- Date
- 1892
- Eras
- Strang era
- Concepts
- historiographymaritimeshippingland-surveyStrang era
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
The autobiographical sketch headed “John Harris Forster” says its author rejoined the Lake Survey under Capt. Meade in May 1855 and was on Beaver Island in June. This is an independently printed later recollection of the 1855 survey season, useful beside the 1855 Lake Survey chart and the volume IX Forster reminiscence.
The statement is not an official report, route log, or complete account of the survey. Its description of James J. Strang is plainly editorial and is retained only as evidence of the writer’s perspective. Although the volume IX author is styled “John H. Forster,” this record does not merge the two bylines into a single person without separate identity evidence.
Evidence limits
This page supports the memoir’s own timing and its author’s claimed presence on Beaver Island. It does not establish the precise location of work on the island, every member of the survey party, the text or publication history of the 1855 chart, or any of the memoir’s uncorroborated judgments about Strang.
See also
Sources
- Described in this archive: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society collections corpus.Printed page image checked. In a first-person autobiographical sketch headed “John Harris Forster,” the author says he rejoined the Lake Survey under Capt. Meade in May 1855 and was on Beaver Island in June. The same sentence calls Strang a “talented humbug”; that phrase is retained only to document the memoir’s voice, not as a project characterization. The memoir is published 37 years after the visit and is not an official Lake Survey record.
- Described in this archive: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society collections corpus.The locally held text derivative makes the broader volume searchable; it is a discovery and transcription aid, while the page image is the checked evidence for this entry.
- Project provenance sidecar for the checked page image of *Michigan Historical Collections*, vol. 21, p. 285.Described in this archive: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society collections corpus.Records the Internet Archive page-image URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, and printed-page/scan-leaf relationship. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
- Internet Archive DjVu provenance sidecar for *Michigan Historical Collections*, vol. 21.Described in this archive: Michigan Pioneer and Historical Society collections corpus.Records the OCR derivative URL, retrieval metadata, checksum, and derivative status. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.
Added 2 August 2026 · revised 4 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “Michigan Historical Collections, volume 21, 1892”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/michigan-historical-collections-volume-21/, accessed [date], citing “John Harris Forster,” *Michigan Historical Collections*, vol. 21 (1892), p. 285, Internet Archive item michiganhistoric21mich. (and 3 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-04. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “Michigan Historical Collections, volume 21, 1892”RIS for “Michigan Historical Collections, volume 21, 1892”