Bay City, Michigan 48706
Front Page 03/29/2024 07:50 About us
www.mybaycity.com June 25, 2005
(Prior Story)   History ArTicle 814   (Next Story)

Photo of Famed Bay City Abolitionist James Birney Sells for $450 on E-Bay

150th Anniversary of Birney's Death to be Marked in 2007

June 25, 2005       Leave a Comment
By: Dave Rogers

Printer Friendly Story View

Rare original 1844 Presidential campaign photo of James G. Birney went for $480 in a recent E-Bay auction.
 

Somebody, somewhere, obviously thinks James G. Birney was really something. Whoever they were paid $450 on an E-Bay live auction recently for an original Birney 1844 campaign photo.

%ad%
%im%
%cp%


The recognition, at least by someone in the historical artifact collecting community, recalls the fact that Birney was a Presidential candidate of the abolitionist Liberty Party in 1840 and 1844.

Almost unrecognized by historians and many local residents is the fact that Birney lived 11 years in Bay City, 1842-53, where he was important in building the community.

Birney was not the first person of note to recognize the value of this area; the governor of Michigan, Stevens T. Mason, and the later famous Indian agent Henry Rowe Schoolcraft had been partners with land speculator James Fraser and seven others in the early attempt to develop this community.

The group gathered in Detroit assembled $30,000 and convinced John Riley to sell the 640 acre Riley reserve that had been granted to his father by the U.S. government in the Treaty of 1818.

Besides Fraser, Mason and Schoolcraft, the investors included Frederick H. Stevens, Electus Backus, Horace Hallock, John Hulbert, Andrew T. McReynolds, Henry Sanger and Phineas T. Davis, and their wives.



--- Advertisements ---
     



Shortly after the purchase, the company built a dock and warehouse and framed a large hotel around Fourth and Water streets, all of which were abandoned after a financial crash in 1838.

Birney, Fraser and Dr. D.H. Fitzhugh, a physician and member of the New York Legislature, took over the defunct Sagina Bay Company in 1843.

Birney came to Bay City and helped revive the "paper village" of Lower Sagina that had been established by the Sagina Bay Company in 1837. About the same time Probate Judge Albert Miller established the village of Portsmouth a few miles upstream.

The Sagina Bay Company had surveyed and platted 240 acres along the river bounded by Woodside and points parallelwith Tenth and VanBuren streets. The original investors had named the village Lower Sagina.

Birney came to Bay City from Cincinnati, Ohio, after a getting only about 7,000 votes nationally in the 1840 Presidential election. Abolitionists were not popular in a nation in the thrall of chattel slavery. "In 1842, James Birney came in pursuit of solitude and found it," opined an early Bay County history.

Notable about Birney's stay here was that despite being in the middle of the wilderness with almost no communication, he was able to mount a Presidential campaign in 1844. He became the first Michigan resident to run for President.

His second candidacy was in contrast to the first in two major respects: First, he campaigned in1844 while in 1840 he was in England prior to the election; secondly, he got ten times more votes, about 70,000 in the second run.

History researchers of this period are aware that because of Birney's residency, Bay City was the national headquarters of the abolition movement in the Midwest. Birney also connected Bay City with the Underground Railroad, although documentation is sparse. And Birney's influence helped lay the foundation for Michigan's key role in the Civil War.

The city at that time was populated by only a half dozen families, among them the fur trader Joseph Trombley, himself a local legend. It was said that Trombley could out-run, out-jump and out-throw any Indian or white man around. James McCormick reported that Trombley would run to Flint and return, a distance of 90 miles, beating a man on horseback.

Birney's philosophical grounding of the anti-slavery movement that led to Abraham Lincoln's election is a monumental contribution to freedom. It was Birney's insistence that the nation adhere to the principle stated in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights that among them are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Birney was partially paralyzed in a fall from a horse on his farm, the present Veterans Park on the west side of the river, in 1845. That accident ended his politicalcareer although he remained active in writing on anti-slavery causes. Here he drew the first map of the village, established the first church, first school and circulated the first book -- Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, for which he had contributed information. In 1853 he moved to New Jersey where he died in 1857.

As we approach the Fourth of July celebration, a recollection of Birney's part in the history of the nation and the community is more than appropriate -- it is right andessential to understanding why we celebrate.###



Printer Friendly Story View
Prior Article

February 10, 2020
by: Rachel Reh
Family Winter Fun Fest is BACC Hot Spot for 2/10/2020
Next Article

February 2, 2020
by: Kathy Rupert-Mathews
MOVIE REVIEW: "Just Mercy" ... You Will Shed Tears, or at Least You Should
Agree? or Disagree?


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)

More from Dave Rogers

Send This Story to a Friend!       Letter to the editor       Link to this Story
Printer-Friendly Story View


--- Advertisments ---
     


0200 Nd: 03-25-2024 d 4 cpr 0






12/31/2020 P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm

SPONSORED LINKS



12/31/2020 drop ads P3v3-0200-Ad.cfm


Designed at OJ Advertising, Inc. (V3) (v3) Software by Mid-Michigan Computer Consultants
Bay City, Michigan USA
All Photographs and Content Copyright © 1998 - 2024 by OJA/MMCC. They may be used by permission only.
P3V3-0200 (1) 0   ID:Default   UserID:Default   Type:reader   R:x   PubID:mbC   NewspaperID:noPaperID
  pid:1560   pd:11-18-2012   nd:2024-03-25   ax:2024-03-29   Site:5   ArticleID:814   MaxA: 999999   MaxAA: 999999
claudebot