Augustus Brevoort Woodward (born Elias Brevoort Woodward; November 1774 – June 12, 1827) was the first Chief Justice of the Michigan Territory. In that position, he played a prominent role in the reconstruction of Detroit following a devastating fire in 1805. He promoted an urban design based on radial avenues, as in Washington, DC and Paris. He is also known as one of the founders of the University of Michigan, established by the legislature in 1817.
Early life
He was born Elias Brevoort Woodward in 1774 in New York, the son of John and Ann Silvester Woodward. His mother was of Flemish ancestry, and his father was of English descent. John Woodward was a merchant and importer, as well as a member of the Continental Army. The family lived in Manhattan on the corner of Pine and Pearl Streets.
Woodward graduated from Columbia College. After working in Philadelphia as a clerk in the U.S. Treasury Department, he later read the law and practiced as an attorney in Washington, DC.
Woodward never married. His biographer, Arthur M. Woodford, describes Woodward as a prototype of Washington Irving's Ichabod Crane. He stood tall, and was thin, sallow, and stooped. His long, narrow face was dominated by a big nose. He had thick, black hair. His contemporaries commented on his slovenliness.
While living in Washington, D.C., Woodward was described as "a man of middle age, a hardened bachelor who wore nut-brown clothing . . . he slept in his office which was never swept ... and was eccentric and erratic. His friends were few and his practice was so small that he hardly made a living." But while working in Washington, he got to know President Thomas Jefferson, and they shared scientific and education interests.
Michigan Territory
President Thomas Jefferson and Woodward knew each other personally. Jefferson appointed Woodward on March 3, 1805, as the Michigan Territory's first Chief Justice. When Woodward arrived in Detroit on June 30, 1805, he found the city in ruins from the devastating fire earlier that month on June 11. Few buildings were left standing.
Woodward, with Governor William Hull and associate Justices John Griffin and Frederick Bates, possessed all the legislative power in the Territory. Woodward and Griffin, along with the current Governor and a third judge, held this power from 1805 until the institution of a legislature in 1824. Woodward and Hull bickered almost constantly. One of Woodward's legacies is the Woodward Code: a series of statutes serving as the basis of the Territorial Supreme Court legal procedures.
Woodward protected the free status of Michigan Territory in regard to slavery. In 1807 as Territorial Justice, he refused to allow the return of two slaves owned by a man in Windsor, Upper Canada (present-day Ontario). Woodward declared that any man "coming into this Territory is by law of the land a freeman." Detroit became a station on the Underground Railroad, by which fugitive slaves escaped from the South. After Canada had abolished slavery, many went across the river to escape slave catchers who operated even in the northern border areas.
During the War of 1812, Governor (and later Brigadier General) Hull surrendered Detroit to the British without a shot being fired in the Battle of Detroit. While Hull and Justices Bates and Griffin left, Woodward stayed and maintained his judicial status in Detroit during the British occupation. The British offered him the office of Secretary of the Territory, but Woodward declined that offer.
Eventually, he became a problem for the British. He was asked to leave the territory and was granted safe passage to New York. The United States regained control of Detroit in 1813.
Planning of Detroit
Following the destruction of Detroit in the Great Fire of 1805, it fell to Woodward and Hull to oversee the rebuilding of the then territorial capital. The resulting plan drew heavily from Pierre L'Enfant's layout for Washington, D.C. Woodward proposed a system of hexagonal street blocks, with the Grand Circus at its center. Wide avenues, alternatively 200 feet and 120 feet, were designed to radiate from large circular plazas like spokes from the hub of a wheel. Most prominent of these are the construction of the six main "spokes" of Woodward, Michigan, Grand River, Gratiot, and Jefferson avenues and Fort Street. Cornell University professor of city planning John William Reps writes that this original 1807 design for Detroit was "one of the most unusual city plans ever devised.”