Birmingham Uncovered
Join us as we uncover the diverse and compelling lives that built Birmingham, Michigan. How does a sleepy village evolve into an urban mecca known for its thriving cultural scene, great schools and bustling downtown? We’ll take a deep dive into the stories of the people behind one of Michigan’s most prosperous and vibrant communities.
Episodes
Did you know that Birmingham was among the first cities in Michigan to have a female mayor? In her 1960 acceptance speech, Florence “Twink” Willitt stated “I hope to do a good job. I want the women in the community to be proud of the manner in which I perform- and the men too.” And while she sought to do that good job for the city, the media often paid far more attention to her appearance, clothing and family life. F...
Last month we covered one half of the Birmingham Peabody story with Lyman Peabody and his dry goods store. This month we are diving into James and his descendants, notably Jim Peabody… he of the Peabody’s restaurant fame. If you are a long time Birmingham resident or you know one, you’ve probably heard all about the restaurant. Let's dive into the farm that became a grocery store that became a restaurant.
What's in a name? Quite a lot if you are a Peabody in Birmingham. There's been many businesses and one still standing fancy house associated with the name. In this episode, we start at the beginning of the Peabody story in Birmingham and the dry goods store that one of the Peabody brothers established in the 1870s. Just why was Lyman importing Japanese tea a big deal and did he have anything to do with Peabo...
The near constant gloom of a Birmingham winter can be a lot for anyone. On her first winter in Birmingham in 1918, Ruth recalled “I just felt I couldn’t live-maybe I’d just die, because the winter was so hard”. But she lived, and threw herself into civic projects to keep the blues at bay. The projects she undertook changed Birmingham forever and we are still reaping the rewards.
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Edward Crawford was 15 years old when he was shot and killed the evening of September 6, 1916 while walking home from a store in Birmingham after it closed with the store owner, a clerk and two of his friends. The shocking murder caused a stir in the village of Birmingham, which didn’t have a lot of violent crime. And it rippled out and caused a stir throughout both Oakland County and the whole metro D...
Mental health care in the 1800s wasn't always a hellscape of overcrowded asylums filled with patients chained to floors and beds. In the 1840s and 1850s, a new treatment paradigm called "the moral treatment movement" offered patients dignity, respect, individualized treatment plans and creative outlets. One Birmingham man, Washington Willits, was described as coming home from the premier moral treatment...
Friendship can be a very powerful thing. It can empower an individual and redirect their life and sometimes it can reshape the fabric of an entire community. Today’s podcast has two subjects because it is impossible to cover one of these individuals without talking about the other. Almeron Whitehead and George Mitchell met at work in their late teens and they were inseparable for over 60 years until they died… and eve...
What image comes to mind when I say the word “Birmingham”? I’m going to take a wild guess and say that it’s probably not Shetland Ponies. But, for a period of a few decades in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Birmingham was the premier place in the country to get a purebred Shetland Pony. And the subject of this podcast episode, Fenton Watkins, spent a great deal of his life working with those ponies, bringing joy to p...
Minnie Hunt Saltzer considered herself the foremost expert on the lives of Birmingham’s pioneers made it one of her life’s goals to educate everyone on it. Unfortunately, her stories contained more prejudice, unchecked gossip and pettiness than facts. We take a look at her life, her writings and just what they can tell us about Minnie Hunt Saltzer and Birmingham.
To access a full episode transcript as well as...
It is just not fair that the life and work of Harris Machus gets overshadowed by the disappearance of a certain Teamster from the parking lot of his restaurant. This is us putting some respect back on Machus’ name by exploring his exciting life and business savvy that changed dining in Birmingham forever. This is the fourth episode in a limited series with the Birmingham Shopping District where we explore the evolutio...
When Nathan Rosenfield brought Jacobson’s Department store to Birmingham in 1950 there was only one huge problem-shoppers didn’t have anywhere to park! Rosenfield would radically alter not just the shopping landscape forever but the urban planning one as well. This is the third episode in a limited series with the Birmingham Shopping district where we look at the evolution of Birmingham’s retail environment.
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For some Birminghamsters, the story of department stores in Birmingham begins and ends with Jacobson's, but the story doesn't start there. In 1896, two Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe changed the retail environment in Birmingham forever by opening up the first department store. Gitel and Morris Levinson weren't just retail pioneers though, they were also the first Jewish family in Birmingham and c...
When Edwin O’Neal opened his harness shop in 1885 he probably never dreamed of exactly what the landscape of Birmingham would look like at his retirement. His business straddles the period where horsepower was shifting from literal horses to how we measure a car’s engine’s power. This is a the first episode in a limited series with the Birmingham Shopping District where we look at the evolution of Birmingham’s reta...
What Birmingham would be like today without Martha Baldwin is hard to picture. She has an outsized legacy that would be far too much to cover in one episode, so over however long this podcast runs we are going to be breaking up her life and legacy into thematic chunks. And since I write the scripts, the first chunk that I’m choosing is how Martha, in an age before women could yield political power, used instead the po...
Robert Opdyke took a train from Birmingham to Detroit and was never seen again…until his son received an alarming telegram several years later. Robert’s story is one of business and failure in mid-late 1800s Birmingham.
To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about the mill and the Opdyke family, check out our website.
For questions, concerns, corrections or epis...
John Allen Bigelow was a man of many talents but taking life too seriously wasn’t one of them. Come along with us as we sneak into the Union Army to fight in the Civil War twice, form a love connection with a good friend’s sister, steal a train, brand ourselves as a one-armed insurance salesman and give future historians headaches with our inability to walk in a straight line with one of Birmingham’s most colorful ch...
The world has always been ending, which means there's always a candidate or two around waiting to be cast in the role of the Antichrist. In the late 1700s, a friend or family member of Rhoda Bingham Daniels wrote an 8 page manifesto about how Napoleon Bonaparte was the figure the book of Revelations in the Bible warned about.
Why Napoleon? And what exactly did the end of the world look like for an Ameri...
Rhoda Bingham Daniels was a direct descendant of a famous puritan minister back East, which meant letters from the family contained more hellfire and information on how babies are evil than you might expect. This story has everything: TULIPs, sex cults, lying toddlers and an intimate look at religion and family life in early 1800s Birmingham.
To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additiona...
It took George Taylor 4 weeks along the Underground Railroad before he achieved freedom. In the following decades he got married, adopted a child and helped to found a still active church community in Kansas before settling in Birmingham, where he became the village’s first Black property owner. Come along with us as we trace George’s epic journey and talk about our continuing research into Birmingham’s Underground Ra...
Ziba Swan was an early Birmingham settler who is perhaps best known today for donating the first ½ acre of land to make Greenwood Cemetery, but he was a lot more than just a land-donator. Ever wondered just what a battlefield doctor during the War of 1812 would have done? Come along and find out.
To access a full episode transcript as well as to access additional material about Swan, check out our website.
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