USA > Michigan > Allegan County > A twentieth century history of Allegan County, Michigan > Part 2
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'Ten Cate, Herman. 377
Thew, Joseph 551
Thomas, George S. 349
Thomas, Dr. Henry F. 493
Thomas, William J 402
Thompson, Dr. Cyrenius 46
Thorpe, Ira G ... 98
Tiefenthal, Daniel 335
Tien, Henry H ... 393
Township Clerks (See Township Offi-
cials).
Township Officials .622-655 Township Treasurers (See Township Officials).
Townships-Formation of, 16-19; or- ganization of 19-25
Tooker, Pliny H.
319
Trantman, Vietor 351
Treble Clef Society
Trowbridge, C. C ..
561
54
Trowbridge Township-Organization 22
Trutsch, Joseph Antony.
458
Tueker, A. Brink
421
Tueker, John
246
United Brethren Church-Cheshire, 592 ; Dorr and Salem .. 593
United Brethren in Christ. 596
United Presbyterian Church. 589
University Regent
616
Updyke, Theodore S. 92
Usher, Ambrose 236
Van Blareum, William. 238
Van Keuren, James A. 115
Van Raalte, Rev. A. C .. 52
Van Valkenburg, Charles F. 174
Vickery, Stephen
53
Village Clerks (See Village Officials).
Village Officials
650-655
Village Recorders (See Village Officials). Village Treasurers (See Village Offi- cials).
Wade, Jolm P 147
Wade, HIon. Theodosins. 150
Wadsworth, John 202
Wadsworth, Van Renslaer 199
Wait, Amos B
314
Walter, L. C ..
288
Walters. William 491
Ward, F. M. 177
Warner, George Y. 549
Warner, William W. 101
Washburn. Herbert A. 425
Watkins. Francis R ..
428
Watson Township-Organization, 21;
531-532
Tanner, Alanson A. 275
Taylor, Alfred
438
Taylor, George K .. 179
Taylor, Rev. James F. 142
Schram, Albert A. 194
Schultz, Christopher 138
Schultz, Fred
164
Secretary of State. 616
Seventh Day Adventist Church-Or-
ganization of, at Allegan, 593;
churches at Monterey, Otsego and Douglas
594
Shafer, Aaron 295
Shafer, Henry E .. 336
Shattuck, De Witt Clinton.
262
Shea, John
447
Sheffer, Clark M. 224
Sheriffs 619
Sherwood, Hull 41,43
41
Silcox, F. J.
169
Silcox, William H. 492
Silo plants
497
Silver Creek (See Argenta).
Simonson, Simon
Singapore (deserted village) .34, 125
Slagel, Jacob F. 302
Slenk, John H 383
363
Smith, Frederick F
427
Smith, John T ..
325
Smith, Sherman I.
182
Snell, Eli
Soldiers' Monument 615
Spanish-American War (See Mili-
tary Records).
Spencer, Warner W. 467
Stafford, Martin A. 177
Stafford, Silas 552
Staring, George
365
Starring, Andrew J 155
State Senators 616
State Treasurer 616
Stiekel, William Henry. 230
Stockdale, Hon. David. 258
Stockdale, John B .. 260
Stockdale, Samuel Gagen 487
Stockdale, William
270
Stone, Gilbert M. 300
Stone, Jolın W. (Jndge) 552
Stow, William H. 249
Stratton, George 374
Streeter, Thomas E., Sr. 58,62
Sturgis, John W. 426
Supervisors (See Township Officials).
Surveyors 621
Sutter, Christian 356
Swaney, Sylvester 152
Swedish Lutheran Church . 592
Symons, Charles 201
Takken, William R. 132
Wayland Saturday Globe.
542
Sherwood family
135
INDEX
XV
Wayland Township-Organization,
21; history and present status .... 257
Wicks, Dr. Almond H. 305
Wayland Village - History, 257;
Wiley, Hon. D. W .129, 501
schools, 531-532; officials. .654-655
Wilkes, C. R. 552
Weber, Henry
357
Williams, Frank Hawley (Judge) . .
