lumber baron S.O. Fisher) would live on in Garra Tighe, a name of Scottish-Irish derivation. In 1949 she would attempt to sell the white elephant to an order of nuns, the Catholic Society of Mary of Reparatrix, of Ann Arbor, for a retreat house.

Neighbors led by attorney Edward Clark banded together to block the sale, although another neighborhood group strongly supported it. Also objecting were Charles A. Coryell, George W. Massnick, Edward W. Bowen, Benjamin R. Boutell, R.W. Phillips, C.R. Wells, Mrs. C.D. Wood, Harold J. Hand, Clark F. Andreae, Mrs. A.W. Beutel and Harry F. Chapin.

Signing a petition voicing no objection to the chapel were Mrs. Clements, Mrs. Emma Moulthrop, Paul and Margaret Thompson, Mrs. W. F. Jennison, Don and Nina Rayburn, Homer G. Nichols, J. Stanley See and Hoyt E. Hayes.

Rev. Fr. Carl R. Cahill, director of Catholic Charities here, said there was nothing in the zoning ordinance to prevent establishment of a church.

Clark told the Bay City Zoning Board it would be "partly hotel, partly mental sanitarium" and feared the chapel would open the property to public and perhaps commercial use. The zoning board turned down the request by the nuns.

Frustrated and unable to afford the expense of the huge house, Mrs. Clements ordered it torn down in 1952. The lots subdivided from the five acre tracts were all pre-sold by Realtor W.W. Henry. Only the carriage house in a court at the foot of Fifth Avenue remains as a reminder of the glory days of William L. Clements and Bay City. ###

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Dave Rogers

Dave Rogers is a former editorial writer for the Bay City Times and a widely read,
respected journalist/writer in and around Bay City.
(Contact Dave Via Email at carraroe@aol.com)

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