A Look at History
Surveying Team Marked Out Mackinac Island 180 Years Ago
BY FRANK STRAUS

One day in October 1828, a surveyor named John Mullett and his assistant set out to do a "circular traverse" - a walk and wade - around Mackinac Island. On a pleasant summer day in 2008, this is something that more than 1,000 people will do; it was not so easy then. The shoreline was partly dry and partly wet, with the bluff's edge along several patches of the shoreline plunging down into Lake Huron. The surveyor and his assistant probably wore greased leather boots as they set off on their trek.

In 1828, surveying was already a scientifically-based line of work. The surveyor and his assistant carried at least two heavy stakes, a compass, and a durable iron chain. Before they started, they had checked the compass against the sun to find out the difference between magnetic north and true north. They found a difference, or variation, of 2 degrees 58 minutes, and wrote it down in their records for future use.

In 1796, when the United States Army took control of Fort Mackinac, most of the land of Mackinac Island came with the Fort. The British had kept most of the property of the Island under the control of their army. After 1796, the Americans, by contrast, began to give away large swathes and parcels of the Island. After most of the trees of the Island were cut down for firewood, Island land was not as valuable as it had been. Some aggressive individuals, led by Michael Dousman of "Private Claim No. 1," had acquired legal titles to large parcels.

British Landing, Mackinac Island (Photograph courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

The U.S. federal government had not, from 1796 until 1828, had a clear idea of what were the dimensions of Mackinac Island. The Island had never been officially surveyed, and so when Washington issued "patents" for parcels of land on Mackinac Island, they did not have a clear idea what they were giving away or what they were keeping. This Mullett survey was meant to fill this gap. By making a precise measurement of the Island's shoreline, they would be able to determine its actual size and know how much of it had been transferred to the private sector.

The 1828 team had experience to work with. Federal officers had surveyed Bois Blanc one year earlier, in August 1827. With Mackinac Island increasingly dependent on Bois Blanc for firewood, game, and other supplies, land on the large, low island had become more valuable. No one surveyed Round Island, which was the site of a small Indian village in the 1820s.

The Mackinac Island team began at the foot of what Mullett called "Folly Rock." This was the formation that the Bois Blanc surveying team had called "Robison's Folly" in the previous year. It was, of course, our Robinson's Folly, the easternmost point on Mackinac Island. (Photograph courtesy of Tom Pfeiffelmann)

The Mackinac Island team began at the foot of what Mullett called "Folly Rock." This was the formation that the Bois Blanc surveying team had called "Robison's Folly" in the previous year. It was, of course, our Robinson's Folly, the easternmost point on Mackinac Island. Here the surveyors drove into the shoreline a first heavy stake to mark their starting point. They would hope no one would move this stake during the time of their traverse.

The team set out clockwise around Mackinac Island. They would take a sight with the surveyor's compass and measure out their chain in a straight line until the shoreline curved significantly. As they started out, they had to frequently reposition their second stake, their compass, and the chain, because they were following the curving shore of Haldimand Bay. Let's follow Mullett and his assistant as they begin their traverse.

Wrapping and unwrapping their "Gunter's chain," the surveying team walked along the shoreline of what was then the grounds of the Protestant mission at Mackinac. Everything on this end of the harbor area was new then; the Mission House had been built only three years before. Precisely 33.02 "chains" west from Robinson's Folly, the team reached their first major landmark, a "20-foot street" that intersected with the shoreline. This street, then unnamed, was what we now call Mission Street. One year after this survey, the missionaries would erect the Mission Church here.

The surveyors could not set down landmarks that had not yet been built in 1828. They could, however, mark down landmarks that have since disappeared or changed their character; 4.75 chains beyond Mission Street, they found the "missionary wharf," located at or close to the foot of what is now Truscott Street. Boats under the command of the Reverend William Ferry and his wife, Amanda Ferry, had unloaded beams and cut timbers, sawn on the mainland at Mill Creek, at this wharf. Men then carried this cargo up the hill to erect the Mission House. Beyond the missionary wharf (7.30 chains) was another 20-foot-wide street: Church Street, we call it today, because Ste. Anne's Church is there now.

So the surveyors continued their work. Every measurement was made in hundredths of a chain, and each one hundredth of a chain was 0.66 feet long, almost exactly eight inches. Surveyor's chains were all carefully forged and certified to be 66 feet long, the length set by English law.

After leaving Haldimand Bay, our surveyors turned the great bend of Biddle's Point, where Windermere Park stands today. Soon they began to mark out the boundaries of the large private claims that already covered the southwestern shore of Mackinac Island: Private Claim No. 4 to the "Yankee rebel," Ambrose Davenport . . . Claim Nos. 3, 2, and 1 . . . Private Claim No. 331, stuffed in between #3 and #4.

On the shoreline of Private Claim No. 4, the surveyors marked what they called "Little Rock," which stood where Lover's Leap stands today. From today's Shore Road, one can't see Lover's Leap, however; a thick tangle of white cedars stands in the way. This picturesque mass of foliage probably did not exist in 1828. Most of the Island's mature trees had been ruthlessly cut down over the immediately preceding decades and fed into Island hearths and fireplaces.

The waders found that an especially generous grant of shoreline - 55 chains long, 3,630 feet in length - marked the lake boundary of Private Claim No. 2. This section, surveyed by Mullett's team, is the parcel of land on which stand the houses and lots of Stone Brook today.

More than halfway around the Island from Robinson's Folly, the surveyors marked an especially sharp bend at Pointe Aux Pins. As their compass needle swung to mark the new direction, the surveyors began to face back toward their "place of beginning." They had now stretched their chain almost 400 times.

Beyond what is now the private home "Easterly" and Point St. Clair, the shoreline straightened out. It was now a simple matter of keeping an accurate compass bearing as the surveyors waded and walked home. At the 622.53- chain mark, they noted "Arch Rock." Precisely 32 chains beyond this unforgettable landmark, our surveyors reached the foot of Robinson's Folly and the stake they had used to mark the beginning of their survey.

Surveyor Mullett took his field notes back to a place of shelter. From these angles, lengths, and compass bearings would come a delineation of the outline of Mackinac Island. He knew that if the two men had done their work well, the curves and straight lines to be marked out with a compass and straight edge would form a completely closed loop, with no "error of closure."

The field notes were approved and recopied into the official land records of Michilimackinac County, kept at the county courthouse on Market Street. When the land books were removed to the new county seat in St. Ignace some years later, these field notes went with the move. They can be read in the current courthouse to this day.

The master map used today on Mackinac Island follows the guidelines set down by this 1828 pioneer survey. It may be no accident that the Island's new street address numbers are based upon an algorithm that uses a point in Lake Huron offshore from Robinson's Folly as its "point of beginning." Even in this day of computerized digitalization, Robinson's Folly is the original zero-point for Island maps. And this survey was done 180 years ago here on Mackinac Island.