Fred Van Every Store

32770 Franklin Road

This two- story, wooden frame building was built by the descendants of the Van Every family in 1918 as a store, billiard parlor, candy store and was the first home of the Golfdale Market.
The pool hall was occupied by the men in the evening to talk and use the spittoon!

Around 1945, the Van Every family, Fred and Stella, leased the building to the grocery store and moved to Southfield. They were the third generation of Van Everys to live in Franklin. Fred was the grandson, of Peter Van Every Sr. who owned the grist mill at 14 Mile and Franklin roads (Cider Mill.)

In 1954 it was an interior decorating shop and later Gerald’s Salon. It has also been occupied by attorney offices.

The building was built on the public county road easement making it impossible to widen Franklin Road on this curvy stretch.

Peter Van Every Mansion

This was the home of Peter Van Every and Amy Deer built around 1838. Later, it became the Temperance Hotel operated by Peter Jr. and his wife Jane Charity Drake. It opened in the 1870’s.

From 1894 to 1898, Dr. Edward Andrew Smith practiced medicine from an office on the first floor. His son, Lawrence E. Smith of Pontiac, believed he also lived in the hotel and still rode horseback on his rounds to see his patients. Smith remembers that his father used to shoot partridges in the mill pond and watched cock fights in the driveway between the two Congleton buildings.

Fred, Peter Jr’s son and his wife Stella continued to live in the rooms behind the hotel until 1914.

In November 1945, Marguerite Ford Ritner opened a nursery school in the hotel which she renovated. When she bought it, there was no electricity or
plumbing in the building. The coal bin was in the kitchen.