Then & Now: The Brilliant Young Engineer Behind Dexter’s Famous Stone Viaduct

By Doug Marrin

The railroad bridge over Dexter-Pinckney Road leading out of Dexter is a marvel of civil engineering designed by a brilliant 25-year-old UM graduate, Fredrick B. Pelham.

Dexter’s stone viaduct is famous for another reason. Trucks frequently get stuck under the archway built for horses and buggies. But Dexter’s notorious truck trap might not be eating vehicles today if it weren’t for Charles Warner’s cow that calved on Sunday morning, March 20, 1887.

When Charles Warner didn’t attend church that morning, his parents became concerned. The Dexter Leader reported what happened next in its March 3, 1887 edition.

1880 photograph of the railroad crossing leading out of Dexter where Mrs. Warner was struck and killed. Tracks can be seen at the bottom of the photo. Courtesy Dexter Area Historical Society.

“A sad and fatal accident which has cast a pall of gloom over the entire community, occurred in our village between the hours of three and four o’clock last Sunday afternoon. Mr. and Mrs. Dennis Warner had started to call on their son Charles whose residence is a short distance across the rail road [sic] track west of the village; as they reached the crossing the Limited Express, (west), running at 45 miles an hour, came suddenly around the curve and signalled for the crossing. Mr. and Mrs. Warner were then crossing. Mr. Warner being slightly in the advance, passed over in safety, but Mrs. Warner evidently became slightly confused, hesitated an instant, and just as she stepped from the track was struck by the pilot of the locomotive, throwing her head against the cylinder, crushing her skull and killing her instantly.”

The “pilot” of the locomotive refers to the cowcatcher, not the engineer. The day after the accident, an inquest determined the railroad was not at fault. The Dexter Leader reported on March 28 that the community was so grieved by the tragedy the businesses closed on the day of the funeral. After the funeral, Dexter residents began petitioning the railroad to build a bridge at the crossing.

Wooden supports were used to set the stones during construction. Pelham is standing just to the right of the middle of the arch. Photo from The Michigan Manual of Freedmen’s Progress.

The Michigan Central Railroad assigned its young African American civil engineer Fredrick Pelham to design two new bridges for the location—one over the road and the other a few hundred yards further over Mill Creek.

Pelham was born in Detroit at the end of the Civil War in 1864. He graduated from Detroit High School with the highest honors. His father, Robert, was a stonemason and Fredrick frequently worked with him. Fredrick excelled in math and attended the University of Michigan, where he received an engineering degree. Fredrick was president of his graduating class and graduated at the top of his class in 1887, three months after Mrs. Warner was killed. He was immediately hired by the Michigan Central Railroad and began a career in bridge design and construction.

Fred Pelham stands atop the completed arch over Mill Creek in Dexter, MI. Image from literature of Michigan Central Railroad.

The Michigan Manual of Freedmen’s Progress (John M. Green, 1915) says of Pelham, “The railroad company gave him a position as assistant civil engineer, which he held up to the time of his death. During his service with the Michigan Central Company, he built some 20 bridges along the road. One bridge at Dexter Michigan, is a skew arch bridge. There is only one like it in the country.”

A skew arch design is used when a bridge is not perpendicular to the crossing, and the stone angles have to be cut accordingly.

The assignment to build the bridge was a remarkable accomplishment for any 25-year-old, even more so for a young African-American man in the 1800s. But looking at the family from which Pelham came gives insight into the young man’s drive and accomplishment.

Pelham’s parents, Robert and Frances, were free persons and landowners in Virginia. In the 1850s, however, they left the state “where they still were subject to widespread discrimination and onerous legal restrictions, including a prohibition against obtaining an education.” Robert Pelham Sr. firmly believed in the value of a good education and moved his family north to get them one.

The larger of Pelham’s two arch bridges spans Mill Creek at the popular Border-to-Border Trailhead in Dexter. Photo by Doug Marrin.

Five of the seven Pelham children graduated high school “at a time when few Americans of any race did so.” Robert Pelham Jr. became a journalist, civil servant, and businessman in Detroit and later in Washington D.C. He and his brother Benjamin co-founded and edited the Detroit Plaindealer in 1883. Joseph became a school principal. Meta became a teacher and worked for the Plaindealer. Emma married William Webb Ferguson, the first African-American man elected to the Michigan House of Representatives. He represented Wayne County. Delia married African-American aristocrat George A. Barrier. And Fredrick, the youngest, followed the high standards set by his older siblings and became a distinguished civil engineer for the railroad.

Work began on Pelham’s bridges in Dexter. The earth was moved out from under the railroad track. A temporary wooden support system was installed for the large rocks taken from Mill Creek. The large stones were moved by hand and hewn on site to exact size and shape to fit the unique masonry of Pelham’s skew arch bridge.

Memorial plaque in Mill Creek Park that overlooks Pelham’s bridge that was researched by Wylie Elementary School 4th-grade students (2017-2018). Photo by Doug Marrin.

The Dexter Leader gave readers an update on January 17, 1890, “The work at the Mill Creek railroad bridge is completed for the winter. The abutments are all in and nothing more will be done until the bridge is raised in the spring.”

And on June 6, 1890, “The temporary railroad bridge across Mill Creek was put in last Sunday.”

After that, the Leader reported no more construction updates. The exact date when the new bridge officially opened is unknown. But there was a plague placed on the bridge commemorating the achievement. Fredrick Pelham’s name was not included on the plaque. It is speculated this was because the custom was to list only local dignitaries, or it could have been because of his race.

We don’t hear any more about the bridge. It was doing its job of keeping travelers safe from passing trains. But its sister bridge a few hundred yards away spanning Mill Creek briefly made the news on February 13, 1891, when the Leader reported, “Henry Pryer fell from the rallroad [sic] bridge onto the ice below last Saturday, a distance of nearly twelve faet [sic]. No bones were broken and he is on the gain at present writing.”

Times change, and we often cannot plan for the direction the decades take us. Little did Pelham know when he built his one-of-a-kind bridge in Dexter that one day residents would take great amusement in modern drays getting wedged underneath. They would look at the color photos of it on a small screen in their hands just moments after it happened wherever they are because of something called the internet, on something called Facebook.

Another truck got stuck under the bridge on the day this article was written. This one didn’t get its top shaved off. Photo courtesy of Samantha Wesley.

Funny for us. Not so amusing for the truck drivers. But it’s been happening ever since there were trucks big enough to get stuck. It seems like word would get around. One can’t help but wonder what Pelham would think if he could see his bridge getting rammed repeatedly by vehicles he could never have conceived and still stand.

One thing leads to the next, as things always do. Charles Warner’s cow gave birth that Sunday morning in 1887, and here we are with two stone structures still in use today, as elegant as they are durable.

They are remarkable accomplishments for such a young man at the beginning of his career. And who knows what he could have accomplished if his life hadn’t been cut short? Fredrick Pelham died at his parents’ home in Detroit in 1895 of acute pneumonia at 30.

Sources:

Dexter Leader archives (Dexter District Library)

The Dexter Underpass (Grace Shackman, Community Observer, Spring 2007) https://aadl.org/aaobserver/18619

Fred B. Pelham: building bridges (Michigan Engineering, February 28, 2018) https://news.engin.umich.edu/2018/02/fred-pelham-building-bridges/

The Michigan Manual of Freedmen’s Progress (John M. Green, 1915) https://books.google.com/books?id=tjoXAQAAMAAJ&q=pelham#v=snippet&q=pelham&f=false

Robert Pelham Jr. (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Pelham_Jr.#cite_note-4