74
Webster, Leonard M. 464
Williams, William B. (Judge) .... 74, 550
Wedge, Judson D. 473
Wilson, Mrs. Annie C. 163
Weed, Nathaniel 50
Wilson, Thomas 162
Winchell, James 469
Weeks, Alanson S.
83
Wing, Fay C. 542
Weeks, Harold C.
83
Wing family 203
Weleh, Charles B.
156
Wolfinger, C. Elmer. 292
Weleh, H. G .. 148,
500
Wellington, George Ambrose 180
Wynn, John 160
West, N. B. 57
Wynne, Edwin P. 110
Wetmore, Albert D 107
Wetmore, Chester 107
Young, Dr. Clarence W 104
Young, H. Osear. 104
White, C. C.
46
Young, Joseph E. 106
White, Heman F.
327
White, Lieut. William. 139
Weed, Perry P. 151
Woman's History Class, Allegan 560
Whitbeck, Allen L. 109
MAP of ALLEGAN COUNTY
MICHIGAN Scale 4 Miles to1 Inch
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5
HISTORY OF ALLEGAN COUNTY
CHAPTER I.
ORGANIZATION AND CIVIL GOVERNMENT.
Strictly speaking, the settlers of Allegan county were not pioneers. The majority of them were people of more or less education and culture, trained and accustomed to the usages of civilization. In the settling of the country there was no interim between savagery and civilization. The pioneers did not come and build their cabins and defend them with their rifles for some years until the civil officers, courts, schools and churches made their appearance. This was necessary in some settlements but not here. In Allegan county civil government sprang into being almost at once. The settlers brought civilization with them. They brought the common law with them, and, in harmony with the legislative statutes, they saw to it at once that the community should be governed thereby. The machinery that governed populous and organized communities was elastic and adaptable, and could be readily extended to this new county. Utilizing it, the people provided for courts, public buildings, for roads, and every possible institution necessary to a civilized country. And the result was that Allegan county soon became a populous link in the great chain of similar political communities stretching 'from the Atlantic beyond the Mississippi, maintaining without a break the institutions of civilization at the standards of older states and counties.
A resume of the early history of Michigan up to the time of the organization of the Territory will be valuable for understanding the history of organization and the beginnings of Allegan county, which is but a more detailed continuation of the larger story of the state.
In 1778-9 George Rogers Clark, a young Virginian of extraordinary character, who has well been called the Hannibal of the West, captured Kas- kaskia and Vincennes, thus cutting off the supplies of the Indians. He had been sent out by the government of Virginia, and that state therefore laid claim to all the territory northwest of the Ohio river, which was the same territory ceded to Great Britain by France in the treaty of 1763.
On March 1, 1784, through her authorized delegates in Congress, Virginia ceded this territory to the United States. She stipulated that it be
1
2
HISTORY OF ALLEGAN COUNTY
divided into states, but specified no boundaries. By virtue of ancient royal charters, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut also claimed large territories north of the Ohio river, but these claims were all transferred to the United States, Connecticut alone reserving a tract, which was called the Western Reserve. Thus the general government obtained jurisdiction over the Northwest Territory and the lands, subject, however, to the proprietary rights of the Indians.
When Congress assumed the jurisdiction there was no established gov- ernment anywhere in the territory. The French commandants of the posts had administered the laws dictated by France, the British succeeded them and proclaimed the common law of England to be in force. Virginia also had extended her laws, but there were no courts to enforce any of them. The question of forming some kind of government for the newly acquired territory at once attracted the attention of Congress.
At first a report was made providing for the formation of the territory into ten states, with fanciful names, but no action was taken upon it. This was Thomas Jefferson's scheme. From the time of its acquirement by the government till 1787 there was no organized control over the Northwest Territory. The people who were settling in it were left to struggle along as best they could. But on April 23, 1787, a committee in Congress reported an ordinance for the government of the new territory. It was discussed from time to time, and very greatly amended, and finally on the 13th of July it passed Congress. This is the celebrated Ordinance of 1787, a document which next to the Constitution of the United States perhaps has occasioned more discussion than any other on account of its sound principles, states- manlike qualities and wise provisions.
