Joseph Campau was Michigan’s largest and wealthiest landowner at the beginning of the 19th century. He was reported to be the state’s first millionaire. He spoke fluent French and knew several Native American dialects, which helped him operate three trading posts in Michigan. He made his fortune in the fur trade and real estate, owned newspapers, and served as both a trustee and treasurer for the city of Detroit.
He was also a slaveholder and allegedly charged his tenants late fees with high interest rates when they struggled to pay rent. He fought with Father Gabriel Richard—an original founder of the institution that would become the University of Michigan—who implored Campau not to sell alcohol to Native Americans. Campau refused to listen.
Campau was a problematic and integral figure in the early history of Detroit and the state of Michigan. A small handful of Campau family papers were donated to the Bentley in 1979 by Donald Daller of Birmingham, Michigan. The donation includes letters from Campau and his brother, Barnabe Campau, with comments about land values, medical treatments, church activities, and more.
Age and importance made the Campau letters a valuable part of Bentley collections. To find more in this vein would be a rare discovery—but that’s exactly what happened when the director of U-M’s Clements Library, Paul J. Erickson, crossed paths with additional Campau letters. Erickson referred the letters to the Bentley right away.
“I think this shows the importance of good neighborliness among archives,” says Michelle McClellan, the Johanna Meijer Magoon Principal Archivist for the Bentley. “Because the Bentley had an existing Campau collection, we were an ideal home for them.”
There are 60 new letters, more than half of which are addressed directly to Campau and sent between 1837 and 1855. The majority of the remaining letters are addressed to Campau’s son, Daniel Campau.
McClellan says the new letters capture a dynamic part of Michigan’s history when the region was an international hub. “Many of the letters are in French, and Campau’s annotations are in French, which reminds us that Detroit and Michigan were part of ‘New France.’ This increasingly connected world was both multilingual and international through trade and the waterways around Michigan.”
The letters also show Campau buying and selling land as the population migrated west. “He’s anchored in Michigan and making money in Michigan, but like many settlers of European decent, he started looking west to expand his holdings even more,” McClellan says.
The letters are currently in the Bentley’s conservation lab, where lead conservator Corinne Robertson is making repairs to long-ago water damage that rendered some of the letters quite fragile. She will stabilize and encapsulate them so they can be accessible to visitors in the Bentley’s reading room.
“Paper was very expensive at the time,” McClellan says, “and it can be saved because it’s such good quality. To have something that an early Michigander held and wrote—something like this never loses its excitement.”
