# 1915 in Michigan

Events from the year 1915 in Michigan.

## Office holders
### State office holders

* Governor of Michigan: Woodbridge N. Ferris (Democrat)
* Lieutenant Governor of Michigan: Luren D. Dickinson (Republican)
* Michigan Attorney General: Grant Fellows (Republican)
* Michigan Secretary of State: Coleman C. Vaughan
* Speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives: Charles W. Smith (Republican)
* Chief Justice, Michigan Supreme Court: Flavius L. Brooke

### Mayors of major cities

* Mayor of Detroit: Oscar Marx (Republican)
* Mayor of Grand Rapids: George E. Ellis
* Mayor of Flint: John R. MacDonald/William H. McKeighan
* Mayor of Lansing: Benjamin A. Kyes
* Mayor of Saginaw: Ard E. Richardson/Hilem F. Paddock
* Mayor of Ann Arbor: Ernst M. Wurster

### Federal office holders

* U.S. Senator from Michigan: Charles E. Townsend (Republican)
* U.S. Senator from Michigan: William Alden Smith (Republican)
* House District 1: Frank Ellsworth Doremus (Democrat)
* House District 2: Samuel Beakes (Democrat)
* House District 3: John M. C. Smith (Republican)
* House District 4: Edward L. Hamilton (Republican)
* House District 5: Carl E. Mapes (Republican)
* House District 6: Samuel William Smith (Republican)/Patrick H. Kelley (Republican)
* House District 7: Louis C. Cramton (Republican)
* House District 8: Joseph W. Fordney (Republican)
* House District 9: James C. McLaughlin (Republican)
* House District 10: Roy O. Woodruff (Progressive)/George A. Loud (Republican)
* House District 11: Francis O. Lindquist (Republican)/Frank D. Scott (Republican)
* House District 12: William Josiah MacDonald (Progressive)/W. Frank James (Republican)

## Population

In the 1910 United States census, Michigan was recorded as having a population of 2,810,173, ranking as the ninth most populous state in the country. By 1920, Michigan's population had increased by 30.5% to 3,668,412.

### Cities

The following is a list of cities in Michigan with a population of at least 10,000 based on 1910 U.S. Census data. Historic census data from 1900 and 1920 is included to reflect trends in population increases or decreases. In recent decades, all of the state's most populous cities lie in the southern half of the lower peninsula. In 1910, owing largely to an economy based on extraction of natural resources, eight of the state's most populous cities were located north of 44° latitude; in the chart below, these cities are shaded in aqua.
| 1910 Rank | City | County | 1900 Pop. | 1910 Pop. | 1920 Pop. | Change 1910-20 |
| 1 | Detroit | Wayne | 285,704 | 465,766 | 993,678 | 113.3% |
| 2 | Grand Rapids | Kent | 87,565 | 112,571 | 137,634 | 22.3% |
| 3 | Saginaw | Saginaw | 42,345 | 50,510 | 61,903 | 22.6% |
| 4 | Bay City | Bay | 27,628 | 45,166 | 47,554 | 5.3% |
| 5 | Kalamazoo | Kalamazoo | 24,404 | 39,437 | 48,487 | 22.9% |
| 6 | Flint | Genesee | 13,103 | 38,550 | 91,599 | 137.6% |
| 7 | Jackson | Jackson | 25,180 | 31,433 | 48,374 | 53.9% |
| 8 | Lansing | Ingham | 16,485 | 31,229 | 57,327 | 83.6% |
| 9 | Battle Creek | Calhoun | 18,563 | 25,267 | 36,164 | 43.1% |
| 10 | Muskegon | Muskegon | 20,818 | 24,062 | 36,570 | 52.0% |
| 11 | Port Huron | St. Clair | 19,158 | 18,863 | 25,944 | 37.5% |
| 12 | Ann Arbor | Washtenaw | 14,509 | 14,817 | 19,516 | 31.7% |
| 13 | Pontiac | Oakland | 9,769 | 14,532 | 34,273 | 135.8% |
| 14 | Escanaba | Delta | 9,549 | 13,194 | 13,103 | −0.7% |
| 15 | Ironwood | Gogebic | 9,705 | 12,821 | 15,739 | 22.8% |
| 16 | Alpena | Alpena | 11,802 | 12,706 | 11,101 | −12.6% |
| 17 | Sault Ste. Marie | Chippewa | 10,538 | 12,615 | 12,096 | −4.1% |
| 18 | Manistee | Manistee | 14,260 | 12,381 | 9,694 | −21.7% |
| 19 | Traverse City | Grand Traverse | 9,407 | 12,115 | 10,925 | −9.8% |
| 20 | Marquette | Marquette | 10,058 | 11,503 | 12,718 | 10.6% |
| 21 | Adrian | Lenawee | 9,654 | 10,763 | 11,878 | 10.4% |
| 22 | Menominee | Menominee | 12,818 | 10,507 | 8,907 | −15.2% |
| 23 | Holland | Ottawa | 7,790 | 10,490 | 12,183 | 16.1% |

