County history
History of Cheboygan and Mackinac Counties, 1873: What’s in It and How to Use It for Genealogy
History of Cheboygan and Mackinac Counties, published in 1873, is one of the earliest county histories written for Michigan's Straits region — part regional history, part settler's prospectus, part tourist guide. Here's what's actually in it and how to use a book like this without being misled by it.
The 1873 county history: what kind of book this is
The full title runs considerably longer than the short version everyone uses: History of Cheboygan and Mackinac Counties. Business and Manufacturing Statistics, Soil, Timber, Prospects for Settlers, &c. A Tourist’s Guide for Mackinaw Island and Other Places of Interest to Pleasure Seekers. George Robinson, who published the Cheboygan Independent newspaper, put it together with R.A. Sprague, publisher of Detroit’s Northwestern Manufacturers Journal, and the Union Job Printing Company printed it in Detroit in 1873. I’ve worked with a fair number of these 1870s Michigan county volumes over the years, and this one is a fairly typical specimen of the genre — three books stitched into one, really: a regional history, a settler’s prospectus, and a tourist guide, all under a single cover.
That combination is worth understanding before you go looking for a specific family in it, because it shapes what the book actually contains.
What kind of source this is, and why it matters for genealogy
Books like this exploded in popularity across the Midwest and Northeast in the years following the Civil War, and Michigan produced dozens of them county by county through the 1870s, 1880s, and 1890s. Some were funded almost entirely by subscription: a family paid a fee to have their biography printed, sometimes with a portrait. Genealogists nicknamed the format “mug books.” Robinson and Sprague’s 1873 volume leans a little differently: it’s built more around general regional narrative, statistics, and land promotion than individual family biographies, with paid advertising space for area merchants running through it rather than a roster of subscriber sketches. Either way, the underlying appeal to a genealogist researching a family history is the same. These county history books preserve names, businesses, and local detail that simply don’t survive anywhere else — township organization dates, who ran which mill, what the countryside looked like to an outside visitor in a specific year. Michigan alone produced dozens of comparable county histories, town histories, and family histories in this era, and each one is a resource worth checking even when it isn’t the county your own family settled in, since neighboring counties’ volumes sometimes mention the same mills, roads, and traveling clergy.
| What the book covers | Genealogical use |
|---|---|
| General early history of the Straits region | Context for when and why settlement began where it did |
| Organization and statistics for Cheboygan and Mackinac counties | Population, business, and manufacturing figures as of 1873 — a snapshot you won’t find in a later, updated history |
| “Prospects for settlers” — soil and timber assessment | Explains what drew a family to a specific township, if they arrived in this era |
| A tourist’s guide to Mackinac Island | Describes the built and natural landscape — forts, cliffs, hotels — as it stood in 1873, useful for placing an ancestor’s occupation or property |
| Advertising from area businesses | Names and trades of local merchants who could afford to advertise, a rough proxy for the town’s commercial class |
The book also pushed hard for something that hadn’t happened yet when it went to press: a national park on Mackinac Island. Congress obliged two years later, in 1875, establishing Mackinac National Park as the country’s second national park after Yellowstone — a detail that places the book right at a hinge point in the island’s history, written just before the place it describes changed for good.
How to search a scanned book like this for a surname
- Use the OCR search box on whichever host you’re reading it through, whether that’s HathiTrust or another digitized copy — full-text search across a 45-year-old scan isn’t perfect, but it’s a fast first pass.
- Search variant spellings. French, Métis, and immigrant surnames common in this region were transcribed inconsistently even by the original 1873 typesetters, long before a modern OCR engine ever touched the page.
- Browse the advertising and business sections directly rather than relying only on search — a merchant’s name sometimes appears only in an ad, which OCR handles less reliably than body text.
- Read the general history sections even if your ancestor isn’t named. They establish exactly which townships existed, which mills were running, and what the regional economy looked like the year your family may have arrived.
- Cross-check anything you find against a primary record — a county history mention is a lead, not proof, of a specific date or relationship.
Reading a 19th-century county history with the right amount of skepticism
- These books were commercial ventures, not neutral archives. Publishers needed subscribers and advertisers to cover printing costs, and a volume meant to attract settlers to “prospects for settlers” language has an obvious motive to describe soil and timber more generously than a modern soil survey would.
- Coverage skews toward people who could pay, not toward completeness. A family that couldn’t afford advertising space or a subscription sketch might not appear at all, regardless of how long they’d lived in the county.
- Facts and figures still deserve a second look. Population counts, mill capacities, and organization dates printed in books like this were usually accurate enough for the publisher’s purposes, but a serious researcher checks them against county, state, or federal records before citing them as a fixed fact.
- The narrative sections carry real historical value even where names don’t match your family. They’re often the only surviving account of what a specific township or business looked like in a given year, written by someone who was actually there to see it.
Where to find the book today, free
Digitized page images of the 1873 Robinson and Sprague volume are held by HathiTrust, reachable through the Online Books Page’s library gateway, which links out to public-domain scans without requiring an account or subscription. The Library of Michigan holds the physical rare volume in its own collection, along with a 1973 microfilm reproduction available for on-site research in Lansing. If this particular book doesn’t answer your question, the University of Michigan’s Michigan County Histories and Atlases digital collection has digitized several hundred similar 19th-century Michigan county histories and atlases, including other early Cheboygan County volumes, free to search and browse as a genealogy resource. Ancestry’s subscription “U.S., Family History Books” collection also indexes many public-domain county histories, this genre included, for researchers who already have access.
FAQ
Who wrote History of Cheboygan and Mackinac Counties? George Robinson, publisher of the Cheboygan Independent, with R.A. Sprague, publisher of Detroit’s Northwestern Manufacturers Journal. The Union Job Printing Company printed it in Detroit in 1873.
Is it available free online? Yes — HathiTrust holds digitized page images, reachable through the Online Books Page’s gateway, and the Library of Michigan holds both the original and a 1973 microfilm copy.
Should I trust everything the book says about my ancestor’s town? Not without checking. It mixes real regional history with settler-recruitment boosterism and paid advertising, so treat its facts as leads to verify rather than a finished record.
My ancestor isn’t named in the book. Does that mean they weren’t there? No. The book focuses on regional narrative and a relatively small set of prominent or advertising residents, not a complete population record. Plenty of real residents simply never appear in it.
Does the book cover Cheboygan County, Mackinac County, or both? Both, in one 1873 volume — Cheboygan County had only organized in 1855, and its early history runs together with the older settlement at the Straits of Mackinac.