Columns



Joseph Serwach

Michigan’s Boy Gov at 200

November 4, 2011

I was 10 the first time I visited the Governor’s Office. One of his aides asked if we knew the name of Michigan’s first governor.

“Stevens T. Mason!” the blond boy shouted.

The stunned aide said no one ever knew that answer (except those of us who attended Stevens T. Mason Elementary School).

Mason, who turned 200 last month, shapes the roots of Michigan’s culture.

His story is much like those of General Motors founder William Durant, Chevy founder Louis Chevrolet and Apple founder Steve Jobs. Each started something revolutionary — and each was pushed aside by the organization he founded.

Jobs is celebrated because he came back and made Apple bigger than ever. But Mason, Durant and Chevrolet were forced out (in Mason’s and Durant’s case, twice).

Each failed to recapture his former glory and died in modest circumstances. Most revolutions at some point get so passionate they turn on their founders.

Your greatest strength is often, simultaneously, your greatest weakness: Mason’s was that he was the youngest governor of any state ever.

At age 19 he became Michigan territorial secretary and acting governor, since the governors he served were rarely around. He became acting territorial governor at age 22 and was elected state governor at 23.

By 31 he was out of office, a struggling New York attorney with a young family, when he went to a New Year’s party hoping to make connections. He caught pneumonia on the way home and died days later.

His family included senators, signers of the Declaration of Independence and neighbors of presidents whose names are now synonymous with Michigan cities: Monroe and Jackson.

His father was territorial secretary before him. Young Stevens was something of a Doogie Howser, home-schooled by a professor/grandfather and a father who took him everywhere with him, enthralling adults, including President Andrew Jackson.

While most, like Jackson, were captivated by the Boy Governor’s intellect and style, Whigs like William Woodbridge became constant critics.

“I see my way clear,” Mason wrote Jackson. “I feel a confidence in maintaining myself against all opposition if sustained by you, of which I feel a perfect assurance.”

From 1831 through 1840, Mason dominated Michigan. He battled a massive cholera epidemic. And he battled Ohio over the “Toledo Strip” that rightfully belonged to Michigan but had been previously annexed into neighboring states that developed the land and refused to give it up.

Jackson actually fired Mason as territorial secretary over the Toledo War (Ohio and Indiana had a massive amount of electoral votes while the Michigan Territory had none). But Mason, beloved by the people he fought for, roared back in 1835, getting elected governor and leading Michigan into the union.

He alone had the clout to convince Michiganders they should trade Toledo for the western Upper Peninsula.

He immediately set out to tame and civilize a wilderness: re-establishing and reinventing the University of Michigan, moving it from Detroit to Ann Arbor. He declared it would be “the most influential state university in the union.”

He and School Superintendent John Pierce embedded in the Michigan Constitution a sixteenth of the land (640 acres per township) to support primary schools, creating one of the richest educational systems in the nation. They established normal colleges to bridge the gaps between primary and higher education.

Mason launched plans for a network of railroads and canals. He worked with the people of Jackson to establish a state prison there.

As in recent years, Michigan experienced a boom and a bust that saw a banking system grow rapidly and then collapse, leaving the economy a shambles. His railroad plans were privatized when the Whig Party took power from him in 1840 before the Whigs went extinct.

In 1837, at the peak of his popularity, the first west Michigan steamboat was dubbed the S.S. Governor Mason. Three years later, the boat was wrecked on a reef near Muskegon and his governorship followed.

Michiganders tend to focus on our happiest endings (the ones that created jobs working for titans like Ford, Edison and Kellogg). We are less likely to describe the unhappy endings of the Masons and Durants. But great entrepreneurs know wrecks teach us more than success and help future efforts grow.

One of the best lessons I learned at Mason School was when we put bean plants under heat lamps (24 hours of sun) and in a closet (24 hours of darkness).

The Mason students learned that plants living in darkness actually grow twice as fast (but they were yellow and weird) while the plants that basked in constant light were green but rather small.

Worth remembering: we grow in darkness and shine in the light. We need both.

Joseph J. Serwach, who spent most of his career as a journalist, is managing director, communications for the Michigan Economic Development Corp.