From the Archives: Sunday School Minute Book

Mackinaw Mission Sunday School Minute Book, 1825 1955.217.1 Donated by Austin G. Packard

Mackinac States Historic Parks archival collections preserves thousands of items documenting all aspects of Mackinac history. In this ongoing series we highlight some of these treasures.

View of the mission, ca. 1830. Mission House is at the center and Mission Church to the left.

Protestant missionary William Ferry and wife, Amanda,  arrived on Mackinac Island from New England in 1823. Here they established the “Mackinaw Mission” which included a boarding school for Indian and Métis children. Within a few years a church (seemingly lifted from New England and dropped on the Great Lakes shore) was constructed next to the school. Both the Mission House school building and the church are owned by Mackinac State Historic Parks and preserved as historic structures. In this record book Rev. Ferry recorded the progress of the mission’s Sunday school. It was discovered by the donor in a Massachusetts barn in the early twentieth century.