Mormon Print Shop

Summary

The Mormon Print Shop is the surviving Saint James building associated with James Strang’s royal press and the publication of the Northern Islander (1850–1856). The National Register lists it as reference 71000386. The building is now the Beaver Island Historical Society’s Print Shop Museum, but the modern museum name should not be read as proof that every surviving feature dates to the press’s 1850-1856 operation.

History

After the Strangite headquarters moved from Voree to Saint James, the Northern Islander began publication there on 12 December 1850. The same press produced books, pamphlets and tracts, including the Book of the Law of the Lord, which was advertised as printed at the “Royal Press, Saint James.” Quaife’s account says that 320 copies were still unbound in the printing office when the anti-Strangite party attacked in 1856; the office and other Strangite property were ransacked during the expulsion. These claims describe the press and its contents through partisan or later sources, not a surviving nineteenth-century building inventory.

The 1892 Michigan Pioneer sketch, preserved and discussed in the Northern Islander source article, reports that by the 1880s the former Northern Islander office had become a boardinghouse and was then regarded as the best hotel in Saint James. That is evidence for the building’s post-kingdom reuse, but it does not establish an uninterrupted ownership chain or identify which historic fabric survived conversion.

The Beaver Island Historical Society was founded in 1957 and made the building its headquarters and museum. Local Beaver Beacon reports document the Society’s 1964 effort to receive the deed and retire the property’s mortgage, and its 1963-1966 public museum operation. The Michigan historical marker identifies the building as James Strang’s Print Shop; the National Register reference supplies the federal historic-resource join key.

Significance

The building is a rare fixed point connecting the Strangite newspaper, the kingdom’s publishing program, the violence and material loss of 1856, and the later community’s preservation work. Its evidence is layered: the press history comes from textual sources, while the building’s exact construction sequence, alterations and surviving equipment require architectural and National Register documentation not yet held here.

Open questions

• Obtain the National Register nomination and a building survey to distinguish documented 1850 construction from later additions and repairs.
• Identify the printer, press, type and other equipment actually used in the building, rather than assuming that the museum’s present exhibits are original.
• Reconstruct the title and occupancy chain from the 1856 expulsion through the reported 1880s boardinghouse period and the Historical Society’s 1964 deed.
• Determine whether the building’s address and coordinates refer to the entire historic parcel or only the mapped National Register point.