On May 7, 1800, Congress divided the Northwest Territory by a line running from the mouth of the Kentucky river to Fort Recovery. All the region east of this line was still to be Northwest Territory, and that on the west was erected into the Indiana Territory. It will be seen that this division threw about one-half of the Michigan country into Indiana, and left the other half in the Northwest Territory. All that portion of the east Michigan country which lay north of the line drawn through the southerly bend of Lake Michigan was organized as Wayne county of the Northwest Terri- tory, and its settlers supposed that their fortunes were thenceforth identified with those of Ohio.
The Northwest Territory was rapidly filling with settlers, and in accordance with the provisions made for admission into the Union, the whole population, including Wayne county, were agitating the question of state- hood. On April 30, 1802, Congress passed an enabling act, the first of its kind, according to which Ohio might frame a constitution and establish a state government. In harmony with the enabling act, a convention met at Chillicothe, Ohio, November Ist to frame a constitution for the new state. The constitution was adopted on November 29th.
The act enabling the people of Ohio to form a state provided that Wayne county might be attached to the new state if Congress saw fit. Congress did not see fit, but on the contrary, attached it to Indiana Terri- tory, and in 1803 Governor Harrison formed a new Wayne county, which comprised almost all of what is now Michigan. North and east it was bounded by Canada, but on the other sides it was bounded by a "north and
3
HISTORY OF ALLEGAN COUNTY
south line through the western extreme of Lake Michigan" and "an east and west line through the southern extreme of the same."
But the Michigan country thus united was too strong to remain long a part of a territory, and hence, on January 11, 1805, Michigan territory was formed by act of Congress. It was bounded on the west by a line extending through the center of Lake Michigan, and on the south by a line running east from the southern extreme of the same. It will be seen that at this time Michigan was deprived of a strip of land on the west shore of Lake Michigan, which as Wayne county Congress had given her. Had she con- tended for that as persistently as she did for the strip on the southern boundary she would have sought something more valuable. For Chicago is situated in that very strip. That spot was comparatively worthless then, and the future is hidden from states as from individuals. It is interesting, however, to think what would have been the results if Michigan had retained the boundary lines which she had as Wayne county.
It will assist in understanding the division of Allegan county into town- ships and the organization of civil government by referring to the formation of the various counties up to the time the history of Allegan begins.
Of Wayne county we have already spoken. Monroe county was formed in 1817; Mackinac in 1818; Oakland in 1820; Washtenaw in 1826; Chippewa in 1826; Lenawee, from Monroe, in 1826. To Lenawee county was attached all the territory (comprising the greater part of southern Michigan) to which the Indian title had been extinguished by the Chicago treaty of 1821. In September, 1828, this already vast domain was further increased by the addition of all the lands to which the Indian title had been extinguished by the Carey Mission treaty of 1828. This entire arca, comprising about ten thousand square miles, was constituted and organized as the township of St. Joseph, being attached to Lenawee county.
By an act approved October 29, 1829. twelve counties were carved from this immense township. The boundaries of counties could not be laid off until the land survey had been completed, and the survey could not be undertaken until the country came into the possession of the government through the extinguishment of the Indian title. The Indians had ceded nearly all the land south of Grand river and west of the principal meridian at the treaty of 1821, so that the surveys of this region into townships was completed between the date of this treaty and the formation of the counties.
The survey of the public lands of Michigan was begun in 1815. Due honor should be accorded the employes of the government who made the survey, for this work had to be done before people could begin to live upon the land and form such associations with one another as constitute a county. Only on condition of this preliminary work having been done can definite individual ownership exist, and those mutual rights and duties of men with each other be established which make an organic body such as a county or township possible. The legislative council of Michigan were able to declare where and what the area of this county should be, because the United States measurers of land had already laid their measuring chain upon the land out of which the county was to be made.
