Cheboygan's Beginnings

In the 1770s, Captain Samuel Robertson identified the River Shaboygan near Michilimackinac as a safe place for wintering vessels, with six feet of water on the bar, a narrow entrance, marshy open ground around the mouth, good fishing and shooting, and abundant pine on both sides of the river. John Askin, born in 1739, moved to Northern Michigan in the 1760s and by the 1780s, after succeeding as a trader, supplier to the British army, and farmer, relocated to Detroit to expand his business ventures. His daughter Catherine married Captain Samuel Robertson, who lived at times in the Cheboygan settlement. In 1774, John Askin built the Welcome in the Straits of Mackinac and used it to carry trade goods through much of the Great Lakes region before the British military later bought it and converted it into an armed sloop during the American Revolutionary War. Pompeii, an African slave who traveled with Askin, worked Askin's boats as they made trading stops in harbors such as the Cheboygan River. In 1976, community members in Cheboygan created a mural on Main Street for America's Bicentennial celebration depicting the area's history; in 1996 it was moved to Locust Street and recreated by artist Molly Jo Nolan; and in 2015 muralist Terry Dickinson, working with the Cheboygan community and with original designer Margaret Lentini using historical information provided by historian Ellis Olson, recreated it again in Washington Park as a new composition telling the story of Cheboygan's beginnings.

Cheboygan, Michigan · United States