Graham Jaehnig/Daily Mining Gazette Four guns of Battery D firing at two-second intervals, on the line, during a demonstration at the 35th annual Battery D, 1st Michigan Light Artillery encampment at Fort Wilkins this past weekend.

COPPER HARBOR — Battery D, 1st Michigan Light Artillery returned to Copper Harbor, helping Fort Wilkins celebrate its 175 birthday, entertaining an unusually large number of people with a light hearted approach to education while having fun.

This year, the battery demonstrated cannon loading and firing on an array of cannons, ranging from a 4.5-pounder Mountain Howitzer, to a 10-pounder Parrot rifled cannon, to a 12-pounder, smooth-bore, bronze Napoleon.

The Battery’s encampment at Fort Wilkins marked its 35th annual visit to the former military post. Founded in 1980s by high school history teacher Jim Newkirk of Ludington, the organization began as a history class project.

Troy Bongard, from Claire, Michigan, holds the rank of lieutenant in the battery, and is the battery’s current commander of the unit. He has held the position for two years, since the Newkirk passed away from cancer. Bongard explained how the battery came into existence.

“Jim (Newkirk) started it as a project with a black powder club, and they contacted a company that sold kits for pistols and muskets,” said Bongard. “They wrote the company a letter saying they were a black power club for a high school, and what do you have available that we could put together as a club for the class. And, they basically said: “We’ll send you six kits for free.”

Bongard said the next year, Newkirk asked his history class what they wanted to do as the project. The kids said: “Let’s build a cannon,” and that is how the battery got started.

The next year, Jim (Newkirk) asked the class: “What do you want to do this year?” The kids said, let’s build a cannon, and that’s where it all started.

Battery D is a recreation of an actual artillery battery that was raised in downstate Michigan, and mustered into Federal service in the Union Army on Sept. 17, 1861. One of the original 90-Day enlistment units called for by President Abraham Lincoln, Battery D left for combat on Dec. 9, two days after it was supposed to have been disbanded. The battery then was under the command of Captain William Andrew. The battery saw service in the western theater of war, in the Army of the Ohio. It served until the end of the war in 1865.

Today, the battery engages in classroom visits and public education of life during the 1860s, and does not glorify war, but rather, demonstrates its atrocities.