Biddle House / Agatha and Edward Biddle

The Biddle House on Mackinac Island, dating to the 1780s, is one of the island's oldest structures and an example of French Canadian piece sur piece en coulisse construction, a frame with log infill fitted into slots, later covered with lath and plaster inside and clapboard siding outside. Edward Biddle and Agatha Biddle acquired the house around 1830, raised three children there, and hosted friends and relatives. Agatha, an Anishnaabe woman from southern Michigan, married Edward, a trader from Pennsylvania, in 1819, and together they combined her tribal connections with his business experience to become accomplished merchants in Mackinac's fishing and fur trading industries; Edward also served as a county sheriff. The house reflects Mackinac's blend of Euro-American and Indigenous cultures, and by the 1860s Agatha was a chief of the Mackinac Band of Odawa and Ojibway, a community with many women of Anishnaabek and European heritage and numerous female chiefs. Agatha was known for her generosity to friends and strangers, caring for many in the house. After the Biddle family left in the late nineteenth century, the house fell into disrepair, then was acquired by the Mackinac Island State Park Commission in 1945, extensively restored in 1957, and became home to the Mackinac Island Native American Museum in 2020.

Mackinac Island, Michigan · United States