Boynton and Oakwood Heights

[lamptester]

The area consisting of the Boynton and Oakwood Heights subdivisions of Detroit were annexed by the city of Detroit sometime between 1920 and 1930. Prior to that time the area was part of Ecorse Township, a 54 square mile area. No one called the neighborhoods Boynton or Oakwood Heights. Oakwood Heights was just called Oakwood and the Boynton subdivision was called Southwest Detroit. Oakwood Heights is an isolated neighborhood. To the north lies the Rouge River, to west and east are large expanses of industrial property and to the south a railroad switch yard, The Detroit Salt Mine and The Detroit Marathon oil refinery forms the southern border north of Schafer Road. In the 40s & 50s Oakwood was primarily populated by people of Italian descent and Boynton by a variety of nationalities west of Fort street and African Americans east of Fort street. In the Boynton subdivision the grade school children attended Boynton Elementary School, now a junior high school. Some children attended the Catholic elementary schools of St Andrew & Benedict located on Beatrice Street in Detroit and St Henry in Lincoln Park. Later the children would attend South Western High School and a variety of Catholic high schools. Few would attend Cass Tech.

In 1875 the Boynton area was farm land largely occupied by people of German and French descent. Farms owned by the Scheonfield, Strowig, Abens, Riopel, Brisbois, Dunn, Campeau and Leblanc families, occupied much of the land in the Boynton subdivision.

The streets of the Boynton subdivision were laid out prior to 1930. In later years the Boynton subdivision was called dogleg by the residents.

In the southwest section of the Boynton subdivision Dumfries Street was the border between Detroit and Melvindale. There were no homes on Dumfries from Outer Drive to Visger. The home, that I lived in as a child, was built in 1941, and was located on Dartmouth the next street east of Dumfries on the former Aben farm near Outer Drive [[formally Pepper Road). From my back door a vista of open fields, ponds, farmland and woods were visible. In the winter the ponds would freeze over and neighborhood kids would ice skate and play hockey. The farm would yield cabbage and squash which was not harvested by the farmer in the fall. The property, which was located in Melvindale, was the former Schoenfield farm of 1875. The old Schoenfield farm house on the corner of Outer Drive and Dumfries was occupied by the descendents of the Schoenfields until the mid 60s. On the corner of Outer Drive and Dartmouth a descendent of the Aben family resided. Today the farm house and the Schoenfield farm are occupied by I-75.