"John Coates,

" Notary Public:'

This last entry, without date as it is, or the names of the
parents, is hardly a sufficient baptismal register to give us
much information for these later days, but it is evidently the
record of a certificate, insisted upon by the parents and given
to them by Major Sinclair, then commander of the post for
the English Government.
In the memoirs of Augustus Grignon, published in the Wis-
consin Historical Collections, is a passage relating how his
mother, who was a daughter of Charles Langlade, who was
born in Mackinac in 1729, came with her children all the way
in a birch canoe, from Green Bay to Mackinac to have them
baptized by Father Payet, who was making a visit here in



29

1787. These registers confirm this. Six children of Pierre
Grignon, from four months to ten years old, were at that time
baptized.
On one of these missionary visits, came to Michilimackinac, in
1799, the subject of this sketch, Father Richard. He found
here, we are told, about 700 Christians, and spent, as this
register shows, several weeks at least in ministering to their
spiritual necessities. From here he went to Georgian Bay
and to the Sault Ste. Marie, and then, after an absence of four
months, returned to Detroit. The succeeding twenty years of
Father Richard's life were marked by an exceedingly great
activity; made Vicar-General of Detroit, and given a free
hand, he enlarged and improved all the parochial and mission
schools; he opened an academy of a very high class for the
higher education of women. He also instituted and carried
on a seminary for young men, and endeavored to obtain from
among its pupils fit candidates for the priesthood, of which
he had pressing need.