In 1796 Congress enacted the law in accordance with which all the public lands were to be surveyed. The system embodied in this act is known as the "Rectangular System." The entire territory of the present state of
4
HISTORY OF ALLEGAN COUNTY
Michigan has been surveyed and divided into townships in accordance with this system and with reference to a certain "meridian" and "base line."
The meridian spoken of so frequently in determining the location of counties and townships was a north and south line known in the U. S. survey as "the principal meridian of the peninsula of Michigan." It is a line running due north from the mouth of the Auglaize river, near Defiance, Ohio, and coincides with the eastern boundary of Hillsdale county. The "base line," or the east and west line from which reckoning was made in the survey, is a line crossing the principal meridian on the parallel of 42 degrees and 25 minutes, or, in other words, the line forming the southern boundary of Allegan and other counties to the east of it. With this principal meridian and this base line established, the surveyors of the general government began to go over the public land of the peninsula of Michigan with compass and chain, and to mark trees and set posts for the boundaries of townships and sections and quarter-sections. These surveyors knew, of course, no names. of counties and townships as we know them now, neither did they give names at all to townships or groups of townships as they surveyed them. They recorded and dated carefully day by day their measurements and topo- graphical notes in their note-books, thus creating the original "Field Notes," which in Allegan county and every county today are of such primary and incalculable importance for titles, deeds, mortgages and all transactions involved in buying, selling or owning of land. As they tramped over the surface of the country, measuring and marking it off into portions each exactly six miles square, making a township, they gave no names to the townships, but merely numbered them in their relation to meridian and base line, according to the ingenious but simple system, the principles of which were struck in the land ordinance of 1785, but which appeared fairly well developed in the Congressional act of 1796.
The laying off of the base line and the meridian and the laying off of all the territory south of the base line, as well as part of the country north of it, had been completed, evidently, before the act previously referred to, according to which a large part of southern Michigan was blocked off into counties. The act of October 29, 1829, constituted with their present boun- laries the following counties: Ingham, Eaton, Barry, Jackson, Calhoun. Kalamazoo, Van Buren. Hillsdale, Branch, St. Joseph, Cass and Berrien. It will be understood that this act provided only for the erecting of the counties by territorial limits ; it did not organize civil governments in cach. Most of the counties mentioned did not have a white settler at the time, and the territory was merely blocked off into convenient squares for the organi- zation of separate governments when the time should come.
Allegan county was not carved out at this time, doubtless because the survey had not yet been completed of all the townships west of Barry. The outside lines of the towns bordering on Barry county were surveyed in 1825 by John Mullett and Lucius Lyon, what are now Gun Plains, Way- land and Martin being outlined in that order, and also the boundaries of the present Dorr township were laid off. But the remaining townships were not surveyed until 1830. A large territory of the country adjacent to Grand river must have been blocked off about this time, for by an act approved March 2, 1831, the legislature laid off the boundaries of the
HISTORY OF ALLEGAN COUNTY
following counties : Clinton, Ionia, Kent, Allegan, Ottawa, Gratiot, Mont- calm, Oceana, Saginaw, Midland, Gladwyn, Arenac, Isabella.
At this time, then, Allegan county was given form and name; just preceding the advance of settlers into this region, for when the act was passed not more than four families were permanently located in the new county. But from that time on the survey-townships grouped together by the legislature might be conveniently referred to as Allegan county. The portion of the act defining the boundaries of the county is as follows :
"That the country included in the following limits, to wit: north of the base line and south of the line between townships four and five north; west of the line between ranges ten and eleven west of the meridian, and cast of the shore of Lake Michigan, be and the same is hereby set off into a separate county, by the name of Allegan."
So much for the marking of boundaries. The township or section lines within the county had been or were being marked at this time. This was all preliminary to actual settlement and civil organization. But civil government can have no real existence except among people, and since there were no inhabitants to speak of in Allegan county, civil government was not yet a necessity.
