Meet the Most Crooked Politician in Michigan History

We’ve had our share, but the most crooked statewide elected official in Michigan history is a guy you’ve probably never heard of.

Daniel E. Soper was a Democrat from Newaygo who was elected Michigan’s Secretary of State in 1890, and he had a scandalous resumé that’s hard to top. He was a convicted bootlegger before getting into politics, he was a thief and an embezzler while he was in office, and then he became a central figure in the biggest archeological hoax in American history.

If you like colorful tales of 19th century scofflaws, you’re going to love this one.

The story starts in 1854, when 12-year-old Daniel Soper’s family moved from New York to Michigan. They eventually settled in Newaygo, a small town north of Grand Rapids, where Soper married a woman named Mary Howell and then opened a drug store in 1865, just as the Civil War was ending.

A few years later, in 1869, he apparently decided it was a good idea to get his criminal career started, so he became a bootlegger. He started selling liquor that didn’t have the required tax stamp attached—a federal crime—and he was caught and indicted by a grand jury. Soper pleaded guilty and had to pay a hefty fine of $500 (about $12,000 in today’s dollars).

Soper laid low and kept his nose clean for the next decade or so, and in the 1880s, he got involved in Democratic politics in Newaygo. In 1885, he was appointed by Democratic President Grover Cleveland as Newaygo’s first Democratic postmaster. In those days, postmaster was a highly partisan, highly political appointment, and Soper had become a darling of the local Democratic Party, serving as an alderman and school board member.

Soper’s star began to shine so brightly on the statewide stage that, in 1890, the Michigan Democrats picked him as their nominee for Secretary of State.

Michigan had gone through 35 straight years of Republican Secretaries of State and 40 years of Republican governors, but 1890 was a blue wave year in Michigan. Democrat Edwin Winans of Livingston County was elected governor, and Democrat James E. Soper of Newaygo was elected Secretary of State. Democrats won up and down the ballot.

The 1890 election wasn’t without some drama, however. Just a week before the votes were cast that fall, the State Republic (forerunner of the Lansing State Journal), a heavily Republican newspaper, unveiled a classic “October Surprise,” hoping to sway the election. In a front-page story on Oct. 27, the State Republic revealed Soper’s bootlegging conviction from 1869, which was not well-known since it wasn’t covered by the papers back when it happened.

“Tried, convicted and fined $500 in U.S. District Court,” the paper wrote. “Is this the Dan Soper running on the Democratic ticket?”

Even though the Democratic nominee had been a convicted bootlegger 21 years earlier, the voters were not swayed. Soper rolled to an easy victory.

Newaygo held a huge parade to celebrate Soper’s victory, and the Grand Rapids Press covered it by writing, “Yesterday was a grand day for Newaygo. The whole town seemed to be wild as the train (carrying Soper) pulled in. A brass band and torchlight procession was at the depot to welcome the visitors. The parade through the city and to the hotel was a great pyrotechine display. Everybody cheered and all were happy.”

Soper himself was so happy that in January 1891, when he took office as Michigan’s new Secretary of State, he marked the occasion by embezzling the state’s money. If people came into the office to pay a fine or pay for a license, Soper would pocket some of the cash. He opened all the mail that came into the office, and if an envelope happened to contain some cash to pay for something, Soper would just take some.

Gov. Winans later explained the scheme to a reporter. “We had evidence that the letters often contained sums of money which was never turned over to the state treasurer,” he said. “Still, the amount could not have been very large. We do not know the amounts, but we know some of the letters contained remittances which should have been turned over.”

The Secretary of State was a petty thief. Great.

Soper also held up his deputy, a man named Louis E. Rowley, by demanding that Rowley give him $500 of his annual $2,000 salary or Soper would fire him. Soper’s final act of malfeasance was that he ordered thousands of unneeded state manuals and reams of blank paper and got a kickback from the companies that sold them.

Credit goes to Lansing Mayor Frank Johnson for finding out about all of this and sending an official petition to Gov. Winans in December 1891, demanding that Soper be forced to resign. Winans was outraged at Soper’s conduct, and Soper did indeed resign on Dec. 19, 1891.

