Flushing, Michigan

ClanDonnell was there all day June 7th, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. We’ll told some tales of Ireland and taught Flushingites a wee bit of Irish history.

Sullivan’s Irish Alley is a great Irish and Celtic store in downtown Flushing. It has an awful lot of neat merchandise packed into a quaint store on Main Street. Ed and Caron Sullivan also lead trips to Ireland and the other Celtic nations, and you will never find better guides.

We shared the stage (figuratively, since there was no stage) with Roane, a brilliant Celtic/American folk band.

Art in the Park will be at Flushing’s Riverview Park, down the streets from Sullivan’s. Even if you are not conspicuously astute, you might have guessed that Riverview Park is on a river. It is, to be precise, the Flint River. The river originates in Lapeer County, flows in and around the City of Flint and Genesee County, and ultimately into Saginaw County where it empties into the Shiawassee River. The translation of the Ojibwe name for the river is “Flinty River”. Why the Ojibwes thought the river was flinty, I will never know.

While we are on the subject of names, how did a small town in Genesee County, Michigan get the name Flushing? Blame it (or credit it) on New York and the Netherlands. The town sprung up next to the railroad in the 1830s, and the local railroad baron was originally from Flushing, New York. Flushing is in Queens, New York City, and was named after the Dutch town of Vlissingen. Somehow “Vlissingen” spit out in English comes out close to “Flushing”. Or so they say.

Click the pdf link below the Sullivan’s event flyer, and this link to Sullivan’s event announcement.

Photographs by Flushing Michigan Happenings