Officers at Michilimackinac and Fort Mackinac, 1742–1882: Garrison History and Where to Find Service Records

A fort that moved twice, 1715–1895

The Straits of Mackinac had one garrison, but that garrison lived in three different buildings over 180 years. I find that trips people up more than anything else when they’re trying to place an ancestor: “Fort Michilimackinac” and “Fort Mackinac” sound like the same word and they’re not the same fort.

French soldiers built the first Fort Michilimackinac in 1715, on the mainland at what’s now Mackinaw City, to protect France’s fur trade at the straits where Lake Huron meets Lake Michigan — a military outpost and trading post rolled into one. It changed hands to the British in 1761, after the fall of New France, and stayed on the mainland until 1780–81, when the British, worried about an American attack during the Revolution, moved the entire garrison — literally dismantling buildings and hauling them across the ice — to a new limestone fort on the bluffs of Mackinac Island. Before construction started, Lieutenant Governor Patrick Sinclair also had to negotiate with the Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) for use of the island itself. That’s the Fort Mackinac still standing today. It stayed a working U.S. Army post until 1895. The original mainland site hasn’t vanished, either — it’s been reconstructed as Colonial Michilimackinac, inside Michilimackinac State Park at Mackinaw City, and it’s worth a separate visit if you’re trying to picture the French and early British years specifically.

Here’s the sequence, compressed:

• 1715–1761 — French garrison at Fort Michilimackinac, mainland.
• 1761–1780/81 — British take over the same mainland fort after the French and Indian War.
• 1780–1796 — British build and occupy the new Fort Mackinac on Mackinac Island.
• 1796–1812 — American garrison, transferred under the Jay Treaty.
• 1812–1815 — British recapture and hold the fort during the War of 1812.
• 1815–1895 — American garrison again, until the post closes.

The officers named in the 1742–1882 record

The fullest surviving list of officers who commanded at these two forts comes out of 1880s Michigan scholarship — an 1883 county history of the Upper Peninsula and Dwight H. Kelton’s Annals of Fort Mackinac, first published the same year by an Army captain who was stationed there himself. Both drew on the official French, British, and American correspondence and returns available at the time. The earliest name in that record is a French commandant, de Blainville, who arrived on August 12, 1742 — which is why you’ll see 1742 as the starting point rather than the fort’s 1715 founding. Records naming individual commandants only get consistent from the 1740s forward; the first few decades of the French post are documented mostly through broader colonial correspondence rather than a clean roster of names.

I’m not going to reproduce that roster here — it’s someone else’s compiled transcription, and this page exists to help you go find the underlying records yourself, not to republish a list that already sits in the public domain elsewhere. What follows is how to actually do that.

Which units garrisoned the fort

The regiment or company on duty tells you what kind of record you’re hunting for, so it’s worth knowing roughly who served when.

Where the service records are held today

This is the part that trips people up: officers were commissioned, not enlisted, so the National Archives never built a compiled service record folder with an officer’s name on the tab the way it did for volunteer soldiers. You have to assemble his career from several separate series.

For the American periods (1796–1812 and 1815–1895), start with:

• Heitman’s Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 1789–1903 — a published two-volume reference giving a career summary for every regular officer: commission dates, regiments, brevets. Fastest way to confirm someone served at Mackinac before digging into microfilm.
• NARA M617, Returns from U.S. Military Posts, 1800–1916 — 1,550 rolls of monthly post returns, each listing every officer present that month, by name and duty. This is where you pin down exact dates of assignment.
• NARA M665 (Regular Army Infantry Regiments, 1821–1916) and M727 (Regular Army Artillery Regiments, 1821–1901) — the regimental-level version of the same monthly report, once you know his unit.
• The annual U.S. Army Register, published from 1813 onward, listing every officer’s rank, regiment, and commission date for that year.
• Adjutant General’s Office correspondence, 1812–1917 — indexed on M711 (1812–1889) and M698 (1890–1917) — covers promotions, courts-martial, and resignations.

If your officer served during the War of 1812, also check NARA M313, Index to War of 1812 Pension Application Files, which covers both regulars and volunteers and can lead to a widow’s application with maiden name, marriage date, and death date attached.

