Events & Programs

Grand Rapids Historical Society

2008 Season

Grand Rapids Historical Society lectures/programs are held the second Thursday of the month. All programs are co-sponsored by the Gerald R. Ford Museum and are held at the museum, 303 Pearl St NW, at 7:00 p.m. Each program is followed by a reception with light refreshments. Historical Society programs are free and open to the public, with the exception of the May Meeting/Banquet which is open to members and their guest. Free parking at the museum.

September 13, 2007

Promoting the `West Coast':

The Early History of the

West Michigan Tourist Association

Author Christine Byron will present the early years of the West Michigan Tourist Association, celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. Beginning in 1917, under the direction of promotion genius Hugh Gray, tourism soon became the state's second largest industry. Collecting Michigan travel brochures, advertisements, and other ephemera for 15 years, she will use these to illustrate the association's history. Byron, along with her husband, Tom Wilson, is author of Vintage Views of Leelanau County (2002), Vintage Views of the Charlevoix-Petoskey Region (2005), Vintage Views of the Mackinac Straits Region, released in August, 2007.

October 11, 2007

On the Golden Years of the Grand Rapids Times

Patricia Pulliam, Publisher/Editor-in-Chief

The Grand Rapids Times presents "the other side" of the news. For 50 years the Grand Rapids Times has targeted the African American community, read by "everyone" reaching people from a variety of racial, ethnic, cultural and economic backgrounds, both locally and across the state. Started by John Bankston in 1957, he showcased achievers, sportsmen (especially golfers) and fun lovers. He chastised adults and youth when they chose not to do the "right" thing, all the while, carrying the voices that spoke against poverty, crime, injustice and racism. Yergan and Patricia Pulliam bought the paper in 1986 and continue the tradition.

November 8, 2007

The Best Photos of the Civil War in 3-D: A Stereoscopic Slide Presentation

Bob Zeller, Center for Civil War Photography & author of

The Blue and Gray in Black and White.

Stereo views were the videos of Civil War era. Wearing 3-D glasses, you'll feel as if you are stepping into the tableaus of many of the most famous photographs of the Civil War as the images are projected on a large screen. Many images are projected in sepia tones of original albumen stereograph prints that are more than 140 years old. . Many of the 79 images in the show are well-recognized photos from the war, but some are rare and recent discoveries that were published for the first time in Zeller's books.

Co-sponsored with the Civil War Round Table.

February 14, 2008

Preying on Polluters: `Smoke Hawk' Towner Swoops In - 1907-1915

Diana E. Barrett, Grand Rapids Historical Commission

In the early 1900s the nation's cities suffered from severe air pollution generated by coal-burning industries and railroads. Citizens protested, councils passed smoke abatement ordinances and employed smoke inspectors, but powerful opponents fought improvements with propaganda and economic arguments while some even advocated the benefits of smoke. Due to the influence of Louis C. Towner, Grand Rapids smoke inspector, the International Association for the Prevention of Smoke met here in 1914, and Towner was elected national president. How successful was he as the local smoke inspector, and could he achieve results acceptable to both citizens and business?

March 13, 2008

The Boat-Rocking Lawyer Elizabeth Eaglesfield:

1870s Grand Rapids Attorney and Great Lakes Shipping Captain

Jo Ellyn Clarey, Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council &

Grand Rapids Historical Society

A nineteenth-century case of daring and ambition, Elizabeth Eaglesfield helps to make Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's point that "well-behaved women seldom make history." But even the lives of misbehaving women often need to be pieced together from the public record, and oh, can Eaglesfield be found in the newspapers! A practicing attorney from 1878 and later a Great Lakes fruit boat captain, she was born in the era of Manifest Destiny and came of age during the socially reckless Gilded Age. Most women law graduates of her period did not actually practice and few women were on the lakes, but Elizabeth Eaglesfield engaged her tainted world for decades, a rousing model of determination, persistence, and daring. As March is Women's History Month, we have again collaborated with the Greater Grand Rapids Women's History Council for this program.

Gerald R. Ford Museum

7:00 pm

April 10, 2008

Rails Across the Water: The Rise and Fall of Railroad Car Ferries in Michigan

Bob VandeVusse, marine columnist for Great Lakes and Seaway Shipping and the Holland Sentinel, will discuss the history of ferrying railroad cars across Lake Michigan, from the tale of its beginnings in the nineteenth century, through its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s, to its demise in the 1980s and the remnants remaining today.

Gerald R. Ford Museum

7:00 pm

May 8, 2008

Annual Meeting and Banquet

Going to the Blazes: One-Hundred-Sixty Years of the Grand Rapids Fire Department

Dennis W. Morrow, Pastor at Saints Peter and Paul Church and Chaplain for the

Grand Rapids Fire and Police Departments.

No dramatic disaster underwrote the organization of fire-fighting in Grand Rapids, but by 1848 citizens began institutionalizing practices, buying equipment, and building the housing for that equipment. Morrow will trace the development of the department over 160 years as it grew into the

professional GRFD we know today.

University Club

111 Lyon NW

10th floor of Fifth Third Center