Beaver Island History - Helen Collar Papers
Michigan History - Chronology
1760 - British took over Detroit. The storehouses contained half a million dollars worth of
furs, a large proportion beaver, which were used as standard exchange by French,
Americans, & British. The British prized this traffic so much that they discouraged
settlement. By royal decree it was declared unlawful to survey or acquire land either by
patent or grant, or to purchase it from Indians.
- Writers' Project, Michigan, p. 39
1782 - Treaty with England [Treaty of Paris, 1783, ending Revolutionary War]
1796 - British troops left Detroit
1805 - Territory of Michigan organized
1812 - Mackinac & Detroit taken [by British, War of 1812]
1813 - Perry's victory on Lake Erie won Michigan back, & Detroit reoccupied by Americans,
with Col. Lewis Cass left in charge. The close of war marked the beginning of
the development of Michigan when Cass & civil government returned. Not only
had the war retarded its development before, but also the policy of the British of
retarding settlement in favor of the fur trade. The founding of a university & of
a newspaper in the summer of 1817 were signs of the new trend.
1813-31 - Cass governor (later Michigan Senator, 1845-57)
1818 - 1st public sale of land, & also opening of steam navigation on the Lakes
1821 - Cass negotiated treaties with Indians, getting title to more than 1/2 the Lower
Peninsula. Immigration slow because early government surveyors said almost the
entire region was impenetrable swamp. Cass toured entire region by canoe &
horseback & publicized desirability of land for settlement. There were no roads
until Cass got Congress to authorize building of five roads by the War Dept. as a
military provision. Under Cass's tutelage Michigan was transformed from a
remote & alien outpost into a vigorous, if still nascent, American Commonwealth.
1825 - Erie Canal opened
1830 - Fur trade reached its peak; within another 10 years agriculture & lumbering were
destroying the haunts of fur-bearing animals.
1834 - census taken to prove they had the 60,000 inhabitants needed for statehood - 82,273
enumerated.
1835 - [Michigan state] constitution adopted
1837 - admitted as a state; Upper Peninsula given in place of disputed "Toledo Strip." At the
time of admission there were towns throughout most of the southern section,
agriculture was securely established, lumbering had begun, a survey of the
mineral deposits of the north ordered. [However the economy was] mainly
agricultural, wagon roads few & poor, no RR had been completed, no cities
except Detroit, & few newspapers. The forests were considered an evil & were
being cleared in the southern counties. [This was the year of the Panic caused by
the overproduction of paper money by unregulated banks (anyone could open a
bank). Pres. Jackson ruled that public land could only be bought [with] coin, &
banks failed all over the country.]1
1855 - Soo Canal finished
1857 - another year of economic crisis
1882 - school attendance for all under 14 [became] compulsory
Population:
1837 - 174,467
1880 - 1,636,937 (75% rural)
1900 - 2,420,982
1930 - 4,842,325 (68.2% urban)
1 Final bracketed statement in original