I
was born in Wyandotte, Michigan
in 1966 on the 420th anniversary
of Martin Luther's death. When
it was time to begin
kindergarten, my parents sent me
to the same Lutheran elementary
school in Wyandotte my father
had attended as a boy. My
family had a long history at the
German Lutheran church in
Wyandotte going back to about
1920. The Gerrings were German
Lutherans from Hungary who had
immigrated to Ohio just after
the turn of the century and
later moved to Wyandotte seeking
work. My paternal grandmother's
parents were Donauschwaben
German Catholics from Slavonia
and the Banat. They too had
immigrated to the USA just after
the turn of the century, first
going to St. Louis and then
eventually settling in
Wyandotte. In 1921, [Read
More]
FIRE DESTROYS SHIPYARD.;
Wyandotte Plant of Detroit
Company Nearly Wiped Out by
Flames. September 29, 1912.
Home of . . .
Michigan Alkali
Company, which created baking soda, soda ash
and lye. The company, later renamed Wyandotte
Chemicals Co., producing a variety of soaps
& cleaners, and eventually became part of BASF
and expanded into the BASF industrial complex.
Wyandotte
Iron Ship Building Works built the
nation's earliest steel-hulled vessel, a tug
called the Sport in 1873.
Beginning in
the 1920s Wyandotte was a major source of
toy production, with the All Metal
Products Company founded in 1920 and
located in Wyandotte on Sycamore St.
From the 1920s until the 1950s the company,
under the name "Wyandotte Toys", was
the nation's largest manufacturer of toy
guns and pistols. In the early 1950s the
company moved to Ohio, and was bought out by
Louis Marx and Company three years
later.