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Detroit Catholic Central High School showcases pivotal events and important individuals who helped transform the school from modest beginnings into a leading educational institution.

Detroit Catholic Central High School (CC) opened its doors to 260 students in the fall of 1928. The school was established by the Basilian Fathers of Toronto and led by Fr. Daniel Dillon, CSB. Despite losing its first building on Harper Avenue in 1934 and facing challenges like increasing enrollment, a shortage of classroom space, the Great Depression, and World War II, the school continued to grow. Supported by influential individuals who helped establish strong traditions and a positive school culture, the school, located initially off Woodward Avenue in central Detroit, has a rich history. With its 100th anniversary in 2028, the story of Catholic Central exemplifies a deep commitment to education, faith, and community. The school’s mission of teaching “Goodness, Discipline, and Knowledge” still resonates today. 

James M. Gibbons Jr., a 1968 CC graduate and retired educator, and Michael J. Butler, Esq., a 1971 CC graduate and retired trial attorney, selected images and articles from Basilian Fathers archives, CC archives, and alumni family scrapbooks. The foreword was written by Fr. Dennis P. Noelke, CSB, also a 1971 CC graduate and retired Catholic Central principal.

From the author of Murder in Victorian Western Michigan and Victorian Southwest Michigan True Crime comes more thrilling stories from the Wolverine State's past.

As the Michigan Central Railroad company became a juggernaut, the nineteenth-century rail line also devolved into a bastion for crime as morality was often set aside for profit. In 1850, a grand jury indicted fifty men in Jackson County for conspiracy to commit arson after a freight depot in Detroit was set ablaze. When two Grand Trunk locomotives collided in Battle Creek in 1893 killing twenty-seven people, a conductor and an engineer each accused the other, avoiding conviction. A Mineral Ridge train robbery of $70,000 in payroll money destined for miners on the Keweenaw Peninsula was exposed by a former railroad worker involved in the heist, allowing him to escape prosecution and sending four others to prison.

Author Michael Delaware unfolds dark stories of corruption and crime from Michigan’s Victorian age.

Explore the true story of a famous crime that inspired Anatomy of a Murder

Just after midnight on July 31, 1952, U.S. Army Lieutenant Coleman A. Peterson walked into the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay, Michigan, and shot Mike Chenoweth in retaliation for an assault on his wife. This revenge killing rocked the small lumber town in the Upper Peninsula, and the trial that followed inspired a best-selling novel and an Academy Award–nominated motion picture, Anatomy of a Murder.

Using the testimony taken from trial transcripts, the police investigator, and the killer, author Patrick J. Baker shares the real story of a sensational murder trial that captivated the Midwest and the aftermath that drew the eyes of the nation.

Explore the true story of a famous crime that inspired Anatomy of a Murder

Just after midnight on July 31, 1952, Army Lieutenant Coleman A. Petersen walked into the Lumberjack Tavern in Big Bay, Michigan, and shot Mike Chenoweth in retaliation for an assault on his wife. This revenge killing rocked the small lumber town in the Upper Peninsula, and the trial that followed inspired a best-selling novel and an Academy Award–nominated motion picture, Anatomy of a Murder.

Using the testimony taken from trial transcripts, the police investigator, and the killer, author Patrick J. Baker shares the real story of a sensational murder trial that captivated the Midwest and the aftermath that drew the eyes of the nation.

A complicated friendship blooms during a fated meeting in northern Michigan between two nineteenth-century women writers.

In the mid-1830s, the author Anna Brownell Jameson was called from Britain to Canada to see her husband. Before she returned back home, she embarked on a trip around the Great Lakes to gather material for a book on the “plight of the Indian woman.”

In a remarkable interaction on Mackinac Island, where the current-day lower peninsula of Michigan meets the upper peninsula, she met Jane Johnston Schoolcraft—an Ojibwe American poet and translator married to the geologist Henry Schoolcraft, who was working as an Indian agent for the United States government. The two women talked extensively, bonding over their interests and plights, and sharing private demons.

After their meeting, Anna continued to gain recognition for her writing and become a larger part of the literary scene in Britain and the Continent, entangling herself in the affairs of the likes of Elizabeth Barrett-Browning, Ottilie von Goethe, Lady Byron, and Ada Lovelace. Jane became sicker and less able to work.

In Andrew Wittkop’s sensitive, subtle retelling, complete with Anna's sketches and other historical images, the nuances of the relationship between the two women reveal much about the complicated nature of connection and disconnection and Anna’s blindnesses and missed opportunities. This inventive debut opens a window on two under-remembered writers.