I've read, reread and now share portions of a letter written 191 years ago this month by a first-time visitor to Detroit, who found a "little community in its environs, an isolated moral mass. . . . The city of Detroit contains at least 1,200 people."

William Darby of Philadelphia also describes lush summer crops, trade with native people before they were displaced, and pioneers' reluctance to settle here.

Darby's letter, dated Aug. 14, 1818 [[his 43rd birthday), was sent to his publisher back east for a journal of a 20-week trip from New York City to Detroit and back. The New York Historical Society member was a surveyor, mapmaker and naturalist. My copy of his 1819 book, A Tour from the City of New York to Detroit [Kirk & Mercein], is a 1962 reprint from the Americana Classics series published by Quadrangle Books [[original price: $7).

The Pennsylvania-born son of Irish immigrants landed in Detroit on Aug. 11 after "a tedious passage of eleven days" on Lake Erie aboard the schooner Zephyr. He had endured an overnight gale that blew "with great violence from the N.W. soon after we left Buffalo creek."

His local observations, 13 years after Congress established the Michigan Territory, cross nearly two centuries with views of familiar sites in the frontier era. [[Original spellings are preserved.)

Coming up the Detroit River from lake Erie, he wrote, "both shores exhibit lines of farm houses, interspersed with orchards and gardens."
The settlements on the United States side continue up the rivieres Ecorees and Rouge, which, together with those along the shore of that strait, present a country in high state of culture. . . . The bank of the strait has been vaunted, I believe correctly, for its fine orchards; fruit trees, apples, pears, peaches and plumbs have a very healthy appearance.


Darby also he saw encampments on Bois Blanc [Boblo island], an abandoned military outpost "which now serves as a camping ground for the savages who visit Amherstburg."

A similar tone of the times appears when he visits Gov. Lewis Cass "on the banks of the strait below the garrison."
The governor leaves this city on the 16th to meet the governor of Ohio in order to hold a treaty with the Putawattomies, Wyandots, Senecas, Weas, and other nations of Indians . . . to remove the savages to a greater distance westward.


At the same time, the first-generation American acknowledges that Detroit and Michigan weren't exactly a magnet for newcomers.
Ancient settlements were formed along the water courses and continue to be in most part the only establishments yet made in the territory. . . .

"Though the soil is good in general, some of it excellent, and all parts well-situated for agriculture and commerce, some causes have hitherto operated to prevent any serious emigration to the Michigan Territory. For upwards of a month that I have been travelling between this city and Geneva, in the state of New York, I have seen hundreds removing to the west – and not one in fifty with an intention to settle in the Michigan Territory.

"By the census of 1810, the inhabitants then were 4,762 . . . Since 1810, no increment has been added of consequence to the mass, except that of natural increase.


As he describes riverside docks and warehouses with "ponderous packages of articles destined for Indian trade . . . bales of stroud [woolen cloth] and blankets," Darby sounds surprised that the city wasn't more of a commercial hub.
With all the attributes of a seaport, [Detroit] forms the uniting link between a vast interior, inhabited yet in great part by savages, and the civilized Atlantic border.


Anticipating big changes, he envisions how the Grand Canal of New York [Erie Canal, started a year earlier] will connect to the Great Lakes and let "Buffalo, Detroit, Michilimakinac and Green bay form an immense chain of inter-communication . . . [letting] the commercial rivalry of New York and New Orleans come in contact in the heart of our country."

The imaginative mapmaker even takes a stab at meteorology, though he stops short of explaining lake-effect snow.
The seasons are much more mild at Detroit than at Buffalo. The difference is greater than could be expected, from the small difference in latitude, less than one degree. I believe the phenomenon is produced by the prevalence of westerly winds, which crowd the ice continually into the N.E. angle of lake Erie.


Amid his harsh reminders that Michigan Territory settlers generally didn't show good will to those who blazed the trails they expanded, William Darby sketches an absorbing illustration of our area less than two decades before statehood.

[Full chapter excerpted is posted by Central Michigan University's Clarke Historical Library.]