FeedsCanton history is added to series
The old black-and-white photo shows a large group of men and women on a front porch. Some have stern expressions but others are smiling; they are dressed formally but modestly.
The photo—which will be on the cover of a new book about the history of Canton Township—shows some of the first people to settle in a village called Sheldon Corners, one of the first communities in Canton.
According to resident Gerald Van Dusen, the picture was taken to mark a special occasion: the day that Sheldon Corners residents gathered to help the Smith family raise their barn.
“It was a pretty popular custom in the early days, when Canton residents depended so much on their neighbors,” said Van Dusen. “It depended how many people came out and how well planned it was, but it could be a day’s work. Typically it’s not.”
Raising a barn was one thing—could they have imagined what rose from the “Canton clay” during the next 100 years?
On the heels of new estimates from the U.S. Census that the population of Canton has boomed to 90,000, Van Dusen is set to debut his chronicle of what was a tiny farming community.
Van Dusen’s book is published by Arcadia Publishing, as part of an “Images of America” series that has already printed several picture-filled historical volumes about communities in Michigan.
“I saw other local communities like Wayne and Westland and Plymouth were well-represented” in the series, said Van Dusen. “Canton was not and I thought that was a glaring omission,” he said.
When he called the publisher to propose a broad history of Wayne County, they suggested he start by just filling in the gaps about Canton.
Arcadia had great interest, after all, in a Canton book, said Van Dusen.
“They had even talked to a couple of prospective authors, but it never materialized,” he said, “and so I went ahead (writing one) without really fully knowing if there would be enough pictures available.”
Not surprisingly, this book was not a day’s work, either. Van Dusen, who teaches English classes at Wayne County Community College District campus in Belleville, had a lot of help from some fifth-generation residents in gathering primary documents—including the 200-plus photos required by Arcadia.
Few farm families remain in Canton Township, so Van Dusen spent months driving around southeast Michigan to track them down.
“I talked to a number of former residents who very graciously opened up their scrapbooks and gave me a number of pictures that I would not otherwise have been able to include had I depended on a single source.”
The cover photo, however, came from the Canton Historical Museum, which will carry copies of the book when it is released.
