Governor Fitzgerald's Grand Ledge Home
Near Lansing, Michigan
The house you're passing was home to Frank D. Fitzgerald, one of Michigan's most consequential mid-century governors. Born in Grand Ledge in eighteen eighty-five, Fitzgerald rose through the ranks of state government to win the governorship in nineteen thirty-four.
He served one term, lost a reelection bid, then came back in nineteen thirty-eight to win again. He never finished that second term. In March of nineteen thirty-nine, just weeks into his return to office, Fitzgerald died in this very house of a heart attack.
He was fifty-four years old. Lieutenant Governor Luren Dickinson took over as governor. Locals remembered him as a man of genuine integrity, respected across party lines in an era when that still counted for something.
