[Michigan Land] SUMMERFIELD CITY. 500 SPLENDID BUILDING LOTS TO BE GIVEN AWAY.

Item Details

SUMMERFIELD CITY. 500 SPLENDID BUILDING LOTS TO BE GIVEN AWAY.

Thayer & Co., Box 103, New Haven, Connecticut, 1860. Double-sided flier (9½ × 12 inches), promotional prospectus on the recto, engraved town plat on the verso. Contemporary folds with several fold separations and edge wear; complete, with no loss of printed text or map.

An apparently unrecorded promotional item issued by Thayer & Co. of New Haven, Connecticut, advertising the proposed community of Summerfield City in Monroe County, Michigan. The recto announces the extraordinary offer of "500 Splendid Building Lots to be Given Away," accompanied by the promise of financing, warranty deeds, and the anticipated appreciation of western real estate. The text compares the prospects of the new town to the spectacular growth of Chicago and other Midwestern cities, urging eastern investors to participate in the continuing settlement of the Old Northwest.

The verso presents an engraved plat entitled "Plan of Thayer & Co. New City of Summerfield," depicting twelve civic blocks divided into 154 numbered lots, together with streets, public squares, and a railroad depot. The inclusion of an arriving locomotive emphasizes the town's principal selling point—its location on the Michigan Southern and Northern Indiana Railroad, whose route through Monroe County linked Detroit, Toledo, and Chicago and was widely promoted as a catalyst for commercial growth. The plat presents not merely a survey but a carefully constructed vision of civic order and prosperity, transforming an undeveloped landscape into a planned community ready for investment.

Although the broadside confidently predicted that the lots would soon be worth "thousands of dollars," the proposed Summerfield City never emerged as the substantial municipality envisioned by its promoters. Contemporary Michigan gazetteers of 1860 and 1863 instead describe Summerfield (also known as Petersburg) as a modest post village and township served by the railroad, with mills, churches, local trades, and a population of approximately one thousand. By 1877 the community remained a small agricultural center rather than the ambitious city imagined by the prospectus--a document of the speculative enthusiasm that accompanied railroad expansion and western migration during the final years before the Civil War.

The engraved plat invites further study. Most street names reflect agricultural themes—Raisin, Orchard, Garden, Cedar, Ashland, and others—reinforcing the community's rural setting, while the designation "Lincoln Square" is especially intriguing. Whether the name refers to Abraham Lincoln during the presidential election year of 1860 or had another local origin remains uncertain and merits additional investigation. Likewise, the identity of Thayer & Co., whose New Haven address suggests eastern financial backing for western land development, has not yet been established. Land companies of this type frequently combined real-estate promotion, investment, insurance, and railroad interests, serving as intermediaries between eastern capital and western settlement.

No example of this notice, or of the accompanying town plat in this format, has been located in the principal online bibliographical resources consulted, including OCLC/WorldCat, the American Antiquarian Society, the Library of Congress, major auction databases, and standard online references. While additional copies may survive in uncatalogued local or archival collections, the present example appears to be an exceptionally uncommon survival of mid-nineteenth-century western land promotion.

Provenance: Estate of G. W. Davenport, Litchfield County, Connecticut.

References: Michigan State Gazetteer (1860); Michigan Gazetteer (1863); Michigan Gazetteer (1877).