History of Michigan, / by Charles Moore. [Vol. 3]

HISTORY OF MICHIGAN

1241

Mr. Yatzek completed his own handsome brick modern residence in
I9I1 at 955 Field avenue. Besides his membership and presidency for
the year I914 of the Master Carpenters Association Mr. Yatzek is a
member of the Detroit Builders & Traders Exchange. He and his family are members of the German Lutheran Evangelical church. He married Lena Stoetzner, who was born in Saxony, Germany, daughter of
Charles Stoetzner, who came to this country when Mrs. Yatzek was an
infant. To Mr. and Mrs. Yatzek has been born one daughter, Florence
Elsa, aged thirteen years.
JERE C. HUTCHINS. The president of the Detroit United Railway has
been a railroad man since the minor beginnings of his very successful
career. Before assuming the heavy responsibilities of his present executive office, Jere C. Hutchins, as a railway engineer, was identified with
the construction and improvement of various lines in different parts of
the state, and at one time mingled with his profession several years of
active newspaper work, and that experience has probably not been without its practical value in connection with railway management. For
twenty years Mr. Hutchins has been identified with the street and interurban railway interests of Detroit and vicinity and has been at the head
of the Detroit United Railway almost from the time the various companies were consolidated under that management.
Jere C. Hutchins is a native of the south, born in Carroll parish,
Louisiana, October 13, 1853. His parents were Anthony W. and Mary
B. (Chamberlin) Hutchins, the former a native of Mississippi and the
latter of Pennsylvania. Anthony W. Hutchins for many years was a
successful planter in Louisiana, but soon after the birth of Jere C. moved
to Missouri, and both he and his wife spent the rest of their lives in that
state.
Prepared for his career in the public schools of Lexington, Missouri,
and by study under private tutor, Jere C. Hutchins at the age of seventeen
took up the study of civil engineering under Major Morris, one of the
leaders of his profession at that time in Missouri. His early experience
as a civil engineer identified him with construction work on the Missouri
division of the Gulf and Lexington Railroad, with engineering departments of the Kansas Pacific, the Kansas and Texas, and the Texas Pacific
railroads, and he was a construction engineer with each of the last three
mentioned. It was while in Texas that he was drawn temporarily away
from his profession into the newspaper field. In I876 he found work as
reporter on the Waco Examiner at Waco, Texas, and subsequently became editor of that journal. He was also Texas political correspondent
for New York and New Orleans papers. After five years of newspaper
work, Mr. Hutchins in I88I resumed his profession as engineer, and
the following thirteen years were spent successively in the engineering
department of the New Orleans and Pacific, the Missouri, Kansas and
Texas, and the Illinois Central railroads.
Having already established a reputation as an engineer, Mr. Hutchins
in 1894 moved to Detroit, where he became vice president of the Citizens
Street Railway Company, and one of the large stockholders in that enttrprise. About the same time he was made president of the Detroit, Fort
Wayne and Belle Isle Railway Company and vice-president of the Detroit Electric Railway Company. Those were the three corporations that
at that time controlled nearly all the street railway transportation in and
about Detroit and the responsibilities of their successful management devolved upon Mr. Hutchins more than upon any other one official. While
known among his associates as a duly conservative business man, Mr.
Hutchins pursued a liberal policy in increasing the facilities and good