In one generation Michigan turned from a lumber-and-mining state into the automobile capital of the world.
The people in this story fill our public-record database. Search a surname and filter to Michigan.
Search Michigan records →Ford and the assembly line
Henry Ford’s moving assembly line and 1914 five-dollar day at Highland Park made the automobile a mass product and Detroit a magnet for workers. The Model T put the world on wheels and made Michigan the center of American manufacturing.
The Big Three and the union
Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler grew into the “Big Three,” and the great 1936–37 Flint sit-down strike won recognition for the United Auto Workers, reshaping American labor.
The Arsenal of Democracy
In the Second World War the auto plants converted to war production — Willow Run built B-24 bombers by the thousand — and the plants drew a huge Southern Black and Appalachian migration that transformed Michigan’s cities.
Finding your Michigan ancestors
- Company, union, and census occupation records tie a family to this industry — start with the occupation column and the local company’s payroll and union rolls.
- Census records (free through 1950) list occupation and residence — placing your family in a specific Michigan county and town, decade by decade.
- Death & cemetery records — search our Michigan database for the people in this story and the generations around them.
- The Archives of Michigan & the Library of Michigan in Lansing holds the deeper collections — company, church, military, and county records.
- Newspapers on the Library of Congress’s Chronicling America carried the obituaries, accidents, and milestones of these communities.
We work back from you to the ancestor who lived this history — census, vital, church, and cemetery records, written into a book and an interactive family site. Flat rate, no DNA test.
See how it works →Frequently asked questions
Why is Detroit called the Motor City?
Because Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler built the American automobile industry there in the early 1900s, making Detroit the center of car manufacturing.
What was the Arsenal of Democracy?
The nickname for America’s war-production effort in World War II, centered on Michigan’s converted auto plants — including Willow Run, which mass-produced B-24 bombers.