Isabella Swan — ‘The Deep Roots’

By Joel Thurtell

How often would I get a chance to write about a female historian who made a case based on evidence that slaves lived and worked in her Michigan community?

Score one for women’s history.

Score another for black history.

I have reservations about assigning months for recognizing the accomplishments of women and minorities. There are so many good stories, why wait a year to publish them? So, even though the appropriate months have passed, I’m posting this article I wrote seven years ago for the Detroit Free Press .

Swan’s book prompted me to look more deeply into the use of slaves on Grosse Ile by the island’s first white owners, Alexander and William Macomb.

That Grosse Ile’s latter-day historians chose to deny Swan’s account of slavery in their community in the 18th and 19th centuries does not erase the fact that it happened.

Rather, it demonstrates the power of history, and the fear many have that a true rendition of their past will embarrass and detract from their community’s luster.

In other words, by omitting, by censoring, historians lie.

Isabella Swan was about telling her town’s story, warts and all.

Here is my story about Isabella Swan. published with permission of the Detroit Free Press:

Headline: HER ROOTS GROW DEEP

Sub-Head: CALLED A FORCE OF NATURE’ BY HER DESCENDANT, ISABELLA SWAN

GAVE GROSSE ILE ITS WRITTEN STORY AND HER FAMILY’S CONTINUING LEGACY

Byline:  JOEL THURTELL

Pub-Date: 3/11/2007

Memo:  DOWNRIVER

Correction:

Text: Isabella Swan loved books. She always wanted to write one. In

retirement, she got her chance.

Warming up, she wrote a little book about a woman who was born a slave

and won her freedom. She paid to have the book printed and then, even

though she was an atheist, she took on the unlikely task of writing

the history of the Grosse Ile church that was built thanks partly to

the largesse of that same ex-slave.

Finally, she wrote her big work – a long history of the first century

of her beloved Grosse Ile. She paid $10,000 to have it printed and

called it “The Deep Roots.”

Even though she was a Democrat on an overwhelmingly Republican island,

Grosse Ile’s government conferred the title of official historian on

her. In fact, those deep roots – referring to the early white settlers

on the island – about which she wrote belonged as much to her and her

family as to anyone else on this big island.

With National Women’s History Month being celebrated this month, I

thought it was a good time to tell the story of Isabella Swan, the

librarian, historian and writer, and her Grosse Ile roots.

To family and old friends, Isabella was known as “Icky.” The nickname

was accidentally bestowed on her by a niece who, as a child, found

pronouncing “Isabella” impossible.

That niece, Pat Lafayette, 76, gave me a tour of the island places

that were important to Isabella, who died in 1993 at the age of 93.

I was shown the huge dining room, one of 16 rooms in the family’s 1875

farmhouse at West River and Groh. In another family house, part of

which dates to the 1830s, I looked out the window at the choppy

Trenton Channel – the same view Isabella enjoyed as she wrote her

books.

But mostly, Pat and her son, Marc, told me about the colorful past of

this woman who was a tough cookie to those who knew her and those who

did not.

“My mother and Isabella were very much alike,” Marc said. He’s

Isabella’s  great-nephew. “Very, very stubborn. Isabella was a force

of nature. Until the day she died, she would correct my grammar. She

would tell me how to lead my life.”

Pat is a tough cookie herself.

“My mother fills the same role as Isabella,” Marc  told me. Pat is,

according to her son, the only woman he knows with a master’s degree

who can trap a muskrat, gut it and stretch its hide.

“Pretty much all the women in my mother’s family are almost forces of

nature,” he said. “My mother always said if you want Isabella to turn

left, you should tell her to turn right.”

Isabella’s grandfather was Louis (originally Ludwig) Groh, a German

who came to the United States to get away from Prussian conscription

and to be in a country where he could be an atheist. He married a

neighbor, Emeline Peck, who also was an atheist.

“Her mother gave her, as well as my mother, George Bernard Shaw’s ëA

Woman’s Guide to Socialism.’ They learned early about self-sufficiency

from any man and any deity,” Marc said.

Living large – for a while

Louis Groh was supervisor of Grosse Ile Township in the late 1800s and

he amassed 650 acres of land at the southern end of the island.

The family was upper crust. Isabella’s father was wealthy attorney

James Swan, founder of the Scarab Club. She went to Detroit public

schools, where she learned to speak French at Central High School. She

went to the University of Michigan, where she majored in physics and

mathematics and graduated in 1922.

