Matilda Dodge Wilson

Matilda Dodge Wilson (née Rausch; October 19, 1883 – September 19, 1967) was an American politician and heiress who was the 43rd lieutenant governor of Michigan. Ranked as one of the wealthiest women in the world, she was the widow of John Francis Dodge, who co-founded the Dodge motor car company in Detroit with his brother Horace Elgin Dodge. She co-founded the Oakland campus of Michigan State University, now Oakland University, with her husband Alfred Wilson, and John A. Hannah. The new university was built on her estate, Meadow Brook Farms. Upon Alfred Wilson's death on April 6, 1962, Matilda again received the bulk of her husband's estate.

Matilda and John Dodge had three children, Frances (1914–1971), Daniel (1917–1938) and Anna Margaret (1919–1924). In addition, she was stepmother to John's three children from his first marriage (one of whom was Isabel Dodge Sloane). Matilda and Alfred Wilson adopted two children, Richard and Barbara. They won both seats by a wide margin, with Wilson placing first in a field of eight candidates with 40 percent of the vote, and Daane placing second with 39 percent. She and Daane were renominated in 1937, but narrowly lost re-election to Democrats James Jakway and Lavina Masselink. Wilson placed fourth, losing by 5,171 votes.

On November 19, 1940, outgoing Governor Luren Dickinson appointed Wilson as Lieutenant Governor of Michigan, and she became the first woman to serve as Lieutenant Governor in American history. Attorney General Thomas Read argued that Dickinson had no power to make the appointment, because Dickinson remained Lieutenant Governor, and merely acted as Governor, upon the death of Governor Frank Fitzgerald in 1939. but did ostensibly serve as acting Governor when Dickinson was out of the state, and attended a state Administrative Board meeting.

Meadow Brook Hall and Music Hall

She was the author of A Place in the Country, a guidebook to her home, Meadow Brook Hall. In it she takes the reader through the mansion and introduces the reader to her art collection which includes works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough, Gilbert Stuart, George Romney, Frederic Remington, Émile van Marcke, Rosa Bonheur, Justus Sustermans and Louis Betts.

During the later 1920s, Wilson hired the Detroit architectural firm of Smith Hinchman & Grylls to design two of the Detroit area's notable buildings, Music Hall Center for the Performing Arts (1928) and Meadow Brook Hall (1929). Both were designed by William Kapp and both included architectural sculpture by Detroit sculptor Corrado Parducci.

Final resting place In 1939, Matilda and Alfred Wilson had constructed a pale granite Art Deco style mausoleum in Woodlawn Cemetery, designed by New York architect William Henry Deacy. and again, featuring sculpture by Corrado Parducci. It is located near the south wall of the Dodge family mausoleum where her first husband was interred in 1920.