Augustus B. Woodward - Michigan Territory

Michigan Territory

Then President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson appointed Woodward on March 3, 1805, as the Michigan Territory's first Chief Justice. Woodward arrived in Detroit on June 30, 1805, with the city in ruins from the devastating fire earlier that month on June 11. Few buildings were left standing.

Woodward, with Governor William Hull and associate Justices John Griffin and Frederick Bates, possessed all the legislative power in the Territory. Woodward and Griffin, along with the current Governor and a third judge, would hold this power from 1805 until the institution of a legislature in 1824. Woodward and Hull bickered almost constantly.

In 1807 as Territorial Justice of the Michigan Territory Woodward denies the return of two slaves owned by a man in Windsor, Upper Canada (present day Ontario). Woodward declares that any man “coming into this Territory is by law of the land a freeman.”

Woodward and Hull planned Detroit, which was the capital of the Territory. L'Enfant's layout for Washington, D.C. was the model upon which they based their work (thanks to Woodward's notebook). Woodward's plan attempted to live up to the newly-adopted city motto, Speramus Meliora, Resurgit Cineribus (“We hope for better days, it will rise again from the ashes”). For the first time in Detroit's history, attention shifted fully from its river to its roads. Woodward Avenue in Detroit, originally called Court House Avenue and other names, was popularly named for Woodward's efforts in rebuilding. Woodward, somewhat in jest, claimed the road's name as nothing more than the fact that the road traveled toward the wooded area to the north of the city.

Woodward proposed a system of hexagonal street blocks, with the Grand Circus at its center. Wide avenues, alternatively 200 feet and 120 feet, would emanate from large circular plazas like spokes from the hub of a wheel. As the city grew, these would spread in all directions from the banks of the Detroit River. When Woodward presented his proposal, Detroit had fewer than 1,000 residents. The plan was abandoned after only 11 years, but not before some of its most significant elements had been implemented. Most prominent of these are the six main "spokes" of Woodward, Michigan, Grand River, Gratiot, and Jefferson avenues together with Fort Street.

During the War of 1812, Governor (and later Brigadier General) Hull surrendered Detroit to the British without a shot being fired in the Battle of Detroit. While Hull and Justices Bates and Griffin left, Woodward stayed and maintained his status in Detroit during the British occupation. The British offered him the office of Secretary of the Territory, but Woodward declined that offer. Eventually, he became a problem for the British. He was asked to leave the territory and was granted safe passage to New York.