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Any photos not otherwise credited are from the personal collection of Frank Passic, Albion Historian.
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Morning Star, June 24, 2001, pg. 5 People have asked me "where do you come up with the information for your articles?" Sometimes on Saturdays I visit local history rooms open in libraries across southern Michigan, and discover information about Albion in the strangest places. Usually these are in specialty books about Michigan, in which an Albion resident made a contribution, such as in the Civil War or as a member of a specific club or group. Others are of the biographical nature where businessmen paid to have their personal story printed in that year’s biographical album. Others references are found in some obscure text or lists by chance. My article about the "little drummer boy" several weeks ago is a case-in-point. Sometimes I come across information that is too good to be true, such as the subject matter for this week’s article. In the local history room of the Kalamazoo Public Library there is a large scroll-type map hanging on the wall on your right when you walk on. It was printed relatively recently, in 1986. It is called the "Hearne Brothers Official Earth Science Polyconic Projection Map of Michigan." The firm is located in Warren, Michigan. According to the dictionary, a polyconic projection map is one "consisting of a composite series of concentric cones each of which before being unrolled has been placed over a sphere so as to be tangent to a different parallel of latitude." This map of Michigan contains various circles and other shapes for cities with numbers in them, and unfortunately the library didn’t have the "key" explaining what these symbols meant. Upon looking at Calhoun County and the area around Albion, they labeled a "new town" just north of Albion which I never heard of before, nor had seen on any map in all my years of Albion research: the town of "Daninvick." Wondering what this was about, I looked in both recent and earlier plat maps to see if someone with the last name of Daninvick owned land in the vicinity, and didn’t find any such name. The name Daninvick sounds Russian, and I was thinking it might possibly be a settlement of Russians north of Albion. The Sudnykovych property is located about where this Daninvick is supposed to be located, but again no Daninvick ever lived there. The map shows Duck Lake Road (28 Mile Road) going north of Albion as a major road, but then turning right on J Drive North (Devereaux Road) into Devereaux and out to M-99. North of J Drive there is no Duck Lake Road! Hmmm. Just south of the J Drive/28 Mile Road intersection maybe a couple of houses is a dot and the name Daninvick. Somebody goofed or was playing a trick. Maybe the printing firm placed this fictitious town in there to catch firms who might illegally reproduce its map, just like small phone companies used to do by placing a few fictitious names in their directory to prove that the big phone company copied their listings without their permission. In any event, from our Historical Notebook this week we present this map showing the town of Daninvick, which you might like to visit sometime. If you know of such a place or family, let me know; otherwise please don’t drive around in circles trying to find it.  Map showing the town of Daninvick All text copyright, 2024 © all rights reserved Frank Passic
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