Brian Dunnigan speaks at Mackinac Island history conference.

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Michigan's Role in the War of 1812 Topic of Talk Tuesday in Saginaw

Friends of the Clements Library Sponsors Event Featuring Brian Dunnigan

September 23, 2012
By: Dave Rogers

The Friends of the Clements Library will sponsor a historical talk on Tuesday, September 25, 2012 at 7:30 p.m. at the Saginaw Arts and Sciences Academy, 1903 N. Niagara, Saginaw.

Brian Leigh Dunnigan, Associate Director/Curator of Maps at University of Michigan's William L. Clements Library will be giving a talk titled: "The Great Lakes Frontier on the Eve of the War of 1812."

Using maps and drawings, Brian will discuss the context and forces at work in the Michigan territory that made the Great Lakes a crucial part of the conflict.

Mr. Dunnigan serves as the Library's Associate Director and also oversees the library's extensive collections of maps of the Americas. His particular interests in cartography are manuscript military maps and plans of the 18th and early 19th centuries, town and fortification plans, and the mapping of the Great Lakes.

He has been with the Clements Library since 1996, serving as Curator of Maps for most of that time but also as Interim Director in 2007-2008 and associate director since July 2010.

He has written and published on the early history of the Great Lakes, particularly the Detroit, Niagara, and Straits of Mackinac regions.

Mr. Dunnigan assists the Library's director and supervises the curators of different divisions. He cares for the map collection and edits and produces The Quarto, the semi-annual publication of the Clements Library Associates. He also helps administer the Library's fellowship programs.

Mr. Dunnigan is a graduate of the University of Michigan (BA History, 1971; MA History, 1973) and the State University of New York, Cooperstown Graduate Programs (MA, Museum Studies, 1979).

Before coming to the Clements, he was Executive Director of Old Fort Niagara (Youngstown, NY) from 1979 to 1996 and Managing Director of Historic Fort Wayne (Fort Wayne, Indiana) from 1974 to 1979. Previous experience included seasonal museum positions with Mackinac State Historic Parks.

Mr. Dunnigan has written numerous books and articles on the history of the Straits of Mackinac, the Niagara River region, and the early Great Lakes. Among these is Siege, 1759: The Campaign Against Niagara (1986, revised 1996).

In 1994 he edited a new translation of Pierre Pouchot's Memoirs on the Late War in North America (1994, revised 2005), the only account of the French and Indian War from the French perspective published during the eighteenth century.

His Frontier Metropolis: Picturing Early Detroit, 1701-1838 (Great Lakes Books), was published by Wayne State University Press in 2001 to mark the occasion of Detroit's Tercentennial celebration.

His latest work, released in May 2008, is A Picturesque Situation: Mackinac Before Photography, 1615-1860 (Great Lakes Books)

Mr. Dunnigan is a Michigan native, who resides in Grass Lake with his wife Candice and two children, James and Claire.

Mr. Dunnigan's wife, Candice Dunnigan, has written a book, Horse Tales from Mackinac, A Collection of Stories from the Mackinac Island Town Crier.

For more information please contact Ann Rock at annrock@umich.edu or 734-358-9770.

This talk is free of charge and reservations are not needed.

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