Lake Geneserath

Summary

Lake Geneserath is the largest inland lake on Beaver Island, lying near the head (northern part) of the island. Its name is a Strang-era biblical toponym — for the Sea of Gennesaret, i.e. the Sea of Galilee — one of several such names James Jesse Strang’s Latter Day Saint settlers gave to features on the island between 1848 and 1856. A 1912 newspaper account records that the biblical names for the lake, its outlet (the Jordan) and a settlement at its mouth (Galilee) had already fallen out of local use in favor of the plain descriptive “Little lake,” while noting the older names survived “only [on] the old maps” — which is exactly where “Lake Geneserath” survives today, as the official GNIS name.

History

Strang’s settlers renamed this lake for the Sea of Gennesaret as part of a broader programme of biblical place-naming on the island, paralleling Donegal Bay’s former name, Mount Pisgah Bay, and the Jordan River, the lake’s outlet. A 1912 feature in the Rock Island Argus — reporting on the island fifty-six years after Strang’s assassination — describes the lake, “the largest Inland lake,” at the head of the island: “They call it Little lake to distinguish it from Lake Michigan. But the Mormons called it Lake Gennesaret. Its outlet they called the Jordan and a little settlement which they made at its mouth they called Galilee. All that has disappeared and only the old maps retain the names. Today but three families live at the head.”¹ This is a striking piece of evidence that, within a single generation, the Strang-era toponyms had already become historical curiosities to residents rather than living names — even as they persisted, and still persist, as the official cartographic record.

Elizabeth Whitney Williams’ 1905 memoir lists “Lakes Genessarett, Fox Lake, Green Lake” among six inland lakes near the head of the island, distinct from Font Lake near the harbor, which she identifies as the site of Mormon baptisms and yearly feasts.² No source read for this project places baptisms specifically at Lake Geneserath; that association belongs to Font Lake and should not be conflated with this entity.

Geography

Lake Geneserath is described in the 2023 Beaver Island Master Plan as the island’s largest inland lake, a high-quality mesotrophic lake reaching depths of 55 feet and supporting a walleye fishery; the Master Plan also notes at least one study linking an increase in the lake’s trophic status to a warming climate and increased residential development around its shore. This is a modern secondary source, held at probable confidence for the specific ecological claims, cited for present-day physical description rather than for the historical naming record above. A February 2024 Northern Islander community report of a July 2023 MDNR survey also records a mixed fish community and multiple walleye year classes. Because the underlying state report is not held, that account remains a newspaper-mediated summary rather than a directly inspected state dataset. A 1976 county inventory printed in the Charlevoix Courier gives 440 acres, a useful historical size reference but not a substitute for a current survey.

Names

Lake Geneserath is a direct biblical toponym from Strang’s settlement era (the Sea of Gennesaret/Galilee). GNIS carries “Geneserath Lake” as a variant word-order form. The 1912 newspaper account is the clearest evidence held that the name was, even by then, a surviving cartographic artifact of Strang’s kingdom rather than a name in everyday local use — islanders of the time called it simply “Little lake.”

Significance

Together with the Jordan River and the former Mount Pisgah Bay, Lake Geneserath is part of the physical trace Strang’s settlement-era theocratic renaming programme (1847–1856) left on the modern map — a distribution of names that stands as evidence of the kingdom’s extent even where the settlements themselves, like Galilee at the lake’s mouth, have vanished entirely.

Open questions

• The exact date the name “Lake Geneserath”/“Lake Gennesaret” was first applied by Strang’s settlers is not established from sources held.
• Whether any trace of the “Galilee” settlement at the lake’s outlet survives archaeologically, or whether its location has been identified on modern maps, is not established from sources held.
• The 1912 newspaper’s claim that “but three families live at the head” of the island at that date has not been cross-checked against any census or township record.

See also

• Beaver Island
• Jordan River
• Donegal Bay
• Saint James