Some volume 1 & 2 topics: Tribal distribution at the beginning of the sixteenth century, coureurs de bois, Samuel Champlain, Dollier and Galinee, Treaty of St. Mary’s, Treaty of Upper Sandusky, biography of Cadillac, Detroit under French rule, Ordinance of 1787, law and order in early Detroit, British rule in Detroit, public utilities, fire and police departments, penal and charitable institutions, slavery and underground railroad.

"Numerous histories of Michigan’s largest city have appeared since Farmer, but none matches it for detail or replaces it as the basic source for the period Farmer covers, although Clarence M. Burton, ed., The City of Detroit, Michigan, 1701-1922, comes the closest.”
- Willis F. Dunbar and George S. May, Michigan: a History of the Wolverine State, Eerdmans 1995.