Nevertheless, the legislature had wisely provided for any chance settler in this region that he should not be beyond the reach of justice, even though it might be necessary to travel a hundred miles to get it. On November 4. 1829, a few days after the twelve counties in southwestern Michigan were laid off as mentioned above, the legislature provided for the organization of civil government in two counties of this territory and attached all the rest of the unorganized country to them for judicial and other civil purposes. St. Joseph and Cass counties were constituted with all the rights and privi- leges of other civil counties of the Territory, a court was established in each, and provision made for the election of civil officers. Each of these county governments had jurisdiction far beyond its own boundaries. To St. Joseph county were attached the counties of Kalamazoo, Calhoun, Branch, Barry and Eaton (which had been surveyed), and also all of the unsurveyed country north of the base line to the straits of Mackinac, and included between the principal meridian on the east and the line between ranges 12 and 13 on the west. This latter line cut off the two eastern blocks of town- ships in this county, so that so much of Allegan county was attached to St. Joseph county for civil purposes. If any settlers along the river in what are now Gun Plains and Otsego townships or any of the towns north of them (provided there were settlers at that time) had desired to attend court for a settlement of differences, it would have been necessary for the litigants to travel through the woods nearly fifty miles to White Pigeon.
To Cass county were attached, for like reasons, both Berrien and Van Buren counties, and all the country north of those counties to Lake Michigan. a strip of land extending along almost the entire eastern shore of Lake Michigan. A glance at the map will show that this included all that portion of Allegan county lying directly north of Van Buren county ; in other words, all the townships not included in these attached to St. Joseph county. So that the county seat for an inhabitant of the west two-thirds of the county was fixed at that time in Cass county.
6
HISTORY OF ALLEGAN COUNTY
On November 5, 1829, the day after the passage of the act just men- tioned, the legislature went a step further in providing a temporary civil arrangement for all this unorganized country of western Michigan. It was provided that the counties of Kalamazoo and Barry and all the unsurveyed country north of them (including the east part of Allegan county) should be organized into a civil township named Brady.
The first settlers of Allegan county, Giles Scott, Turner Aldrich and others, in the southeastern corner of the county, were for some months citizens of this Brady township of St. Joseph county. The first town meeting of this large territory was held at the house of Abram J. Shaver, in Kalamazoo county, but there is no record, and it is unlikely that any person from the limits of present Allegan county attended.
By the same act the west two-thirds of the county became a part of another civil township, belonging to Cass county. Van Buren county and all the country lying north of it, as already described, were formed into a township by the name of Penn. So far as Allegan county is concerned, these townships of Penn and Brady have an empty significance, for whole counties were soon organized within their limits and their names were abolished or applied to restricted boundaries.
The rapid progress of settlement across western Michigan beginning with the thirties brought about the organization of one county after the other, so that by the time the Territory was admitted to statehood there was a solid block of settled and organized counties from Detroit to Lake Michigan. The establishment of civil government is a ready index of this process of settlement, and it will be interesting to note the various changes of civil condition which preceded the organization of Allegan county into a separate and independent political entity.
By the act approved July 30, 1830, the township of Brady ceased to be a part of St. Joseph county, for on that date the county of Kalamazoo was organized, and all the remaining portion of country to the north hitherto mentioned as forming Brady township, as well as Calhoun and Eaton counties, was attached to Kalamazoo county for legal purposes.
Thus the east side of Allegan remained a legal part of Kalamazoo county, and the western portion was attached to Cass county, until the important legislative act of March 29, 1833. Then for the first time the Allegan county as we know it was recognized as a legal entity.
This act provided that all that district of country which had been set off into a separate county by the name of Allegan (according to act of March 2, 1831) should be a township by the name of Allegan, "attached to the county of Kalamazoo for all legal purposes whatsoever," and that the first township meeting should be held at the house of Samuel Foster.
The civil history of the county of Allegan thus really begins with the history of Allegan township. For three years, while the first mills were being erected along the Kalamazoo and Pine creek, the first roads were being laid out, the first postoffices established, and the institutions of civilization securing firm foothold, the twenty-four township arcas com- prising Allegan county were grouped together for civil purposes under the name of Allegan township.
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