Hull's Trace on the 1817 Topographical Engineer Map

This weekend I was able to check out the very long (about 12 feet in two 6-foot sections) survey map of the military road from the Miami Rapids (the present day crossing of the Maumee River between Perrysburg and Maumee) to Detroit. The map itself ends at Spring Wells, the point just south of Detroit where General Isaac Brock landed his troops to capture the town in August 1812. There is a detailed map of the Battle of Maguaga and the nearby Indian village. The 1817 Military Road is significant because it was part of a large Federal public works project (one of the first ever), meant to improve land lines of communication between the remote outposts of the United States Army and its bases of supply, which were so easily jeopardized by British forces during the late war. It's very interesting to note that the contours of the land have changed very little in 200 years, especially along the Maumee Rapids and at the section of corduroy road at the Huron River south of Detroit. While I was not able to visit the site of the corduroy road this time, I hope to go there soon and check on the state of preservation. The timbers of the original road have now been exposed for about 17 years since a decline in water levels in 2000.


Why did Colonel John Anderson, the survey engineer (and very senior Topographical Engineer, include this battle as the only sketched out historical note on the map? Perhaps he was a participant. In August 1812 he was a 1st Lieutenant in the 19th Regiment of Infantry. The 19th was not present for William Hull's campaign on the Detroit River, but perhaps he was detached, since his service record indicates he resigned the service in 1811 at the Michigan Territory... More research, as always, is warranted.


Map of the Battle of Maguagon


The corduroy road crossing at the Huron River as it existed in 1817.


Frenchtown as it was in 1817.


The crossing of the Maumee River.

River Raisin Reenactment in Monroe, Michigan

Once again this year I was able to attend the annual reenactment of the Battle of the River Raisin in Monroe Michigan. It's a unique event for us 1812 reenactors, since it occurs well off the normal season of the hobby and is staged on private land next door to the battlefield National Park (because of the NPS rules against opposing line tactical demonstrations). The reenactors sign in at a hockey rink, and then stage from the rink's parking lot for a brief battle in an empty lot next door, then march to a memorial program at the National Park Service visitor center a block away. It's a small event but I'm proud to be able to honor the men who fought there in this small way.

This year I was part of the British artillery crews. Since the Americans at the historical battle had no artillery with them, when we take our cannon the American artillery switches sides for the event. British Royal Artillery wore a blue coat with red facings and yellow tape, same as the Americans, so we actually look correct from a distance.

Afterwards there was a program given by the NPS ranger from Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial at South Bass Island, covering the naval campaign of 1813 on Lake Erie and the Battle of September 10, 1813. Even I learned new things.



The Monroe County Museum occupies an old post office downtown. I was interested to find a collection of old maps of the area on display, particularly an 1817 engineers survey of the military road between the Maumee River and Spring Wells. You can still visit a section of the corduroy road, as I did a few years ago.








For more information on the Monroe County Museum, check out their website: http://www.co.monroe.mi.us/officials_and_departments/departments/museum/index.php

Brigadier General Charles Gratiot, US Corps of Engineers

Charles Gratiot, 1786-1855.

Born the son of a French fur trader at St. Louis, Charles Gratiot Sr. (d.1817), the younger Charles was appointed by President Jefferson to the United States Military Academy in 1804, the same year his home became a United States Territory. He graduated in 1806 and was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant of Engineers. By 1808 he was a Captain in the Corps of Engineers.

During the Autumn of 1812 Captain Gratiot was ordered to the Northwest to become the chief engineer on the staff of the Northwest Army. One of his first duties was to escort the massive ordnance train of siege cannon sent overland from Pittsburgh to Upper Sandusky. Later he assisted Captain Eleazar Wood with the construction of Fort Meigs but suffered from illness. 

He spent the latter part of the war at Detroit and various points in the Michigan Territory, building Fort Gratiot at the inlet of the St. Clair River and participating in the failed attack on Fort Mackinac. Territorial Governor General Lewis Cass appointed him a Colonel in the Michigan Militia in order to have command over militia troops in the Michigan garrisons. 

Shortly following the war he was promoted to Major in the Engineers (February 1815),  Lt. Colonel in 1819, and finally Colonel in 1828, when he was made chief of the Corps of Engineers (and brevetted a Brigadier General). Robert E. Lee was one of his subordinates. He was dismissed in 1838 however as a result of a disagreement over funds. In his later years he worked as a clerk in the St. Louis government land office, and pursued suits against the Federal government before dying in 1855.

Visiting the Detroit Historical Society

 Fort Detroit. A scale diorama depicting Detroit in the 1790s before it was turned over to Americans; the Fort and pickets around the town are identical to the defenses as they existed in 1812. The British burned the fort when they retreated from the area in 1813, but the Americans rebuilt it and renamed it Fort Shelby, pretty much on the original plan.

Last weekend, we had planned to stage a big, reenactors-only wargame version of the Battle of the Thames, but rain intervened. So I found myself getting on the road home mid morning on Sunday. Unlike Benson Lossing, the 1860s historian and travel writer who toured the battlefield before writing his epic War of 1812 narrative, I wanted to visit the nearby village of Moraviantown. For some reason, the local police had closed the road from Thamesville and I was forced to turn back. (The Moravians were Christian Indians who had originally settled in eastern Ohio: following a massacre which I've detailed elswhere in this blog, they moved to Upper Canada. General Harrison had their village burned down, because it supposedly harbored supplies and weapons for the British.) 