Her family owned homes in Tucson, Ariz., and Biloxi, Miss. The family

traveled and lived the high life.

The family owned Snake Island alongside Grosse Ile and renamed it Swan

Island in hopes of selling home lots. They bought part of the original

Belle Isle bridge, and used it to connect Grosse Ile to Swan Island.

They developed the island and received a construction bill for

$650,000, the equivalent in 2006 of $7.4 million.

About that time, 1929, the stock market crashed. All but three of the

lot buyers defaulted. They could not pay the construction bill. The

family lost all but 3.5 acres.  The easy life came to an end.

Head of the household

Isabella’s older brother, Donald Swan, who played football at the

University of Michigan under legendary coach Fielding Yost, began

bottling water from the family’s artesian well. He called it the

Wonder Well.

Isabella got a job as a librarian for Wayne County. She had the only

paying job in the family. “She became head of the household,” said Pat

Lafayette. “She ran everything. She was the only one with a real job.”

They cooked wild mushrooms. Pat ran her trapline, earning money by

selling muskrat hides.

When Isabella retired, she was second-in-command at the Wayne County

Library. While she worked there, she did research and wrote articles

about the history of names on Grosse Ile and how to make elderflower

fritters, and she delved into Great Lakes maritime history.

In a speech on Grosse Ile at St. James Episcopal Church in 1965, she

explained her interest in history: “It was, I think, a native

childhood curiosity to begin with.” But a teacher was thrilled with a

report she gave on Buffalo Bill Cody. She got a cum laude grade in

history.

She retired in the early 1960s, traveled for six months, then began

work on “Lisette,” the first of her books about Grosse Ile history.

She spent each day in research at the Burton Historical Collection of

the Detroit Public Library. That’s where many records of early Grosse

Ile are kept.

In 1965, she published “Lisette,” a biography of Elizabeth Denison

Forth, the onetime slave who invested in steamboats and real estate

and left an endowment for founding St. James Episcopal, which is now

the church’s chapel.

“The Deep Roots” was a study of the first 100 years of Grosse Ile

history. Few copies remain from its printing in 1976 in time for the

bicentennial – not only of the United States, but of Grosse Ile, if

you count from July 6, 1776, when the brothers William and Alexander

Macomb bought the island from American Indians.

No reprint?

Marc Lafayette doubts the book will be reprinted.

“There are factual errors – Isabella always talked about how there was

never any evidence of native habitation on Grosse Ile, but  we know

that is not true. Early maps from France mention native habitation on

Grosse Ile and there were actual longhouses on the north end of the

island.” Longhouses were communal Indian dwellings.

“That would drive Isabella crazy,” said Marc. “She wanted it to be the

definitive history of Grosse Ile, and the idea of making a mistake in

her book drove her crazy.”

Personally, I think they’re making too much of the errors.

Yes, mistakes drive writers nuts. But Swan didn’t make many, and they

could be corrected in a second edition.

I’ve had a copy of “The Deep Roots” for about 20 years, and I use it

as a basic reference for Grosse Ile history. When I was first told

there’d been slaves on Grosse Ile, I turned to the book’s index and

found the references. Isabella did not shy away from that sensitive

topic.

I can’t think of any other town in suburban Detroit that has been the

subject of serious research by a serious historian. Grosse Ile has had

two strokes of good fortune. First, it had Elizabeth Denison Forth.

Then it had Isabella Swan.

Caption: Grosse Ile historian Isabella Swan, in a photo on display at

St. James Episcopal Church. Swan died in 1993 at age 93.

MADALYN RUGGIERO / Special to the Free Press

Historian Isabella Swan’s niece, Pat Lafayette, 76, of Grosse Ile once

lived in this house at 10529 Groh in Grosse Ile.  The house was built

in 1875 by Swan’s great-grandfather.

 

Photos by MADALYN RUGGIERO / Special to the Free Press

Asher Peck, the father of Emeline Peck, Isabella Swan’s grandmother,

lived for many years in this house at 25909 West River Road.

 

Full front view of the house at 10529 Groh, Grosse Ile that was built

in 1875 by Asher Peck, Isabella Swan’s great-grandfather.

 

Illustration:  PHOTO

 

Edition: METRO FINAL

 

Section:  CFP; COMMUNITY FREE PRESS

 

Page: 7CV

 

Keywords: history

 

Disclaimer:  THIS ELECTRONIC VERSION MAY DIFFER SLIGHTLY FROM THE

PRINTED ARTICLE

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