Fort Mackinac and the island

The British held this fort for thirteen years after the war that lost them the country.

Before 1763 the French controlled this water from Fort Michilimackinac, on the mainland south shore of the Straits of Mackinac. After the Treaty of Paris in 1763 the British occupied that French fort and judged the wooden structure too difficult to defend. So in 1780 and 1781 the lieutenant governor, Patrick Sinclair, built a new limestone fort on the 150-foot limestone bluffs of Mackinac Island, above the straits.

The point was the water. Whoever held the Straits of Mackinac, between Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, controlled the fur trade of the Great Lakes.

Captain Daniel Robertson commanded the garrison from 1782 until Lieutenant George Clowes replaced him in 1784. And despite the terms of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, the British did not officially hand the fort to the United States until the Jay Treaty was ratified in 1796.

The War of 1812 produced two strategic battles here. In June 1812 Major-General Isaac Brock, hearing that America had declared war, sent a canoe party to Fort St. Joseph in Ontario to confirm it, and the party came back with an order to attack. The American garrison was about sixty men under Lieutenant Porter Hanks, a diligent officer who had received no communication from his superiors for months. On the morning of 17 July 1812 a combined British and Native American force of seventy war canoes and ten bateaux, commanded by Captain Charles Roberts, arrived.

The fort served as a United States Army outpost through most of the 19th century and closed in 1895. It is now a museum on the grounds of Mackinac Island State Park.

For the older account, Historic Mackinac covers the historical, picturesque and legendary features of the Mackinac country in two volumes, illustrated from sketches, drawings, maps and photographs, with an original map of the island made for the work. It is free to read in the Internet Archive.