Plat of Garden Island, 1930s

Summary

Garden Island drawn to name the owner and acreage of every parcel, under the heading

GARDEN ISLAND T. 39 & 40N. R. 9 & 10W.

It fills the left half of its leaf. The right half is T.33N. Evangeline R.6W., a mainland township around Boyne City and Walloon Lake, and the two have nothing to do with each other: they share the paper because a plat book fills its pages. This article is about the island half.

This sheet was nearly missed. The repository’s catalogue lists the archipelago sheets by canvas number, and read as PDF page numbers those land two pages short; page 17 of the volume PDF was taken at first glance for an Evangeline sheet alone, because Evangeline is the half whose heading sits at the top of the leaf. Garden Island is on it, headed at the left.

Ownership, as the compilers recorded it

Four parcels are marked only Indian — 80 acres in section 34, 200 and 80 in section 35, and 89 and 49 in section 34 — exactly as the 1901 edition marked a large number of parcels on this island and on High Island. Thirty years on, this volume repeats the practice. It is the compilers’ label and not a name; the unnamed parcels are a defect in the source, not an absence of people, and the archive’s other holdings for this island should be read alongside it rather than against it.

The named holdings, read round the sheet (spellings verbatim):

• Government on the largest blocks — 145.18 and 52 in section 27, 293.26 in the south-east, and further shore parcels of 32.45, 52.50, 20.2 and 48.80.
• State on 80-acre blocks in sections 27, 34, 35, 36 and 6, and on a 36 and a 40.
• Northcutt, the commonest private surname on the island — G. Northcutt 88.8, E. Northcutt 40, B. Northcutt 80 and E. B. Northcutt 168.80 and 48.80.
• North and east — J. Vincent Est., J. Vincent 120, M. Jenson 13.83, 36.10, 82.65 and 46.55, B. Williams 80 and 40, E. L. 12.
• South and centre — Gus. Mielke 280, P. Nielson 40, J. J. Twedele 40 on three parcels, M. O'Donnell 23.7 and 28, Fochtman 120, F. Roddy 40, J. J. Campbell 44.80, W. Washegesiak, N. McGreen and N. McG. 56.10, 36.60, 34.30 and 41.10, C. Bonaway 40, H. Richter 40, Connors, G. M. 23.65, and a small parcel lettered Garden Island itself.
• Three parcels are lettered only E. U. N., which is not expanded anywhere on the sheet.

Washegesiak, Bonaway and McGreen are Anishinaabe surnames on an island whose Anishinaabe community this archive documents elsewhere, and they sit beside the four parcels the compilers would not name.

What is drawn, and what is not

Long double-cased lines run diagonally across the island from the north-west shore to the south-east — three of them, converging near the harbour at the east side of section 2. In the volume’s own terms they are undefined: this atlas prints no legend, no scale statement and no date.

The small hooked mark drawn like a figure 6 recurs beside parcel labels here too, and short arrows point from a name into the adjoining parcel; neither is explained. Acreages above are given as drawn.

Sources

1. W. W. Hixson & Company, “Garden Island T.39 & 40N. R.9 & 10W.”, in Plat Book of Charlevoix Co. Mich. (Rockford, Ill., between 1930 and 1939). Read at native resolution from the 6,600 x 5,100 px sheet master held at the local_path above; Michigan State University Digital Repository item 961, ARK ark:/85335/m56q1xj4p.
2. kb/articles/documents/charlevoix-county-plat-book-1901.md for the 1901 plate’s treatment of the same island.

Read the document

19 pages, rendered from the held scan.

All 19 pages

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