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Public History

Public History is the study of History outside of the classroom. Their are many different careers that someone with a degree in Public History could find work. Most notable are that of careers in Museums, Historic Preservation, Archives, Cultural Recourses management. During my undergraduate studies I spent one semester working in the W.M.U. Archives and regional history collection. I also spent one semester at the Kalamazoo valley museum working photo's on an exhibit that recapped the last 100 years in Kalamazoo.

Local History

South Western Michigan is a unique and dynamic place. A slice of Midwestern Americana that lies directly between Chicago and Detroit . Many different interruptions have been given for the name Kalamazoo . Willes Dunbar writes gives some explanations to its different interruptions. In the book Kalamazoo and how it grew and grew Dunbar tells the story of William Burnett, a trader at St. Joseph that wrote a letter referring to the Kakallamazou River . Other notication indicates that early records have the name Kikamasung which means boiling water. Anther version of the meaning is the mirage of reflecting water. Anyway the name came to be given it is the only Kalamazoo in the whole wide world. ( Dunbar 2,3)

On October 29, 1829 the Territorial Council of Michigan established the county of Kalamazoo . In July 1830 the first two townships were established. Brady and Arcadia , the site of the future city being the later. (2, 3).

The first settler to this area of what is now called Kalamazoo was an eccentric old potato farmer by the name of Titus Bronson. A restless wonder who was often thought of as irritating and annoying to other members of the community settled here after following and old Indian trail from Ann Arbor by way of Ohio . In 1829 he made came very near the sight of what is present day downtown. That winter he traveled south to a settlement in present day Schoolcraft. He left in the spring to retrieve his family from Connecticut . In the early spring of 1831 Bronson had returned to Kalamazoo with his family and built a log cabin in the place close to where city hall is today.

Sometime there after he traveled to the land office in White Pigeon Bronson entered the east half of the southwest quarter of Section 15 in the name of his wife. To this day we still do not know why? Once Michigan governor Lewis Cass there was fierce compaction for the location of the county seat between Bronson and Horce H. Comstock. To win, Bronson set aside for public use a square of sixteen rods to use as a Jail, Court House, school, cemetery, and the rest for the first four established Religions in the new town. Bronson tired his hand at running a sawmill and being Justice of the Peace, but untimely ended up raising potatoes.  Bronson's strange ways alienated most of the other townsfolk and by 1836 his enemies, successfully managed to change the name from Bronson to Kalamazoo . This coupled with a mass settlements, Bronson sold out and eventually ended up in his native Connecticut where he died. Home to Sleep with his Fathers.

Local History in Kalamzoo has been writhen about, talked about and even published. Now in what I belive to be the first ever attempt to put a comperhensive history of Kalamazoo and all it;s inportants on the World Wide web.

The Stryker  cooperation was formed here, Dr. Stryker was one of the first to invent a rotating hospital bed.

Over Gibson started his mandolin and guitar company here. Which later moved to Tennessee.

Most of the research on this website can be traced back to the work of three of Kalamazoo's greatist Historians. Dr. Peter Schmitt W.MU. department of History. Willies Dunbar former Chair W.M.U. Department of History Larry Massie author on Many books about Michigan History.

Inportant Dates

1805 Michigan Territory is Established.

1823 Rix Robinson builds fur trading post near present day Riverside Cemetery.

1825 The Erie Canal opens , making travel to the west easier for emmigrants from New York and New Egland

1827 The Potawatomies deed the site of Kalamazoo to the United States. The Township is surveyed by John Mullett.

1828 The Baltimore & Ohio Railroad , first passenger line in America , is begun on July 4. Bazel Harrison and his family become the first white settlers in the county , locating on the the north side of the "Prairie Ronde" near Schoolcraft on November 3.

1829 Titus Bronson camps near the future site of City Hall and resolves to live here. Ten counties of southwestern Michigan including Kalamazoo , are formally organized.

1831 Titus Bronson constructs a log cabin, buys 160 acres now camping downtown Kalamazoo, and plats a town which he calls Bronson. After a spririted contest with the village of Comstock, Bronson is named the county seat