Invisible Histories

Michigan native Geraldine Huff Doyle, who died on December 26^th in Lansing, was only a teenager when the UPI photograph was taken of her working in a factory and for most of her adult lifetime had no idea she was the original inspiration for ‘Rosie the Riveter.’ As typically happens, the myth took on a life of its own quite different from the reality. Among other details of her story as a busy wife and mother, the article mentions that Geraldine was a cellist who had quit the factory job not long after the initial photo was taken because she was worried about irreparably damaging her hands. And about that iconic, robust physique? “She didn’t have those big muscles,” said her daughter Stephanie Gregg of Eaton Rapids, Mich. “She was busy playing cello.”

The original UPI photo, here on the cover of Time-Life's The Patriotic Tide: 1940-1950 (This Fabulous Century)

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Long a home to Native Americans (particularly the Algonquin), in the 1800s and first part of the 1900s and largely due to its mining, timber and available land Michigan became a magnet for those immigrating to America, including a large number from Finland. For some it functioned as a brief stopover before they moved on to other parts of the US, while some have stayed in Michigan since the arrival of their family’s first immigrants.

Seeking Michigan is a searchable website with the following, constantly growing collections:  Architecture, Civil War (manuscripts, photography and service records), Death Records 1897-1920, Early Photography, Governors of Michigan, Lighthouses and Life-Saving Stations, Maps, Main Streets, Music of Michigan, Oral Histories and WPA Property Inventories.

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