When diptheria ravaged Edmund Hewitt’s family in 1862, it spared only the young and the fragile—Edmund’s youngest daughter Mary, and--a poem.

The disease killed Edmund’s 31-year-old wife Eliza (pictured, at left), his eight-year-old daughter Lucy, and his 5-year-old son Edmund Jr. Edmund’s three-year-old daughter Mary, named for her maternal grandmother, lost both of her older siblings and her mother in one year.

Diptheria was a common, highly contagious disease in the 19th-century. Caused by a bacterium that releases a deadly toxin into the body, the illness can create blue-grey membranes in the throat that impede breathing and swallowing. Diptheria can lead to inflammation of the heart, causing arrhythmia, and nerves, causing paralysis, as well as inflammation of the kidneys and middle ear, skin lesions, a telltale swollen “bull neck,” and death.

In the year this dread disease struck his family, Edmund worked as a clerk in his father Walter’s store.

Walter B. Hewitt was one of the city’s earliest and most successful merchants of dry goods, hats and boots, and shoes.

One of Walter’s 1874 ads in the Ypsilanti Commercial (at left) says, “New Goods! New Goods! W. B. Hewitt have just received a NEW STOCK of BOOTS and SHOES which will be sold at GREATLY REDUCED PRICES.”

He owned several extensive swaths of land (below, right) west of the city where Hewitt Road, named for him, is now located.

Father and son lived close to the store, Walter at the corner of Ellis and Huron and Edmond at the corner of Ellis and Adams.

Edmond’s daughter Mary created a scrapbook. In it she kept an old unsigned poem about her grandfather Walter’s onetime store.

This merry bit of ephemera sounds as though it might have been written to commemorate the store’s opening in 1850. In its tribute to Walter’s store, the poem offers a glimpse of a bustling Michigan Avenue.

Ypsilanti where the sun was high Was thronged with crowds who wished to buy; On they rushed, past store and store But paused and entered at the door Of Hewitt Hill & Co.

As day wore on the crowd increased; The people flew as to a feast; Nor stopped the scores of busy feet Till at the corner of the street Called Congress & Washington

What means this bustle, what portends? Cried half crazed merchants, hair on ends, And clerks with eyes as saucers round Ran forth to see the hundreds bound For Hewitt Hill & Co.

Hold! Hold! Be calm! No use to talk He’s just received fresh from New York A stock of fine new goods so cheap That buying some you’ll save a heap So go to Hewitt Hill & Co’s.

“Oh! Stay!” a lovely maiden cried, “We’ve bonnets new, and flowers beside And ribbons too: neat, rich, and gay.” But faster still they took their way To Hewitt Hill & Co.

A lad sprang from a grocery store. A hat on his right ear he wore. His coat would wrap him twice around His shoes would carry two, I’m bound Aloud he cried, the aspiring blade Look here! Look here! I never trade At Hewitt Hill & Co’s.

Seeing their speed only increased, He caught a bell. Alas! ’twas greased And tossed it round most lustily But heeded naught the passerby Went straight to Hewitt Hill & Co’s.

And thus it is from morn till night From early dawn till candle light Ypsilanti rings with noise and din And crowds rush out and crowds rush in At Hewitt Hill & Co’s store.

When people know where are possessed The cheapest goods and much the best, In vain your words & health you spend To stay them from their purposed end, The store of Hewitt Hill & Co, Cor. Congress Washington sto.

A note on the transcribed poem reads, “From a scrapbook kept by Miss Mary E. Loomis [Mary Hewitt]. Walter Hewitt, father of Edmund & Professor Walter Hewitt. Thomas Hill, son of Rev. Oliver Hill of Stony Creek Presbyterian minister. Boy dressed as described did run out from grocery store nearby to advertise Hewitt Hill & Co.”

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