The Importance of Taverns in Pioneer Days

When the first land owners started settling in Farmington Township in the mid-1820s, all they found upon arrival was a vast virgin forest, crossed by some streams and a few Indian trails.

They got to work immediately clearing a few acres of their land for subsistence farming, and using the felled trees to construct their small log cabins. As each settler established his farm, they cut crude roads to their property down the section lines along the “line of blazed trees” left by the surveyors in 1817.

There were no churches, town halls, police stations, or shopping centers. So whenever a meeting of all the inhabitants was needed, or when elections were held, this was done initially at private homes.

For the first three years of settlement, from 1824 through 1827, Farmington Township was politically a part of Bloomfield, and public meetings and elections were held there. But after enough residents arrived, legislation was passed on April 12, 1827 officially forming Farmington Township, with the first legal township meeting and elections held on May 28, 1827 at the home of Robert Wixom Sr. on the northeast corner of present day Farmington Road and 11 Mile Road.

Also during 1827, Solomon Walker started building a small log tavern on the Grand River Indian Trail a little west of present day Halsted Road. It was completed late in 1827.

An account of its first party is given in the “1877 History of Farmington Township” as follows: “It was completed and opened towards the last of the year, so that a dedicatory new year's festival was held there at the commencement of 1828, on which occasion there was a very large attendance of young people, and perhaps some who could hardly be termed young: except in their perennial fondness for dancing and festivity. The revelers came from near and from far off. Their conveyances were exclusively drawn by oxen, with the single exception of a horse-team which brought its load from Bloomfield. No doubt their enjoyment that night was as keen as if their teams had been fleeter, and their hall accommodations more spacious and splendid.”

The 2nd Annual Township Meeting and Election was held on May 26, 1828 (the meetings were always on the last Monday of the month) at Nathan Philbrick’s house about 1 mile east of the site of the first meeting. It appears that Philbrick turned his house into a tavern shortly after the Township Meeting, providing competition for Solomon Walker.

The 1877 History goes on to note: "Small as it was, Walker's tavern soon became a place of some note, and in 1829 the annual township-meeting was first held there, though its location was by no means a central one, being only a mile from the western line of the town." The 3rd Annual Township Meeting at Walker’s Tavern was held on May 25, 1829.

About 1830, as the traffic on the old Grand River Indian Trail was rapidly increasing, Walker decided to build a new larger “framed” Tavern. It was built a short distance east of the log tavern, which started being used as a meeting house for the Methodists in 1829, and as a school.

An open competition developed between Solomon Walker’s new framed Tavern and the Philbrick Tavern noted earlier. P. D. Warner, writing in the Farmington Herald circa 1905 discussed this rivalry as follows:

"Walker's tavern was the most central, while Novi, and Commerce, once a part of Farmington Township, furnished a large portion of the voters, but Mrs. Philbrick, universally known as Aunt Senah, was a good house-keeper and splendid cook, and knew just how much 'Scotch Snuff' to put into her pies and cakes so as to season them to the exact taste of her neighbors and friends. Her husband, 'Uncle Nathan' having two eyes, could see and understand the advantage of a 'social glass' in the maintainence of friendly relations with his neighbors, while 'Uncle Solomon' had but one eye with which to look after the social habits of his townsmen, and his wife, Mrs. W, was wholly ignorant of the secret process by which her rival was able to maintain the great reputation of her cookery. (These circumstances may explain the reason why it was voted at the previous meeting that the election should be held at the school house instead of Walker's Tavern.)"