BEAKES' ESSAY
MILAN AND YORK TOWNSHIP HISTORY

Author:  Samuel W. Beakes

Title:  Past and Present of Washtenaw County, Michigan.  Chicago

Publisher:  S. J. Clarke Publishing Co.

Date:  1906

The first schoolhouse in York Township was built in 1831. 

The first sawmill in York Township was built at Mooreville in 1832 by Isaac Hathaway.

The first store in York Township was built about 1835 by Elijah Ellis at Milan.  It was not until the Ann Arbor Railroad and the Wabash Railroad that Milan began to assume much proportions as a village.  It was established as a post office about 1855.  The first settlement at Milan was made by William Marvin, who cast the first vote in the township.

Mooreville was named by John Moore, its founder, who came from New York.

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FIRES

Milan has been several times  visited by large fires.  Among these was the fire of December 4, 1893, which started in the saloon of Edward Doersam at 10:15 p.m.  It was confined to the three stores owned by O. A. Kelly, Jacob R. Verscelins and Mrs. Phoebe Kelly.  Hard work with a hand engine saved other buildings.  The Ann Arbor fire department reached Milan before the flames were extinguished.  The loss was $16,000.  Milan had a $11,000 fire on October 30, 1891.

ELECTRIC SUGAR

The electric sugar case, in 1888, was among the greatest cases of the country. To it the New York city papers devoted pages daily.  It was especially interesting in this county as the defendants in the cases actually lived in Milan in this county [Washtenaw].  William E. Howard the father-in-law of Prof. Friend, was convicted and served time in Sing Sing.  His wife and Mrs. Olive E. Friend and two other Milan defendants were never convicted.

Electric sugar was a stupendous fraud and there is no doubt that Prof Friend was one of the principals in it.  The parties actually charged with the fraud probably never were guilty of more than knowledge that it was going on. There were other parties undoubtedly as deeply implicated as Friend, but they sought cover when Friend killed himself and were never brought to trial.  English investors were defrauded out of about $3,000,000.  The mode of working the fraud was simple.  Prof. Friend pretended to have discovered a process by which he could treat raw sugar with electricity and so turn  out the finest grade of refined sugar.  If he could do what he claimed, there was millions in it, for the main cost of refined sugar is incurred in removing the impurities from the raw sugar.  Friend had no process.  His mode of operating was at first to secure a house near the river with a sewer leading directly into the river so that the impurities in the sugar could be carried out into New York bay and the ocean.  His fellow conspirators were on the lookout for English investors.  When they were got in tow a committee would come to New York to see the wonderful process, which was to revolutionize sugar manufacturing.  They would go to Friend’s house and after listening to a lecture on the process were requested to thoroughly search the house and

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everything about it, excepting the machine by which the sugar was made.  That stood in the center of the room on legs, elevated from the floor, so that it could be seen that nothing could be brought into the house by way of the floor.  This machine was covered over; to see it would be to discover the process, as Friend insisted that the machinery was simple.  That constituted the secret.  The bags of raw sugar would be setting in the room but nowhere any sign of refined sugar.  Then the committee would be requested to leave the room and lock and guard all doors.  This done Friend would set to work.  First the raw sugar would be emptied into the sewer and water turned in until it was washed out into the briny deep.  Then the wonderful machine would be opened, filled with loaf sugar of the finest grade that could be bought and Friend would set to work to grind it up.  Then the committee would be invited in.  There would lay Friend, covered with perspiration apparently overcome by the hard work and in the bags which had contained the raw sugar would be the purest of refined sugar, some very fine and the rest of it in limps of varying size.  The committee would go back over the water with samples of this sugar manufactured while they waited and highly satisfied with the precautions taken to secure the genuineness of the secret process.

Stock in the wonderful invention sold for fancy prices.  For a long time nothing would be done until the price got away down where it would be brought up and exploited again.  Finally a big factory, seven or eight stories high, fitted up with machinery from top to bottom and with workmen on every floor, none of whom knew what was being done on the floor above them, so carefully was the secret guarded.  The chief secret was in the top floor.  Here refined sugar would be put in the hoppers, instead of the refined sugar taken up in sight of the committees of investors, and which would be washed out to sea in the sewer designed to carry off impurities.  The committees would be allowed to see raw sugar going up and then to see the refined sugar coming out into the bags in the lower floor each grade of fineness into separate bags.  

It was a great fraud, and as has been said, English investors were mulcted out of $3,000,000 before the bubble burst and Friend killed himself and his fellow conspirators joined in the hue and cry against Friend’s family, who were not enough in his secrets to point them out.