This is a study of the lower peninsula's occupation by agriculturists, whose presence forever transformed the land and helped to create the modern state of Michigan. This is not simply a history of Michigan, but rather a work that focuses on why the state developed as it did. Employing numerous primary sources, the book traces changes and patterns of settlement crucial to documenting the large-scale development of southern Michigan as a region. Diaries, letters, memoirs, gazetteers, and legal documents serve to transform the more abstract elements of economic and social change into more human terms. Through the experiences of the early Agriculturists process, we can gain insight into how their triumphs played out in communities within the region to produce small-scale elements that comprise the fabric of the larger cultural landscape.
Author(s): Kenneth E. Lewis
Publisher: Michigan State University Press
Year: 2002
Language: English
Pages: 516
City: East Lansing
Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Abbreviations
Acknowledgments
1. Frontier Studies and Approach to Michigan's Past
2. Michigan Before 1815: Prelude to American Settlement
3. The Environmental Context of Colonization
4. The Impact of Perception on Settlement
5. The Transfer of Land
6. The Settlers' Acquisition of Land
7. Strategies for Settlement
8. Michigan's Frontier Economy in 1845
9. Population Expansion, Transportation, and Settlement Pattering on the Michigan Frontier, 1845-1860
10. Long-Distance Transportation and External Trade
11. The Restructuring of Michigan Agriculture
12. The Organization of Production and Marketing
13. The Consolidation of Settlement and Transportation
14. The Landscape of Settlement in Southern Michigan in 1860
15. Epilogue
Appendices
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index
