LINCOLN PARK OBSERVES 250TH ANNIVERSARY OF ST. COSME LINE
The community of Lincoln Park will gather at 2:00 p.m. on Sunday July 26, 2026 to commemorate the 250thanniversary of the St. Cosme tract of land, a gift of the Potawatomi Nation to Pierre St. Cosme and his family dated July 1, 1776. [This event has been RESCHEDULED following the July 1st heat wave.]
On July 1, 1776, thousands of acres (French arpents) of land were deeded by fourteen named Potawatomi chiefs. Pierre St. Cosme, a French Canadian born at Montreal, lived most of his life at Detroit, serving the French government here as magistrate and notary until 1763 when the English won control of all French Canadian territories following the French & Indian War.
The St. Cosme family lived on Rue St Jacques within the boundaries of the old fort (formerly Fort Pontchartrain). ‘For love and affection’, Pierre St. Cosme and his sons Amable and Dominique were presented the land by the Potawatomi chieftains, land located south of the River Rouge and centered on the Ecorse River at the Detroit River. The tract extended westward for nearly four miles. The lands were equally divided between the father and the sons, spreading one-half mile north and south from the mouth of the Ecorse River. The northern boundary of the tract became “St. Cosme Line” and later formed St. Cosme Line Road for more than a hundred years until 1923 when it was renamed State Street and soon after, Southfield Road.
Occurring the same week as the signing of the Declaration of Independence in the colonies, this transaction of deeded property was the foundation for the earliest downriver private claims by many French Canadian farm families who would subsequently develop the region that became part of Ecorse Township in 1827. Many of those early names continue today – Beaubien, Campau, Drouillard, Cicotte, Rousson, Labadie, Salliotte, Renaud, LeBlanc, among others.
Today, the one-time St. Cosme tract holds incorporated areas of Ecorse, Wyandotte, Lincoln Park, and Allen Park.
The commemoration ceremony will take place on Sunday, July 26th at 2:00 p.m. at the Historical Museum, 1335 Southfield Road in Lincoln Park.