Ypsi Stories

Highland Cemetery is perhaps the finest example of the garden cemetery in Michigan, which intended to make cemeteries beautiful. Highland Cemetery is a place of peace and nature, the perfect place to take a troubled soul for a walk. In this episode, we are going to be learning about the history of Highland Cemetery, and of previous cemeteries in Ypsilanti, from local historian James Mann.

In this episode we'll join historian Matt Siegfried as we learn how the UAW-CIO came to Washtenaw County at the end of the Great Depression, and through a victory at Ford led the workers at Willow Run during World War Two, transforming the social landscape of Ypsilanti and bettering the lives of tens of thousands of people.

In this episode we'll join historian Matt Siegfried as we learn how the UAW-CIO came to Washtenaw County at the end of the Great Depression, and through a victory at Ford led the workers at Willow Run during World War Two, transforming the social landscape of Ypsilanti and bettering the lives of tens of thousands of people.

Hey there Ypsi Stories listeners! This month’s episode is going to be coming a little later than usual, and it’s going to be a two parter! This month, in honor of Labor Day, we’ll be learning about how the labor landscape changed in Ypsilanti and Willow Run in the 1930s and 1940s with the arrival of the United Auto Workers union from Matt Siegfried. Matt has so much knowledge to share that we just couldn’t fit it in one episode, so keep your ear out for a new, two part episode, later this month! Then at the beginning of October, in honor of Halloween, we’ll learn about the history of the Highland Cemetery from James Mann. That’ll close out the first year of the Ypsi Stories podcast! But don’t worry, we aren’t going anywhere! We have many more local stories to share, and we’ll keep putting out new episodes each month!

As always, you can find links to all our episode pages with additional materials including pictures, videos, biographies, and bibliographies at ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories, and of course, the best way to be notified when the newest episode comes out is to subscribe to Ypsi Stories (that’s two words) on your favorite podcast app!

Hope you have a great end of the summer, and we’ll be back very soon! Bye, but just for now!

When settlers set out for the northern Midwest, it was more than loading the kids and a picnic basket in the family van. Having established in Episodes 1 and 6 how land to settle was purchased and how news was transmitted between the American frontier and the East Coast, there was the trouble of transport to be solved. In Episode 1 we saw that some settlers actually walked to Ypsilanti from New York state in the 1820s and 1830s. In this episode we will learn about two avenues for the less hardy.

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your podcasts!

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ypsilibrary.org

The city of Ypsilanti has the most often misspelled and mispronounced name of any community in the state of Michigan. To add to the fun, the city is named after a man, who not only had nothing to do with its founding, but was never even in North America. Local historian James Mann shares the story of how this came about.

For more information about this and other episodes of Ypsi Stories, including photos and bibliographies, check out ypsilibrary.org/ypsistories

If you don’t want to miss any future episodes, you can always subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you find your podcasts!

To keep up to date on this podcast, as well as all the great things the Ypsilanti District Library is doing, you can follow the library on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, and of course, you can always check out our webpage at ypsilibrary.org

Nearly seventy Ypsilanti men served in the Civil War's Black regiments, including many who had previously escaped from slavery. A dozen never returned. Whether with Michigan’s 102nd United States Colored Troops or the “Glory” regiments of the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Infantries, Ypsilanti men were largely stationed on the Sea Islands off the coast of South Carolina. There they were at some of the War’s most iconic moments like the assault on Fort Wagner, the liberation of Charleston, and Sherman’s March to the Sea.

In this episode, we will learn from historian Matt Siegfried about who the Ypsilanti volunteers were, their life in camp, the racism they faced in the military, the battles they fought, the plantations they liberated, and the lives lived in Ypsilanti after the war as we take a look at Ypsilanti's Black Civil War experience.

Ypsilanti's Water Street Sculpture Garden, also known as the Water Street Commons, was a rhizomal happening and community run outdoor space in the city of Ypsilanti which was most active between June 2013 and April 2016. Professor Beth Currans, as a researcher, as a participant, and as an observer, was in the perfect position to study and document this phenomenon in recent Ypsilanti history.

Ypsilanti District Library Clerk Jerome Drummond takes us back again to Ypsilanti in its earliest years. Settlers traveling west had left their homes on the east coast behind but not their interest; how would information be gotten? The federal government considered it crucial to its plans of westward expansion that unity of the population be maintained by shared information; the tool for achieving this was the United States Post Office. If, however, information was to rise above the level of hearsay, letters alone would not be sufficient, so the government allowed special low postal rates for newspapers at the same moment that newspapers were undergoing a transformation that would bring their price down to the person on the street. We will examine some aspects of this institution and note the similarities and differences between our time and then through the careers of two Ypsilantians:  Charles Woodruff and Charles Pattison.

In today's episode, we'll be in conversation with members of Ypsilanti's Palm Leaf Club. The Palm Leaf Club was formed on October 30th, 1904 as the Trustee Helpers of Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church and changed its name to the Palm Leaf Club in the 1930s when it officially separated from the church and became its own civic and social African American women's organization, the only organization of its kind in Ypsilanti. It is a member organization of the Ypsilanti Association of Women’s Clubs, Michigan State Association of Colored Women’s Clubs and the National Association of Colored Women's Clubs. Legend has it that the name comes from the Palm Sunday Scholarship Teas. Dr. Dyann Logwood, who was on our previous episode in February 2021, was an awardee of the Palm Leaf Club Scholarship.