People of Detroit:
Cassius Hollenback - A Mayoral Mystery

If you study anything long enough, you are bound to find contradictions and misleading information -- and sometimes, even a mystery. A while back, Jacquelyn Y. Watts of the City of Detroit, emailed me looking for information on a former Detroit Mayor. The man's names was Cassius Hollenbeck, and he is thought by some to have been mayor around 1900.
Hollenbeck appears in no known (to me) lists of Detroit mayors. I have never seen his name in a Detroit history text. In fact, I had never heard his name until Ms. Watts emailed me.
Mr. Hollenback's great-grand-nephew, Alexander Korycinski, has shared the following information:
"Cassius Hollenbeck was my great-grand-uncle. There is documentary evidence that he practiced law in Detroit, according to numerous city directories from 1887 into the 1920s. He graduated from the law school of the University of Michigan in 1885. His law offices were located in the Buhl building and the Whitney block. I think his rural Cortland County, New York relatives were very proud of his accomplishments; perhaps someone exaggerated in his obituary, which did indeed state that he was a former mayor of Detroit."
A quick search on the internet turned up the following links:
An obituary from a Cortland County, New York newspaper
According to the obituary, he died on April 19, 1927. According to other pages on the same site, he was born on October 25, 1857.
I have emailed the author of the site to find more information on Cassius and will post any information I find on this mystery Mayor.