Boy governor's remains can't be found

Michigan can't find its first governor.

On Monday, a crew of workers operating two heavy excavators, regular old shovels, an assortment of power drills, wedges and sledge hammers dug diligently into downtown Capitol Park, seeking the remains of Gov. Stevens T. Mason.

The remains, believed to lie beneath a bronze statue in the park, is supposed to be moved to a more prominent place in the tiny park tucked a block behind the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel as part of a $1 million restoration.

Mason, only 19 when President Andrew Jackson named him secretary of the Michigan territory, was 24 when first elected governor in 1835, and 26 when re-elected and Michigan gained statehood in 1837. But 173 years later, Mason's statue had become a forgotten site of pigeon droppings and occasional passersby. Now, with the park's revival, Mason's statue and monument will be burnished. On Monday, workers laboriously dislodged four granite slabs -- all solid -- before hitting a solid mass of stone or metal that appeared to be an unlikely crypt. Using an excavator, they tipped over the tall pedestal that serves as the statue base, hoping to find him within.

No go.

"Now we're thinking we'll have to dig underneath, maybe 8 feet or so," said Darwyn Parks, the project manager for the contractor, Tooles.

"It's like 'Where's Waldo?' " said Charles Merz, the lead Detroit architect for the park's re-design.

The dig was supposed to go quickly, but as the sun rose higher in the sky, the assembled historians, architects, undertakers and an archaeologist began comparing their hunt for Stevens T. Mason to FBI searches under barns and floorboards for Jimmy Hoffa's remains.

This was history in the making.

Even the Harris Funeral Home, which last moved Mason's body to the Wayne County Morgue and back in 1955, has kept no records of the move.

"After you find him, it may take about an hour for us to get him," said David Kowalewski, the funeral home manager, speaking above the din of drills and shovels to the contractors. "We don't want to send a big truck if there's only an urn there."

Popular, then vilified

Even the remains themselves -- which have been variously described in newspaper accounts as cremated remains and a full skeleton -- are a matter of dispute and enigma.

"We don't know, but ashes would be easier," said Kowalewski, with a shrug.

In his lifetime, Mason was a popular figure who sent soldiers to fight for the "Toledo strip" and ultimately accepted the Upper Peninsula as a compromise and thus a route to statehood in 1837. He's also celebrated for creating Michigan's public school system, and is the namesake of the city of Mason.

Although he was re-elected, he was blamed for Michigan's economic collapse during a national downturn and left the state after his term ended in 1840. Four years later, he was dead. "Shades of contemporary politics," said Jack Dempsey, chairman of the Michigan Historical Commission, who was on hand Monday.

In 1905, Mason was resurrected as a popular figure by his biographer Lawton Hemans and moved from encrypted anonymity in New York to official reburial in Capitol Park, where bands played, veterans from the Civil and Spanish-American wars marched, and Mason's 93-year-old sister, Emily Mason, peered through her lorgnette as the $10,000 statue of Mason was dedicated.

Included was lettering on the monument base hinting of the governor's delicate condition: "The tribute of Michigan to the memory of the first governor whose ashes lie beneath."

In 1955, Mason was moved again, this time within the park, to make way for a bus terminal, and confusion ensued.

Merz, who found six sets of detailed plans for the triangular park at State and Griswold, could find no descriptions of Mason's reburial. Newspaper accounts are sparse because a strike shut down The Detroit News, Free Press and Times during his December 1955 reburial.

Belated praise

The Detroit News archive does contain a three-paragraph section of typed copy, dated Dec. 2, 1955, describing Mason's reburial "in a simple military ceremony," attended by city officials and students from Stevens T. Mason Elementary School.

On Monday, Kerry Chartkoff, the state's official Capitol historian, drove in from Lansing to see the former "young, brash, good-looking governor" get his due in the park that contained the state's first Capitol, later a high school and then a park.

'Enemies were vicious'

"His enemies were vicious and accused him of dying in the gutter, penniless, as a drunk," she added. "We're finally getting around to appreciate him as one of the finest governors Michigan ever had."

By noon Monday, when the crew abandoned the dig for the day, a swelling crowd of neighbors and storekeepers had gathered to watch.

"This is a historic moment," said DeCarlos Stewart, proprietor of nearby Xcopy Printing. "I put it on Facebook: Raising of first governor of Michigan's body."

Hopes were raised. But finding and excavating Mason's remains is a continuing project and mystery, to be continued today.

lberman@detnews.com">lberman@detnews.com (313) 222-2032