Illustrated by Dirk Cringhuis

This important historical document, now published for the first time in its entirety, was purchased in 1914 by the great collector of materials relating to the history of Michigan and the Old Northwest, Clarence M. Burton, who bought it from a book seller in London, England, for $55. He brought the journal back to the state in which it was written where it now rests in the Burton Historical Collection of the Detroit Public Library.

Dr. Morison’s journal provides us with a picture of the English population of the fort, a people beset by violence, lawlessness, tyrannical officers, petty bickering, and assorted other problems. A reading of the journal should dispel any romantic notions of what conditions were like at an eighteenth-century frontier fort.