North End of Lake Michigan Including the Beaver Island Group (1855 Lake Survey chart)

Summary

This is a 1:120,000-scale chart of the north end of Lake Michigan and the Beaver Island group, engraved from trigonometrical surveys directed by Capt. John N. Macomb, Topographical Engineers, in 1854 and 1855, as part of the US government’s Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes.¹ The scan held here is a “Duplicate” print bearing a handwritten presentation inscription: “Detroit April 1st 1861. Presented to the Geographical & Statistical Soc’y of N.Y. with Capt. Meade’s compl’ts,” signed in print below by “Geo. G. Meade, Capt. Top’l Engineers, Sup’t Survey N. and N.W. Lakes.”² This is George Gordon Meade, who would command the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg two years later; in 1861 he was Superintendent of the US Survey of the Northern and Northwestern Lakes, based in Detroit. The chart predates and independently corroborates several details in Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes (1902), while also showing how the light stations changed in the intervening decades.

Contents

Title block: “NORTH END OF LAKE MICHIGAN INCLUDING THE BEAVER ISLAND GROUP. From trigonometrical Surveys under the direction of the Topographical Bureau of the War Department in obedience to Acts of Congress requiring the Survey of the Northern and North Western Lakes under the orders of Captain J.N. Macomb Topographical Engineers in 1854 & 1855. Scale 1/120,000.” Engraved by W. H. Dougal.¹

Triangulation credits note (transcribed in full from the chart): general triangulation and hydrography remote from shore by Capt. J. N. Macomb; secondary triangulation, topography and minute hydrography of Hog Island, Garden Island and the north end of Beaver Island by Lieut. W. F. Raynolds in 1854; of the remainder of Beaver Island and the north coast west of Point Patterson by assistants W. H. Hearding, J. H. Foster and J. L. Beghem in 1855; of the north coast from Pt. Patterson to Mille Coquins Point by assistants G. W. Lamson and D. F. Henry in 1854; and of “High, Gull, Trout, Whiskey and Squaw Islands, and of the North coast from Mille Coquins Point to Hat Island meridian,” by assistants G. W. Lamson, H. Gillman and sub-assistant J. B. Williams in 1855.¹ This directly documents the earliest systematic American survey of Gull Island Reef, High Island and the island now called Ojibwa Island (see Squaw Island Light Station).

“Light Houses” table (bottom right of the sheet), transcribed in full:

No Squaw Island light appears in this table, consistent with the chart’s own 1855 survey crediting no light there yet (see Squaw Island Light Station).¹

“Sailing Directions” box (left side of the sheet) gives compass routes between Beaver Harbor, Waugoshance Light House, Manitou Passage, Green Bay and Chicago, all corrected to true meridian with distances in statute miles — including “From Waugoshance Light House to Light House on South bluff, head of Beaver Island, 28¾ miles,” a direct predecessor to the routes tabulated in Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes 47 years later.¹

Significance

Held alongside Scott’s 1902 Coast Pilot, this chart lets several claims about the Beaver Island lights be checked across nearly half a century: the Beaver Harbor light’s height above the lake nearly doubled (30 ft revolving “fixed” light $\to$ 34 ft tower with red 4th-order lens after an 1870 rebuild, per Elizabeth Whitney Williams’s memoir — see Beaver Island Harbor Light), the head-of-island light’s character changed from “revolving” to “fixed, varied by flashes,” and the Squaw Island light did not yet exist. The Meade presentation inscription also documents the pre-Civil War US Lake Survey’s institutional history and its superintendent’s identity, independent of Meade’s later Civil War fame.

Open questions

• The exact print/reissue history of this chart between the 1854-55 survey date and the 1861 presentation inscription is not established: was the “Light Houses” table part of the original 1855 plate, or added/updated on a later state of the same plate before this 1861 duplicate was pulled? The chart’s own title block gives only the survey years, not a printing date.
• The identity of the American Geographical and Statistical Society recipient individual (if any, beyond the Society itself) is not given on the sheet.
• No corresponding textual (non-chart) 1850s-60s sailing-directions pamphlet has been located in the corpus to cross-check the “Sailing Directions” box against contemporary prose.

See also

• Beaver Island Light Station
• Beaver Island Harbor Light
• Squaw Island Light Station
• Scott's New Coast Pilot for the Lakes
• Gull Island Reef
• High Island
• Beaver Island

Sources