This stamp is on the west side of Jones Street between Prospect and Eureka. There are quite a few older stamps in the area south of Sparrow. I know this looks like just another case of “can’t pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp,” but this one is different. See?
The month can be read, for a change (for some reason it’s often marred or too worn to read), but that’s not what’s odd here. What is up with the year? It appears to read “910.” All other dated Minnis & Ewer stamps I have found just render the date like “7 – 10” – never, that I’ve seen, including the first two digits of the year. That seems to rule out that it was “1910” and the “1” wore away. Besides, the rest of the numbers are clear enough, and there isn’t the slightest impression where a “1” would be. I just don’t know what’s going on here. Anyway, it’s almost certainly meant to indicate 1910, a very common date for Minnis & Ewer stamps in this neighborhood.
Here’s a closer look, showing that there doesn’t appear to be a missing “1.”
Good news! The wait is over and I am finally featuring the Minnis & Ewer stamp on the east side of Bingham Street between Eureka and Prospect that I teased back in January. You know, the one adjacent to the surprising-to-me 1927 DPW stamp. There’s nothing unusual about it, aside from being over 110 years old, but I will never pass up a Minnis & Ewer stamp.
The month is illegible, though with the snow brushed out it looks like a 6 or 8.
Looking south on Bingham. The stamp is near the center of the photo, with the previously featured DPW stamp just this side of it
I took the establishing photo from further away than usual because I had to record something odd and a little funny. There is about a foot of completely uncleared sidewalk around the border between two houses, with cleared stretches on either side. I can understand there being a dispute about where the boundary is, but whoever cleared theirs second was being petty even by my standards. I want to know what history has led to this point.
I walked a bit around the neighborhood west of Hunter Park, and fortunately got a stamp photographed before the heavy snow started in the second half of my walk. I haven’t surveyed this neighborhood for sidewalk stamps very much yet, so I was delighted to find a Minnis & Ewer stamp I haven’t recorded yet, on the north side of Hickory Street between Pennsylvania and Jones.
The western stamp.
Most Minnis & Ewer stamps are very clear and crisp. This is the most faded one I’ve encountered. It’s not entirely legible, and I could recognize it mainly by shape. I could not read the month, but at least I could make out the 11 for the year.
Looking east on Hickory. This is quite close to the Pennsylvania intersection.
There is a second one, even more worn, in front of the next house to the east, which might be the other half of a pair. Supporting this is that it faces in the opposite direction. I haven’t observed any obviously paired Minnis & Ewer stamps before, but it might just reflect how many of them have been lost over the years.
Earlier today I told my husband that I was starting to doubt I would ever find a new “oldest” stamp. At least, I said, not as long as I keep walking in the same neighborhoods on the east side. I was beginning to think all the really interesting stamps had been mined out. That was 3 pm, this was 6:30 pm.
That’s 8-07, or August 1907.
This is on the west side of Custer Avenue between Michigan and Jerome, and may be the oldest dated stamp I’ve found. The fact that the earliest stamps usually include a month makes it possible for me to say that this is older than a previous record-holder, the October 1907 J.P. Sleight stamp on Jerome Street. I can’t know whether it is older or younger than the 1907 V.D. Minnis stamp on Regent Street because the date on that one is lost to time.
Still, while I’d have loved to see an undisputed new champion, this was my most exciting find in weeks, and it’s been right under my nose, on a street I frequently walk on. Apparently I have been in the habit of walking on the other side. I actually thought it was a V.D. Minnis stamp when I was coming toward it, since the style is quite similar.
Looking south on Custer Avenue. The stamp is on the nearest slab (only half visible, my fingers were cold and I didn’t have the patience to retake it).
At first I wasn’t able to find much about W.H. McKrill besides that he provided a testimonial for the Aladdin Company, a Bay City manufacturer of kit homes, in an advertisement in the March 1921 issue of Illustrated World magazine. Then I made a guess that W.H. might be a William, and that got me a very useful hit. The February 24, 1955, Lansing State Journal included a human interest piece: “Oldsters Vie for Honor: ‘Bill’ McKrill Beats Lewis J. Bugbee: Has Lived in Lansing 344 Days Longer.” Evidently, William McKrill turned up in the LSJ offices to complain because they had profiled Lewis J. Bugbee with the claim that he was “believed to be Lansing’s oldest son” when McKrill was older.
According to the article, William McKrill worked in the Bement factory until it closed about 1907, and then “later… entered the construction business and helped to build the first pavement on Michigan Avenue. For this he was paid $1.35 for a 10-hour day.” This initially made me think that he must be the very same W.H. McKrill, but then I became less certain. Would he really have gone straight from working at Bement to running his own paving business (and getting such an important job as paving Michigan Avenue) the same year? I wondered if William was instead a relative of W.H. and worked in the latter’s business. William’s father’s name did not begin with W, but it could have been some other relative. But I have found some evidence that W.H.’s wife was named Ida, which would indeed make W.H. the same person as the “Bill” in the above article. I know because of their grave in Mount Hope Cemetery. (William died the same year the article was published.)
