Mt. Pleasant Indian School

The Mt. Pleasant Indian School of Michigan opened to Indian students in 1893. The historical marker that marks the site of this school reads: "In 1891 Congress established the Mount Pleasant Indian Industrial School and appropriated $25,000 for land and buildings. Local citizens contributed and additional $3,400 for the land. First occupied on June 30,1893, the school building contained eight classrooms and an auditorium. The school, emphasizing academics and vocational training, operated until 1934, with an average enrollment of three hundred. That year the property was transferred to the State of Michigan becoming the Mount Pleasant branch of the Michigan Home and Training School."

Records of Mt. Pleasant Indian School are in the Great Lakes Regional Archives of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in Chicago. In addition to correspondence, financial and other administrative records of the school are the student files. They are in two series -- Series 1 covering 1912 to 1946 and Series 2 covering 1893 to 1933. These student files are also indexed.

Pupil Registers for Mt. Pleasant Indian School, including those who died at the school, have been microfilmed and are available at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City.

The names of students from Leelanau County, Michigan who attended Mt. Pleasant are available on-line.

Microfilm copies of “Narrative and Statistical Reports” for Mt. Pleasant are included in National Archives Microcopy M1011, available in the National Archives system and in the collections of the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, beginning with their film number 1724219.

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