City history / Law / Business & brands
Clarence M. Burton
1853–1932 · lawyer, businessman, historian and collector
Detroit title lawyer and historian whose private archive became the Burton Historical Collection, the backbone of Detroit history research.
- Born
Whiskey Diggings, California- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 78- Birth name
- Clarence Monroe Burton
- Detroit years
- 1874–1932
- Field
- City history, Law, Business & brands
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Clarence Monroe Burton was born in a California mining camp in 1853 and grew up in Hastings, Michigan, before studying at the University of Michigan. Licensed to practice law in Wayne County in 1874, he joined a Detroit firm and built a lucrative business in land titles and abstracts, work that sent him digging through the city's oldest deeds and papers. The hobby became a passion: he bought documents, letters, maps and books on Detroit, Michigan and the Old Northwest, travelled to Europe searching for records of Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, and filled his house on Brainard Street to the rafters. In 1914 he gave the whole collection, with the house, to the Detroit Public Library; it opened to the public in 1915 and he later endowed it. He also wrote widely, from a life of Cadillac (1895) to the five-volume The City of Detroit (1922), served for 17 years as a school inspector and contributed a letter to the Detroit Century Box time capsule in 1900.
Highlights
- Donated his archive to the Detroit Public Library in 1914
- The Burton Historical Collection opened to the public in 1915
- Wrote the five-volume The City of Detroit, 1701–1922
- Researched Cadillac's life in European archives
02 / Their Detroit places
Their Detroit places 1
Where they lived, worked, performed and liked to hang out. Closed and demolished places stay here too, because they are part of the city's history.
Founded · 1921–
Detroit Public Library — Main Library
The Main Library in Midtown, home of the Burton Historical Collection that grew from his 1914 gift.