French and British records are in different archives entirely

Two of the three garrisons weren’t American, so American finding aids won’t get you there.

For the British periods (1761–1796 and 1812–1815), the records sit at Library and Archives Canada, not NARA — specifically RG 8, the British Military and Naval Records (“C” Series), and WO 12, the War Office muster books and pay lists, held on microfilm as MG 13. These give a name, rank, station, period of service, and occasionally birthplace or trade.

For the French period (1715–1761), look to France’s Archives nationales d’outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence. Sub-series COL D2C, “Troupes et personnel civil,” holds muster rolls (matricules and revues) for the Compagnies franches de la Marine — the colonial companies that garrisoned every French post from Quebec to Michilimackinac, established in 1683 and disbanded after Montreal’s surrender in 1760. Officers here are relatively well documented; the enlisted soldiers under them mostly aren’t.

How to trace one officer, step by step

1. Confirm the fort and the years. Mainland Michilimackinac or island Fort Mackinac — the archive you need depends entirely on this.
2. Identify the nationality of the garrison for those years, using the timeline above: French, British, or American.
3. Check a published register first. Heitman’s for American regulars, the Army List for British officers, or the ANOM’s own name indexes for French officers.
4. Pull the unit-level returns — NARA M617/M665/M727 for Americans, WO 12 for British, COL D2C matricules for French — to confirm exact dates and rank.
5. Look for a pension or bounty-land file if his service falls in 1812–1815 or later; these often carry more biographical detail than any military return.
6. Cross-check a secondary source, like Kelton’s Annals of Fort Mackinac or Phil Porter’s The Soldiers of Fort Mackinac, to catch names the primary records misspell — common with 18th-century French names run through British and American clerks.

None of this is fast. I’ve spent an entire afternoon on one officer’s file just confirming he was actually at Mackinac the month I thought, rather than at one of the half-dozen other Great Lakes posts a garrison regiment typically rotated through — Detroit shows up constantly in the same files, since it was regional headquarters for much of the 1800s. Budget for that.

What’s there to see today

Fort Mackinac is part of the Mackinac Island National Historic Landmark, designated in 1960, inside Mackinac Island State Park. Mackinac State Historic Parks runs it as a museum now, with all fourteen original buildings restored and interpreted to the 1880s — the exact decade the 1742–1882 officer record runs out. Costumed interpreters run firing demonstrations through the summer, and the Officers’ Stone Quarters, built during the Revolution, is the oldest building still standing in Michigan.

There’s a genealogical reason to visit beyond curiosity, too. The Old Hospital, built 1828, now houses an exhibit on the fort’s post surgeons — worth knowing if an ancestor’s record mentions treatment, disability discharge, or death at the post.

FAQ

Is Fort Michilimackinac the same place as Fort Mackinac? No. Fort Michilimackinac was the wooden French and British fort on the mainland at today’s Mackinaw City, occupied roughly 1715 to 1781. Fort Mackinac is the stone fort the British built on Mackinac Island starting in 1780, garrisoned until 1895.

Was Fort Mackinac ever captured in battle? Once, during the War of 1812. British forces took it without firing a shot on July 17, 1812. American troops tried and failed to retake it on August 4, 1814. It went back to the U.S. on July 18, 1815, under the Treaty of Ghent.

Where do I find the service record of a U.S. Army officer stationed at Fort Mackinac? There’s no single folder with his name on it, the way there is for enlisted men. Start with Heitman’s Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army, 1789–1903 for a career summary, then confirm his dates in NARA microfilm M617 (post returns) or M665/M727 (regimental returns).

My ancestor was a British officer there before 1796. Where do British records live? At Library and Archives Canada, not NARA — RG 8, the British Military and Naval Records (“C” Series), and the War Office muster books and pay lists (WO 12), on microfilm as MG 13.

What about French officers from the Michilimackinac period? Those records sit in France, at the Archives nationales d’outre-mer in Aix-en-Provence, sub-series COL D2C — muster rolls and career registers for the Compagnies franches de la Marine, the colonial troops who garrisoned every French post in New France, Michilimackinac included.