I had been wanting to visit the Detroit Historical Society--near the campus of Wayne State University in urban Detroit-- for a while, and I jumped at the opportunity this time.

Abandoned automobile plant. Albert Duce via wikipedia.

Detroit has fallen on hard times, in fact it has been in a constant state of decay since before I was born. However, the Big Three automakers are still headquartered in the general vicinity, and seem to be doing all right, considering the recession. Detroit deserves better. For all of us who grew up in rustbelt cities around the Great Lakes region, it has always stood as a figurehead of a vanished industrial, blue collar civilization. In Michigan, or so I hear, economic development has migrated towards Grand Rapids, and non-union employers like Amway. Detroit is therefore a kind of avatar for American labor and heavy industry in general.

My interest, though, is mainly in the old Detroit, before the Industrial Revolution(s) had really swept across the American Midwest. Detroit was built on the fur trade: it was really the gateway to the upper Great Lakes, a place where the government and powerful trading companies like Jacob Astor's firm could set up warehouses (called factories) to exchange manufactured goods for furs. The War of 1812 transformed Detroit, as it did many frontier towns, by eliminating British influence from the American northwestern territories, clearing the road for Astor and other American firms to dominate the fur trade. 

Lewis Cass in the 1850s.

For many years after the war, a former Ohio general named Lewis Cass presided over the territory. Cass was a big deal-- he served as Territorial Governor until 1831, as US Secretary of War, and as Senator once Michigan became a state. He was only one of several Northwestern Army officers to play important roles in the development of the frontier. In the wake of the Thames Campaign both he and fellow Ohioan (and future Ohio governor) Duncan McArthur were placed in charge of occupying former British-held territories. Cass graduated directly from command of a brigade of 12-months regular infantrymen to being the Governor of Michigan in 1813.

Duncan McArthur.

McArthur, after a brief stint at Sackett's Harbor and testifying at the William Hull court martial returned to take up command of the 8th Military District, with headquarters at Detroit. Both men ended the war where they had started it: Cass and McArthur had led Ohio Volunteer Militia regiments as colonels during the debacle of the first Northwestern Army's campaign.

But I digress. When I travel, I take pictures as a reference as well as a souvenir. Since I'm interested in recreating the past as well as educating the public about it, I spend a great deal of time getting pictures of museum exhibits and historical sites wherever I go. This blog constitutes a virtual museum, as well as a commentary on how museum exhbits are constructed and how well they convey whatever information they are meant to communicate.

 

A young Lewis Cass.  Below: the town in fur trading days.

The museum was arranged on three floors, and was free for the public (parking in the rear lot was $5). The basement featured a "streets of yesteryear" walkthough--something I've encountered at Columbus COSI, Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, Cincinatti's history museum, and many others. This one was fairly elaborate but not well interpreted. Some of the storefronts were simply repositories for old collections the curators didn't have anyplace else to display. Static collections behind glass are inert and can never be wholly successful in engaging the visitor.

The 1840s:

(What's the story here? It looks like a widow is visiting the banker. Is she selling off her dead husbands military land bounty, or getting a loan?)

(The pavement is one of the fun things about "streets of yesterday" type exhibits. It transitions from asphalt, to bricks, then cobblestone, and mud--or in this case, pitch and wood. Chicago had this type of pavement before the Great Fire!)

The 1870s:

The 1900s:

The first floor or main level featured a number of exhibits, including the early history of Detroit, the automobile industry, and a Kid Rock "Rock lab."

 The early history section was a broad survey of developments leading up to the city's industrialization in the late 19th century. It featured a handful of artifacts, and more dioramas. Unfortunately, most of the static displays were almost deliberately badly lit with can lights, making photography difficult.

 African Americans played an important role in the early years of Detroit. Since the Michigan Territory was free and the neighboring Upper Canada a slave province, in the years before the War of 1812 several slaves escaped from Canada into the United States. A few years later, the traffic would run in the other direction.

The famous steamship Walk-in-the-Water, named after a Huron chief who defected from Tecumseh on the eve of the Battle of the Thames and offered his services to General Harrison. The ship was launched in 1818, a year after her namesake died, and ran from Buffalo to Detroit, until she sank some years later.

There was a two-story exhibit on the auto plants, featuring  a 50-foot or so long section of assembly line from the 1970s. Once again, its a static display, so a bit hard to tell what's going on.

On the next floor, there was a large exhibit on railroads. This is a model of a monorail design proposed for Detroit in 1918...

A second model train display had been installed in the basement, near the streets of yesteryear. The lights and model trains (and a train-themed playlist) activate once someone enters the room. One of the trains had a small video camera mounted on it, which displayed in real time on a couple of tv sets mounted above. It was reminiscent of the scene in the Addams Family movie when Gomez Addams takes out his frustrations on his model train set.

All things considered, the Detroit Historical Society is well worth a visit if you're passing through the city, for the perspective it provides on the growth and subsequent decline of the Queen of the Rust Belt.