By Lawrence Sullivan
You’d never guess from Henry W. Damrow’s gentle disposition and friendly ways that he once earned his living as a professional wrestler.
He was at his best ? tall, dark, lanky, smiling and talkative ? tending bar at his warm, spick ‘n? span Oxford Tavern on Washington Street of that small Oakland County town. But over the years, in good times and bad, he also worked as a farm hand, streetcar conductor, motorist and dispatcher, haberdasher, dry goods store clerk and party store proprietor.
Henry was the son of August and Caroline Domros, who migrated to the United States from their native West Prussia three years before he was born. They arrived at the Port of New York on 18 April 1885, from Hamburg, aboard the steamship California. Crowded with them in third class quarters were sons Richard, 6, and Paul, who was just 5 months old, and one box of family possessions. (Two other sons had died in Germany.)
Although the ship’s manifest proclaims the family’s destination was Houston, Texas, they apparently made a beeline for a farm near Kinde, north of the Huron County seat of Bad Axe in Michigan’s ‘Thumb.?
The declared destination might have been a clerical error. Two men who appear likely to have been his brothers had arrived 12 years earlier and were living in the Thumb, at New Baltimore, and would remain in that area. Gottfried, head of the household in the 1880 census, was nearly 31 years old and his brother Gustavus 27. (August was 29.)
Clues to their likely kinship: Gottfried’s infant daughter, one month old when the census was taken, had been christened Augustina, and one of August’s sons who died in Germany was named Gustav.
It’s unclear when August Domros changed the spelling of the family name, but presumed brothers Gottfried and Gustavus already were using Damrow in 1880.
With the home and surrounding countryside full of first-generation German-Americans, German was the family’s principal tongue for years. Like many youngsters of recent immigrants, Henry didn’t learn English until he started school.
Caroline had 10 children in all, but only six boys and one girl reached maturity. Their names (with ages listed in 1900) were Richard, 19; Paul, 16; Otto, 13; Henry, 11; Annie, 9; Albert, 8; and William, 5. The father, August, was then 49 years old and Caroline 44.
Henry left the family farm and cut out on his own in the first decade of the 20th century. He apparently headed straight for Detroit, at the time one of the most vibrant spots on earth. The principal reason: Henry Ford’s phenomenal success with a bucket of bolts known as the Model T.
Revolutionizing industry with the world’s first moving assembly line, Ford soon was out-producing all his competitors combined ? and there were nearly 300 of them. He then shook up society itself by offering plant workers the princely sum of $5 a day.
Some of these riches flowed into the coffers of Crowley-Milner, said to be the nation’s biggest and finest department store when it opened its doors in downtown Detroit in 1909. Not to be outdone, longtime rival J.L. Hudson’s built a new store, even more glittering and promising than Crowley’s, right next door.
In a lighter vein, Detroiters enjoyed a steady flow of the latest moving pictures; leading stars and acts from vaudeville, burlesque and the legitimate stage; and their own thriving Tin Pan Alley. Vernor’s ginger ale was available there ? and only there ? on tap and in bottles, and Fred Sanders? ice cream parlors served up a sinful hot fudge sundae that definitely was to diet for.
The city also had more breweries than Milwaukee and more beer gardens than Munich.
On the sports scene, the youngest team in the American League, the Tigers, had built a brand-new stadium at the edge of downtown and landed a brilliant young player named Ty Cobb.
By 1910, the famed ‘Georgia Peach? already had led the team to an American League pennant and within one victory of a World Series title.
Ford’s ‘Tin Lizzie? would soon change everything, but in 1910 people still moved about mainly on rails, and no one had a better network of urban and interurban lines than Detroit. The web stretched from Monroe to Port Huron, with links to such widespread outlying communities as Oxford, Flint, Bay City, Romeo and even Toledo.
Henry’s first real paying job ? we’ll forget his wrestling gig ? was as a conductor with the Detroit Urban Railway. He later became a motorist on the company’s overworked Baker line. It ran from downtown along Michigan Avenue, past Navin Field, the new home of the Detroit Tigers, and in years to come all the way to Ford Motor Co.’s sprawling River Rouge industrial complex in Dearborn.
By 1920 Henry had moved to the east side and an office job as a street car dispatcher. He and his new bride, Martha, were living on Mt. Elliott, off East Jefferson, near the city’s crown jewel nature, zoological and recreational park known as Belle Isle.
The 1930 census, the latest one made public, finds them clear across town on Alpine Street in northwest Detroit. Henry, whose own men’s wear store had gone bankrupt earlier that year, was now working in a dry goods store.
We never discussed family history, but I learned from others that Henry and his first wife were divorced in the early ?30s and he was remarried about 1937 to Martha Zimmerman, an Ann Arbor widow who’d adopted a niece named Joy after her sister-in-law died in childbirth. Shortly after that the family moved to Oxford where Henry and Martha owned and operated the Oxford Tavern for many years.
After Martha’s death in 1953, Henry came out of retirement to open a party store on the south edge of town and again remarried, to a widow named Margaret Steelman. Henry died in 1968 and is buried at Oxford’s Ridgelawn Cemetery beside Martha and their daughter, Joy Damrow Sullivan.
Henry, with a gift of gab that made him a popular host and bartender, was fun to be with and easy to listen to.
Lawrence Sullivan is Henry’s favorite son-in-law (he only had one)