### Boom cities of the 1910s

The 1910s saw an explosion of growth in the population of small cities near Detroit. Highland Park and Hamtramck were the most extreme cases, each experiencing population increases in excess of 1,000% during the 1910s.
| 1910 Rank | City | County | 1900 Pop. | 1910 Pop. | 1920 Pop. | Change 1920-30 |
| | Highland Park | Wayne | 427 | 4,120 | 46,499 | 1,028.6% |
| | Hamtramck | Wayne | -- | 3,559 | 48,615 | 1,266% |

### Counties

The following is a list of counties in Michigan with populations of at least 50,000 based on 1910 U.S. Census data. Historic census data from 1900 and 1920 are included to reflect trends in population increases or decreases.
| 1910 Rank | County | Largest city | 1900 Pop. | 1910 Pop. | 1920 Pop. | Change 1910-20 |
| 1 | Wayne | Detroit | 348,793 | 531,591 | 1,177,645 | 121.5% |
| 2 | Kent | Grand Rapids | 129,714 | 159,145 | 183,041 | 15.0% |
| 3 | Saginaw | Saginaw | 81,222 | 89,290 | 100,286 | 12.3% |
| 4 | Houghton | Houghton | 66,063 | 88,098 | 71,930 | −18.4% |
| 5 | Bay | Bay City | 62,378 | 68,238 | 69,548 | 1.9% |
| 6 | Genesee | Flint | 41,804 | 64,555 | 125,668 | 94.7% |
| 7 | Kalamazoo | Kalamazoo | 44,310 | 60,327 | 71,225 | 18.1% |
| 8 | Calhoun | Battle Creek | 49,315 | 56,638 | 72,918 | 28.7% |
| 9 | Berrien | Niles | 49,165 | 53,622 | 62,653 | 16.8% |
| 10 | Jackson | Jackson | 48,222 | 53,426 | 72,539 | 35.8% |
| 11 | Ingham | Lansing | 39,818 | 53,310 | 81,554 | 53.0% |
| 12 | St. Clair | Port Huron | 55,228 | 52,341 | 58,009 | 10.8% |
| 13 | Oakland | Pontiac | 44,792 | 49,576 | 90,050 | 81.6% |
| 14 | Lenawee | Adrian | 48,406 | 47,907 | 47,767 | −0.3% |
| 15 | Marquette | Marquette | 41,239 | 46,739 | 45,786 | −2.0% |
| 16 | Ottawa | Holland | 39,667 | 45,301 | 47,660 | 5.2% |
| 17 | Washtenaw | Ann Arbor | 47,761 | 44,714 | 49,520 | 10.7% |
| 18 | Muskegon | Muskegon | 37,036 | 40,577 | 62,362 | 53.7% |
| 19 | Allegan | Holland | 38,812 | 39,819 | 37,540 | −5.7% |

## Sports
### Baseball

* 1915 Detroit Tigers season – The Tigers compiled a 100-54 record, the second best in club history, but finished in second place in the American League behind the Boston Red Sox. The Tigers' 1915 outfield of Ty Cobb, Sam Crawford, and Bobby Veach finished first, second, and third in the American League in both runs batted in and total bases and was selected by baseball historian Bill James as the best in major league history.
* 1915 Michigan Wolverines baseball season - Under head coach Carl Lundgren, the Wolverines compiled a 16–7–3 record. Edmund McQueen was the team captain. George Sisler played first base and pitcher for the team.

### American football

* 1915 Detroit Heralds season - Under head coach Bill Marshall, the team compiled a 5–1–1 record.
* 1915 Michigan Wolverines football team – Under head coach Fielding H. Yost, the Wolverines compiled a 4–3–1 record.
* 1915 Michigan Agricultural Aggies football team –
* 1915 Western State Hilltoppers football team -
* 1915 Michigan State Normal Normalites football team –
* 1910 Detroit Titans football team –

## Births

* January 11 - Lucille Farrier Stickel, wildlife toxicologist whose research on contaminants in wildlife ecosystems and on the pesticide DDT helped form the basis for Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in Hillman, Michigan
* March 14 - Roy Kellerman, U.S. Secret Service agent assigned to John F. Kennedy when he was assassinated, in New Baltimore, Michigan
* April 10 - Harry Morgan, actor (Bill Gannon on Dragnet, Colonel Sherman T. Potter in M*A*S*H), in Detroit
* April 13 - Bob Devaney, head football coach at Wyoming (1957–1961) and Nebraska (1962–1972), and athletic director at Nebraska (1967–1993), in Saginaw, Michigan
* May 19 - Elman Service, cultural anthropologist who researched Latin American Indian ethnology, cultural evolution, and theory and method in ethnology, in Tecumseh, Michigan
* June 15 - Thomas Huckle Weller, virologist who received Nobel Prize in 1954 for showing how to cultivate poliomyelitis viruses in a test tube, in Ann Arbor, Michigan

## Deaths

* November 16 - Julius C. Burrows, United States Senator from Michigan (1895-1911), at age 78 in Kalamazoo