The Arkansas in the Civil War Message Board

Re: Gratiot pronunciation
In Response To: Gratiot pronunciation ()

Sorry to arrive so late to this party--just had to chime in. Here in the Detroit, Michigan Metro area we have an especially famous and useful road which runs from Detroit, Wayne Co.; north through all of Macomb County, and then all the way to Port Huron, St. Clair Co. Seems as if everyone can find their way home if they can just locate Gratiot Ave. I hope this doesn't offend anyone when I say that we pronounce it pretty much like this, "Grass Shit".... (Although we really only pronounce one S... "Grashit")

I'm going way off the topic of civil war but here's a couple of blog excerpts re: Gratiot Ave written by someone named Tom Kapanka:

"...The Avenue I've not yet mentioned was named after Colonel Charles Gratiot, a hero and chief engineer of the War of 1812 who built a fort in what is now Port Huron, Michigan. It was later named Fort Gratiot in his honor, and the 60-mile "spoke" that connected the Fort to Detroit is Gratiot Avenue...
The correct pronunciation of "Gratiot" is a mystery that only people in the Port Huron-Detroit corridor seem to know. It was a French name, but it's been anglicized. The first syllable sounds like "grass" with an "H" on the end. It is not pronounced Gra-T-ot but more like "grasshut." (In fact, must people put a soft "i" in the last syllable and it sounds like a warning sign on the lawn of a petting zoo, but this is hard to explain on a family-friendly blog so I'll leave it at that.) "
http://patternsofink.blogspot.com/2007/08/pause-some-background-about-gratiot.html

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