When most of us go to visit family and friends, we expect nothing more than a warm greeting at the door and perhaps a nice meal in the dining room. We certainly do not expect to be honored with a parade and a band. That is what did happen to one young man when he visited Ypsilanti in December of 1885. This treatment resulted in the outrage of the community.

Freeman Ward was said to have been an 18-year-old lad of a modest and unassuming nature, who had been raised in a Christian household and taught to observe the Sabbath. Still, he seems to have enjoyed the thrill of gambling and the pleasure of good luck on occasion. On Saturday, Dec. 19, 1885, he was the winner of a wager at the Princess Rink in Detroit, to his gain of $50. This was when the roller skating craze was at its height, and such places were seen, at least by some, as dens of vice.

On Sunday, December 20, 1885, Ward grew tried of Detroit, and decided to visit his family in Ypsilanti. He stepped off the train at the Michigan Central depot in what is now the Depot Town section of the city, expecting nothing more exciting that a quite walk to the family home nearby.

“But no sooner had he landed then he was seized and carried to a hack, a band playing at its best. A rope was fastened to the tongue of the hack, an open carriage and a bevy of boys pulled at the rope. A broom was displayed, a few carriages in procession, and the sidewalks crowed with boys and shameless men, the band playing tunes of triumph; and thus was Ward conducted to the Hawkins House (a hotel on Michigan Ave. across the street from the library). Dinner not obtainable here, he was treated to the oysters at a restaurant,” reported The Ypsilanti Commercial of Friday, December 25, 1885.

The Ypsilanti Commercial reported the event, but did not approve of it. “The whole proceeding cannot be characterized in too strong language as an outrage upon not simply a minister’s conscience- a church conscience - the conscience of the respectable moral community but an almost universal public conscience. It makes all classes of men and women cry out for very shame.” The Commercial observed that the leaders of such an event had to “possess well nigh total depravity,” and be “beyond shame or any regard to public sentiment.”

“That the band on the holy Sabbath day,” continued the Commercial, “should lend it self to such an outrage is beyond our comprehension. A good and well ordered band is felt to be almost a public necessity; but a thousand times better have no band than one that will allow itself to aid and give éclat to a performance as that of last Sunday.”

“If this wicked, open trampling on the sanctities of the Sabbath shall be the means of awaking dormant public conscience, sad especially the increasing watchfulness and care of parents as to where the children are on the Sabbath, add increasing zeal to Christian effort to save our youth it will not prove an unmixed evil,” concluded the Commercial.

The Commercial was not alone in its sense of outrage, and was not the first to express such feelings. The Ypsilanti City Council had met in regular session on Monday, Dec. 21, 1885, the day after the event. At the meeting, Mayor Chester L. Yost presented the council with a communication concerning what he called the “disorderly and disgraceful proceedings.” The communication was included in the minutes of the council that were published by the Commercial on Friday, Dec. 25, 1885.

“So little had any such outrageous occurrence been anticipated,” noted Yost, “that no ordinance has been provided to meet the case. The exhibition of yesterday would seem to have been an outgrowth of the Roller Skating Rink craze. Now Ypsilanti is an educational centre, and ahs heretofore been regarded as a moral and enlightened city. The youth of both sexes are sent here with confidence by parents and guardians to be educated, and we have our own proportion of children who are the pride and hope of their parents and of the country. The laws of our State and the sense of the community require a decent observance of the Sabbath day.”

The communication from Mayor Yost was adopted as the sentiment of the council by a vote of 8- 0.