The Death of Mattie Hotchkiss

                    And "Tigers in the Tank"      

Above: 59 East Ferry Street, Detroit, Michigan - today

(Author's note: "Batter up!")

As always, edited like a foul ball.

Hey all, I'm not going to keep you a long time here. Sometimes though, as I make my way through the family trees and the lives that connect to us to each other, remarkable (or at least for me) things sometimes fall out of those very same trees. 

This one felt worth mentioning.

It's a given: We all have these unexpected and unusual connections to "people, places, and things," that often seem to come out of nowhere. Such was the case this week as I researched through the lineage of my cousin Dan to Susannah North Martin of Salem 1692 repute. It was (is) a lineage that had me stop at one very important point along the way, and that point was at the Death of Mattie Hotchkiss - a Susannah North Martin descendant. Indeed, it was Mattie's passing and the intestate probate search for her next of kin that helped me piece "the North line" together.

Yes, Mattie helped us out - via her sister Mary (Hotchkiss) (Trotter) Leonard, who was Dan's biological great-great-grandmother.

              

Long story short, Mattie Hotchkiss was a maiden aunt, a Mary's spinster sister who worked her whole life as a cook and maid in the homes of other people. No children, or husband, and no shame there, on the surface Mattie's life appears to have been kind of a lonely one. As I "tripped" through the census records I could see her, always the "maid" or the cook" or listed as the "domestic" among those records.

As I looked at the records though, a rather nondescript thing stood out. 

The address where Mattie worked. (Duh, Jeff...)

59 East Ferry Street, Detroit, Michigan

It was an address and a household that "Aunt Mattie" served at from at least 1900 through 1910. That's kind of a long time- so I got to wondering about "that address" and about the people associated with it. I got to wondering about the house itself.

Just who were the people Aunt Mattie worked for?

The 1900 census record says that Mattie worked in the household of some guy name Sam Angus.

So who the heck is "Samuel F. Angus?"

At least in the first instance, it didn't take long to find out. 

   

She worked for this guy:

Above: 1908 Obituary for Samuel Angus

Okay, so the name S.F. Angus and all his accomplishments didn't mean that much to me either - but check out that address in his obituary:

"59 East Ferry Ave, Detroit, Michigan"

The same place in the census - and the same place where Mattie lived and worked.

With Sam Angus, owner of the Detroit Tigers.

                

Okay, so I know it isn't like some big deal or some huge genealogical find. But dang, it's a frickn' jewel of life in the past. It tells me that even in the most humble and seemingly unnoticeable of lives that we attempt to learn and study- that there are incredible details of something pretty darn cool that can simply go unnoticed.

There Aunt Mattie was, maybe scrubbing floors and cooking meals at 59 East Ferry Street - but she was also in the thick of 1902 Detroit Tigers baseball fever!

            

So I guess the moral to the story here is that even the most humble of lives there is something to be found that is totally remarkable! It may seem incidental (and indeed it no doubt is) that Aunt Mattie lived and worked here.. and while her memory and life may have faded into the back pages of time, I thought it was worthwhile to take note of her. 

And while I can't be certain of it, Aunt Mattie likely shook hands with some of the greatest baseball players of yesteryear - players like Ty Cobb. 

And all of this hidden in the address for an old house.

 I am no sports aficiando, but that, in my book, is pretty dang cool.

               

Rest in peace, Aunt Mattie.

☮