One last tidbit about William, and I do know this is the same William based on the reference to his address (which I saw listed as the address of Ida in her obituary). According to the January 17, 1931, Lansing State Journal, he was arrested after having been found intoxicated while serving as a school traffic guard at the intersection of Bingham and Michigan. He must have been in a visibly bad state because the police were called by a nearby service station attendant who advised them that the crossing guard was in “no condition to take care of school traffic.” No doubt that crossing guard post served students going to Bingham Street School (the original one, not the 1950s replacement that used to be my polling place before being demolished in 2013).
This one, on the south side of Kalamazoo Street between Pennsylvania and Bingham, has been on my list for ages. Back in October, I wrote about another Minnis & Ewer stamp nearby (with the same date, if I’m reading it right) and mentioned that on my way to it I passed this one and would feature it another time. There is also a third, undated one in the vicinity, which I featured in August. Assuming that one was also done around the same time as the other two – August 1910 – I photographed it during its 110th anniversary month.
I think this says “8-10,” anyway. It looks like the clearer 8-10 stamp around the corner on Pennsylvania. I never stop admiring the crispness of these very old Minnis & Ewer stamps.
I turned down a block I don’t usually visit on my walks because there were some Christmas lights I wanted to see. I was rewarded twice, with the lights and with this very well preserved Department of Public Works stamp. This is the east side of Allen Street, just south of Elizabeth (the last block before I-496).
This is from that period after they stopped stamping the exact date but before they dropped the month too.
Looking north on Allen Street, with Elizabeth in sight.
I’m sorry the flash washed this out a bit because it really is a beautifully-preserved stamp, especially the date, from when they still stamped a month. It is on the west side of North Clemens Avenue between Fernwood and Vine.
The block itself is a bit cracked due to having been heaved up, but not too bad.
This B.F. Churchill stamp is on the west side of the 200 block of Shepard Street, between Kalamazoo and Stanley Court. I have become convinced that both the Churchill stamps I have found are dated 1908 even though, as noted in my entry on the one on Regent Street, this doesn’t seem to make sense of the personal history of Churchill as I understand it. Both have a month as well as a year, something that seems more typical of the earliest stamps I have found. The “AP” of “APRIL” is very faint; I couldn’t see it in person, but with the contrast turned up a bit in this photo I can just make it out.
I’m hoping I may still find more B.F. Churchill stamps to give a greater sample of years.
Looking north on Shepard with the stamp visible in the closest block.
This is a first for the blog, but one that I have been planning on dropping in eventually. This neat and clear Minnis & Ewer stamp looks like it could have been left there last week, but it could very well be over 100 years old, based on the age of the only dated Minnis & Ewer stamp I have found (1911). That in itself makes it interesting, but the real reason I am posting it is because it represents something I find curious and don’t yet understand, the existence of bits of pavement leading from the sidewalk to the curb. This one is on the 200 block of Regent Street, between Michigan and Kalamazoo, on the east side of the street.
I grew up calling the strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb “the extension” as that was what my parents called it. I still use it, but have come to realize no one else around me does. Google has let me know that this is because it is not just specific to Michigan but pretty well localized to Ann Arbor, where I grew up. It appears in the city code of a few towns in Michigan but only Ann Arborites actually seem to use it in conversation.
I don’t know what to call these bits of sidewalk that appear on extensions erratically around my neighborhood. I have used the keyword “curb walk” just so I can find this entry again later, but that’s something I just made up as a placeholder until I come up with something better.
I originally thought, when I saw a bit of pavement like this, that the owner must have had it installed so they had somewhere to set out their trash bin for collection without messing up the grass. On consideration this does not seem to entirely explain it, both because of how old this one likely is (though perhaps contemporary to the old house it’s in front of) and because on some streets they appear at regular intervals as though they were considered a functional part of the sidewalk when it was constructed. This is not one of those places and I believe this is the only one on the block. I rather wish I had one, especially if it had a cool old stamp like this. I would set a planter on it (but not on the stamp).
Update 10/11/20: Joseph has pointed out that there is a date on this one. I revisited it with better light and was able to see that it is dated “6-11” – June 1911.
I walked a different route from usual which took me to the east side of South Clemens Avenue between Kalamazoo and Prospect, instead of the west side where I more often walk. And look what I found there.
So the oddly placed 1921 DPW stamp on Regent Street isn’t unique or a misfire after all. There are stamps from both before and after this one that are more conventionally placed. There is even another one from 1924. So my new hypothesis is that there was one particular foreman in the 1920s who liked it this way.
Too bad about the crack; it’s otherwise very clear. It also gives me my new latest date for DPW stamps marking the month as well as the year.
