The Paczki Principle
A great wake-me-up java scent with a bit of hazelnut
Very creamy and rich. Make mine a grande!
Joseph Campau Street, which takes a meandering, often-interrupted journey from the Detroit River to just before Seven Mile, honors one of our city's most illustrious early names. Joseph Campau (1769-1863) was the largest landowner in Detroit at one time, its wealthiest citizen, and reportedly Michigan's first millionaire.
Campau's grandfather had been a part of the first settlement under Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and the family holdings around the cote' du nord-est, or northeastern coast, became the starting ground for the younger Campau's real-estate empire. He prospered early in life by fur trading with Native American tribes, and his store on Atwater was the first in Detroit to offer fine luxury wares from Boston.
Campau was a civic-minded, albeit somewhat cantankerous local figure. He held several public offices, and in 1831, he and his nephew, future mayor John R. Williams, provided start-up funds for the Michigan Intelligencer and Democratic Detroit Free Press, a name later shortened to the more amenable Detroit Free Press. After acquiring numerous other parcels of land and buildings, Campau spent the remainder of his years engaged in a long and bitter battle with local Roman Catholic officials. A legal dispute over what was known as the Church Farm property involved Campau and then his heirs for an entire generation following his 1863 death. His yellow house on Jefferson, between Griswold and Shelby, also stood for many years afterward.
Like some prominent Detroiters of the time, Campau owned slaves before the practice was outlawed in Michigan. One served as a clerk for Campau, who was said to be a meticulous record-keeper, and another, named Crow, was known for the acrobatic feats he liked to perform atop Ste. Anne's Church. Family property that Campau had lent to the U.S. military efforts became the mustering grounds of the First Michigan Colored Regiment in 1863. Its 845 soldiers battled Confederate forces in Maryland, Georgia, and South Carolina during the Civil War. The Michigan Historic Marker commemorating their achievement sits at what was once Campau land, on Robert Bradby Drive near Chene Street.
