Finding Fun in Michigan
Our best Michigan history posts are found below.
Tales of four ghost ships of the Great Lakes. The 1800s was an era of ships plying the waters over 2000 miles of waterways. Some never made it to port but sailors claim to see these ships still plying waters.
Found this little poem in the book Huron County Illustrated History. I thought it was a bit interesting to know how the origin of the place names for Huron County township names.
Also, did you know the name “Huron” was a Chippawa word? It’s pronounced “u-ron” meaning curved coast.
Henry Schoolcraft was asked to join an expedition organized by Governor Cass of Michigan in 1819. Its purpose was to locate the source of the Mississippi River’ and explore the Great Lakes region. As an expert mineralogist, he was tasked with describing Michigan’s significant topographical features, natural history, and mineral wealth. The expedition took approximately 40 men in five long voyageur canoes commonly used in the fur trade on the Great Lakes. At 35 feet long and 6 feet wide, the canoe had an amazing capacity of four tons. They started the journey on May 24, 1820.
The following little story is an account made by noted Caseville author and historian Mary Cobb Langley. In 1960 she published “History of Caseville: biographies and legends” The work has been scanned by Google and is now, amazingly, considered in the public domain. One of the book’s stories deals with the discovery of the remains of … Read more
In the mid 1800’s much of Michigan was wilderness. In 1857, Captain George Meade took over the Lakes Survey mission of the Great Lakes.
Michigan’s Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial Boarding School indoctrinated 300 children each year and ran until 1934. There were also schools in Baraga and Harbor Springs.
For decades, the US took thousands of Native American children and enrolled them in off-reservation boarding schools. In fact, this was government policy to assimilate an entire people by forcibly removing children from their families and indoctrinating them into the Anglo language, religion, and way of life.
