The Community Outside the Walls: Suburbs of Michilimackinac

The Community Outside the Walls: Suburbs of Michilimackinac. . , The community of Michilimackinac was always larger than the military fort itself. After the British took control of Michilimackinac in 1761, an increasing number of civilian merchants and fur traders settled at the post. With little space left inside the fort, these new residents built homes to the east of the defensive palisade., By 1778, merchant John Askin wrote that "there is near to one hundred houses in the subarbs, and people are now building tolerable good ones." The suburbs Askin described included a number of rowhouses similar to those built within the fort, and the houses were probably laid out on an organized grid pattern. The houses in the suburbs were either abandoned or dismantled when the community of Michilimackinac moved to Mackinac Island between 1779 and 1781., Captions , Although it did not depict civilian homes outside the walls, this 1765 map of Michilimackinac included several stables and gardens, labelled "L" and "N," located to the south of the fort., Drawn sometime between 1766 and 1769, this British map is among the first to document civilian homes outside the fort walls. Along with a wharf and the fort itself, the map depicts several "Houses Belonging to the Traders with out the fort," labelled "B," just to the east of the palisade.