Politics / Business & brands
John J. Bagley
1832–1881 · tobacco manufacturer, governor of Michigan
Teenage tobacco-shop apprentice who built Detroit's Mayflower Tobacco Company and became a reforming governor (1873–1877); his rediscovered statue turned up in DIA storage in 2019.
- Born
Medina, New York- Died
San Francisco, California
aged 49- Birth name
- John Judson Bagley
- Also known as
- John Judson Bagley
- Detroit years
- 1847–1881
- Field
- Politics, Business & brands
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
John J. Bagley grew up in New York and Michigan and came to Detroit in 1847, at fifteen, as an apprentice in Isaac Miller's small chewing-tobacco shop. Seven years later he bought Miller out and renamed the business the Mayflower Tobacco Company, which became a leader in what was then one of Detroit's biggest industries. A Freemason and a founder of the Republican Party, he served on the Detroit Board of Education, as alderman and on the Common Council in 1860–1861, and on the Board of Police Commissioners from 1865 to 1872; he also organized and led the Michigan Mutual Life Insurance Company. Elected governor in 1872, he served two terms from 1873 to 1877, reorganizing state institutions, backing a state board of health and the fish commission, and supporting the new state capitol. He died of tuberculosis in San Francisco in 1881 and is buried at Woodmere Cemetery. In 2019 his long-lost statue was found in storage at the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Highlights
- 16th governor of Michigan, 1873–1877
- Founder of the Mayflower Tobacco Company in Detroit
- Detroit police commissioner, 1865–1872
- President of the Michigan Mutual Life Insurance Company, 1867–1872
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.
Buried here · 1881
Woodmere Cemetery
Southwest Detroit cemetery where he is interred.