WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of CuriosiD, we answer the question:

“How did Ann Arbor get its name?”

Ann Arbor is known for its tree-lined streets and vibrant university-town feel. But how did it get its name? One WDET listener wanted to find out.

Rhea Walden, a longtime WDET listener and social worker in metro Detroit, spent years living and studying in the Ypsilanti-Ann Arbor area. She says the question had been on her mind for decades. So, she wrote to CuriosiD.

The short answer

There are a couple theories about how Ann Arbor got its name.

The most widely accepted version — and the one Walden remembers reading — is that the town was named after the founders’ wives.

“Every time I went to Ann Arbor, I would always wonder, how did this place get its name?” Walden said. “I looked it up, and I swear it said that it was named after one of the founders’ wives. So when the question popped back up in my head some years later, I went to go look it up again — it was not there.”

To get an answer, we turned to Grace Shackman, a longtime Ann Arbor historian and writer for the Ann Arbor Observer, who confirmed the theory.

Meet the founders

Ann Arbor was officially founded in 1824 by two men: John Allen and Elisha Rumsey. But despite their place in the city’s history, Shackman says they weren’t community visionaries.

“These two guys met on the way here. They also knew that…the next year the Erie Canal was going to open. In which time it would be a lot easier for people to get here,” she said. “So they decided to pool their money, and they each, you know, equal to what they could put in, but bought this land.”

Allen and Rumsey were land speculators, looking to turn a profit. They purchased 640 acres of land along the Huron River and planned to subdivide it into smaller plots to sell to new settlers.

To make the town more appealing — and valuable — they lobbied to have it named the Washtenaw County seat.

“They got it because they offered free land to the government,” Shackman said. “And they offered to build a courthouse and a jail, and also a bridge across the Huron River.”

So why ‘Ann Arbor’?

According to Shackman, the naming of the city has a mix of romance and marketing behind it.

“John Allen was married to Ann Allen, and Rumsey — the woman that he was running away with — was Mary Ann Rumsey. So they decided on ‘Ann’s’… Ann Arbor.”

The word “Arbor” was likely a nod to the oak trees that once dominated the landscape, she said.

And then they left…

Despite founding the city, neither of Ann Arbor’s founders stayed very long.

“These two guys were just…it was just for money. And neither of them stayed very long,” Shackman said. “John Allen, he just… he was a wheeler-dealer, and he just kept moving. So he ended up, I think, on the West Coast, and then he died.”

Mary Ann Rumsey also disappeared from town history. And Ann Allen? She didn’t stay either.

“She was from Virginia, and she liked Virginia ‘civilized’ life better,” Shackman said. “When [Allen] left, she just went back to Virginia.”

The name (and city) endured

The city’s original spelling was “Annarbour,” recorded in Wayne County on May 25, 1824. Over time, it became the spelling we know today.

Despite its mercenary beginnings, Ann Arbor grew into a thriving and beloved city:

• 1837: The University of Michigan relocated to Ann Arbor, transforming it into an academic center.
• It became a hub for German immigrants, artists, musicians, and eventually a global destination for progressive ideas and innovation.

And through all that, the name continued.

“Even if the founders weren’t in it for the long haul, it’s kind of nice that the name stuck,” Rhea said.

We want to hear from you! 

Have a question about southeast Michigan’s history or culture?
Send it our way at wdet.org/curiosid, or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

More from CuriosiD:

• Does Gen Z know who Bob Seger is?
• What is the oldest bar in Detroit?
• What happened to the Cobo Hall Christmas Carnival?

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“As an independent artist, you have so many limitations, but I actually enjoy them…”

Ann Arbor-based singer-songwriter Elisabeth Pixley-Fink is describing that ever-uphill feeling countless artists know all too well, appreciating how necessity breeds invention and how lacking the luxury of certain resources spurs a fruitful spontaneity. This particularly applied to the filming of Pixley-Fink’s new music video, as she and director Pia Lu only had four hours in which to film it. 

“We filmed it in my parents’ backyard while they were out for an afternoon,” Pixley-Fink said, referring to the captivating visuals for her latest single, “Fearless and the Pure,” which premiered last Friday. Utilizing interior vestibules, driveways, austere fields, and even a cautiously shattered mirror, they were able to effectively finish just around sunset. 

“Fearless and the Pure” is featured on Pixley-Fink’s latest full-length album, “Heartskin,” which dropped on Feb. 28. This is her second full-length album since emerging into the Michigan music scene more than a decade ago, along with four EPs (which you can find on bandcamp). Pixley-Fink is known for gracefully shifting from richly resonant and melodic ambient folk ballads to gritty garage rock gusto.

Inspired by a masterful blend of riot grrrl, ambient stillness, and the work of queer Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, “Heartskin” is 12 songs of a heart shedding its own skin. Pixley-Fink admitted, “…it’s a hard album for me to talk about because it came from a process of experiencing heavy, painful growth and transformation.

“…the title comes from this poem by Lorca, ‘Corazon Nuevo,’ which conjures this image of a person holding their ‘heartskin’ in their hands, like a serpent shedding its skin, ‘…full of honey and wounds…,’ so it’s the love and sweetness and the pain. That’s what the album is about — the sweetness and pain of being in relationships with other people, whether it’s romantic or not. I also think of heartskin as a membrane that we all have over our chest. It’s how we connect with other people — how we can create loving boundaries, but also how we shut people out.” 

Pixley-Fink said she wanted a key visual element of the video to be about “reclaiming the color red, as an exploration of femininity, of purity and seductiveness, or sexuality.”

“I also love performing live, and I’ve loved the experience of coming alive while performing for an audience, so I wanted to use a microphone and mic cable as my main prop,” she said. “I wanted it to be pretty playful and endearing, but also serious.” 

The video, which was edited by Detroit-based artist Phillip Carel, effectively captures the beautiful messiness of how we navigate our way through any relationship; it’s often imperfect and impulsive and can not only break our hearts but wrack our brains. The sonic aesthetic of the song also taps into that singular angst we encounter when navigating relationships.

“I wanted (the music of ‘Heartskin‘) to be as live as possible,” Pixley-Fink said, noting that she recorded it to two-inch tape at a Detroit-based studio known as The Deli. 

“‘Fearless and the Pure’ is a live take of me singing and playing guitar. And because we recorded to tape, there were literal limitations of how much (tape) we had — so I had to make choices in the moment and stick with them. I had to stick with any imperfections in the music, as a testament to how we show up in relationships with other people.” 

Pixley-Fink regularly performs around the state, either as a solo artist, or with her five-piece band, informally known as EPF the rock band. She has a show set for May 31 at the North Star Lounge in Ann Arbor, and is currently planning a Detroit show, with no set date yet. Music-wise, Pixley-Fink said she’s excited to get back into the studio, as she’s already got more than enough songs written to fill her next album, whenever and whatever that will be.

Find Elisabeth Pixley-Fink’s music on bandcamp, and follow on Instagram for more! 

MI Local with host Jeff Milo exposes diverse emerging artists, bands and acts local to Michigan. Listen every Tuesday from 9-10 p.m. ET, or catch the re-air Saturday from 1-2 a.m. ET on 101.9 WDET FM or stream on-demand at wdet.org.