Daniel Morison’s journal ends at this point. After July 2, 1772, we lose sight of the unhappy surgeon’s mate. It appears at least that he did not remain much longer at the Straits for later that year the various units of the Second Battalion of the Royal Americans were assembled from Niagara, Fort Michilimackinac, and other frontier posts and shipped off to serve in the balmier climate of the West Indies.

Captain Turnbull retired from the army in 1775 by selling his commission, but some of the others who had served at Michilimackinac remained with the Royal Americans and fought in the Revolutionary War. Turnbull’s predecessor as commandant, Beamsley Glazier, distinguished himself in the fighting around Savannah, Georgia, in 1779, by leading three companies of the Royal Americans in a fierce charge which drove the American and French forces into headlong retreat and caused the Allies to lift their siege of the British troops in the city. Ensign Johnson’s erstwhile comrade-in-arms, John Christie, fought gallantly in 1780 at Mobile in a futile effort to beat off a Spanish attack on that port. Christie thereby redeemed his reputation which had been badly tarnished by his premature surrender to the Indians when he was in command of a fort at present-day Erie, Pennsylvania, in 1763.

Many changes took place at Michilimackinac after 1772, so many, in fact, that John Askin, an old-time resident, in 1778 wrote to Thomas McMurray, apparently the former acting sergeant-major who had retired to a business in Montreal, that he would scarcely recognize the post any more. In place of the drafty old houses, such as the ones Morison had lived in, the people, Askin reported, were “now building tolerable good ones.”

The fort also had a new surgeon’s mate—another Scotsman, David Mitchell. Unlike his compatriot Morison, Mitchell adjusted very well to the rough conditions of life on the fur-trading frontier. He married a Chippewa woman, and when his regiment was transferred elsewhere he received special permission to stay on as surgeon’s mate so that his wife would not be separated from her people. He remained in the area in various capacities until his death in 1830. By then old Fort Michilimackinac had been abandoned for a half century and only a few ruins sticking out of the sand reminded the occasional visitor of the colorful days of the 1760’s and 1770’s.