The Saginaw Courier-Herald wrote about the scandalous end to Soper’s crime spree in poetic terms: “Mr. Soper retires under fire, distinctly and dishonorably, and the Democratic state officials, from the governor down to the humble janitor, with the possible exception of the deputy secretary of state, are in the slough of despond.”

Soper went back to Newaygo with his tail between his legs, bought a newspaper a few years later, and then prepped himself for the third act in his life of crime and deception. And to be honest, this one dwarfed all the others by a long shot.

Starting in 1907, Soper became one of the leading characters in the greatest archeological hoax of all time, a scam that has become known as the Michigan Relics case. It was an extremely elaborate scam and numerous books and documentaries have been made about it.

Here’s the story in a nutshell. Starting in 1890, the year Soper was elected Secretary of State, a sign painter from Montcalm County named James Scotford started attracting attention because of some ancient relics he supposedly found in Michigan. The relics included a variety of slates and tablets and other items, all of which appeared to show that Michigan was once home to an ancient civilization that dated back as far as 3500 B.C.

Scotford “dug up” hundreds of these artifacts and began to sell them across the country. His operation really picked up in 1907, when he joined forces with 64-year-old Daniel Soper.

Soper began acting as a sort of pitch man for Scotford’s enterprise. They would find a location in Michigan that supposedly contained some of these artifacts, and then Soper would invite out a whole host of local dignitaries, media folks and other people to help him dig them up.

A whole lot of people bought the story hook, line and sinker, and they gladly paid Scotford and Soper big money for these relics. But others were skeptical, including the Detroit Free Press, which ran a story on Nov. 15, 1907, that said, “Hinting at efforts to palm off fraudulent prehistoric relics on collectors, several archeologists have entered into a controversy with Daniel E. Soper and James Scotford, of Detroit, over the genuineness of collections said to have been unearthed in mounds in various parts of Michigan.”

This went on for several years, but by 1911, the scam finally unraveled. It turns out that Scotford had been manufacturing the relics for years at his home and at various other locations, helped by his sons Percy and Charles. Scotford’s own stepdaughter signed an affidavit in 1911 saying she had seen him making the relics.

In the 115 years since, experts have continued to examine the Michigan Relics and have used modern technology to prove that they were all fakes. Scotford and Soper never admitted the relics were fakes, and some people to this day still believe they were genuine, in the same way that some people still claim the moon landing was fake.

A bootlegger in his 20s, an embezzling elected official in his 40s, and a con man in his 60s. Daniel E. Soper had lived quite the scofflaw life—and he still wasn’t done!

In 1914, at age 71, Soper moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee, and according to newspaper accounts at the time, he quickly became the toast of the town by concocting a host of lies.

He told everyone, of course, that he was a world-famous archeologist who had discovered all sorts of ancient relics back in Michigan. He told people that he had been a boyhood friend of Thomas Edison, and that he had known Susan B. Anthony. He told them that the city of Howell, Michigan, was named after his father-in-law.

And perhaps best of all, he told the folks in Tennessee that he had been a colonel in the Union Army during the Civil War and insisted that everyone call him “Col. Soper.”

Every bit of it was a lie, of course. There’s no evidence he knew Thomas Edison or Susan B. Anthony. His wife’s last name was Howell, but the city in Michigan wasn’t named after her dad. And he never even served in the Union Army. He did try to sign up during the Civil War, but his mom said she needed him at home, so he went back to Newaygo before he even got a uniform.

Nonetheless, when Soper died in 1923, the newspapers in Tennessee acted like a beloved folk hero had just passed away.

The Chattanooga News reported it thusly: “It would have been difficult to agree upon any man in the vicinity who was more popular than he, and as for the abounding spirit of perennial youth, no man could have been found who seemed younger.”

Soper is buried in Chattanooga, which is good, because it would appear he was far more welcome there than he was here. He’s all yours, Tennessee.