Did you know?
• William Kirk is believed to have been the first resident of Howard Township in 1826 or 1827.
• The first school in Howard Township was in the northwestern part of the township in an abandoned log cabin in 1833.
• On the north shore of Barron Lake, George Fosdick started a blacksmith shop in 1832. Here he made the locks for the first Cass County Jail.
• Howard Township was once part of Pokagon Township and Ontwa, still containing part of Pokagon Prairie. Early settlers considered the soil too light for farming, although there were heavy mucklands in the southern part. Mounds and garden beds were known to have existed in this area. Upon opening one of the large mounds, hundreds of skeletons were observed buried with their heads toward a common center. The skeletons were buried in a huge circle, and it was thought they had engaged in a great battle on nearby grounds.
• Richard Anderson, of Howard Township, who died in 1891, leaves us some interesting early settlement tales. He tells how his father drove a team of horses from Ohio and sold one of the horses to buy 40 acres from the government three miles south of Niles. The land office was at White Pigeon and the deed had to go to Washington for the president’s signature. The return of the deed took about six weeks. Anderson’s family lived in a Mr. Johnson’s sap house. The years 1837 and 1837 were known as the “sickly years.” People fell ill of sinking fever, cholera morbus, and scarlet fever.
• The only church in Howard Township in 1838 was a Methodist Episcopal church. In 1858, they built a church costing $1,300 called Coulter’s Chapel, named for James Coulter because he gave the lot to the church. In 1882, the church reported a membership of 15.
• The first stagecoaches passed through Cass County in 1830. The line was established by Colonel Alamanson Hutson and connected Niles with Detroit. The route was from Detroit, through Ypsilanti, Jonesville, Coldwater River, White Pigeon, Edwardsburg and Niles. It took seven days to complete this journey, averaging 38 ½ miles per day at seven or eight miles per hour and at a cost of about 5 cents per mile. Teams were changed every 12 miles. At first there were two stages each week and later, three each week until 1832. Until 1834, the road from Clinton west to Chicago was still not much more than a wagon track and Indian trail.
• Chief Pokagon was the first Indian to visit the White House. Abraham Lincoln had just been elected president. He also visited General Grant with whom he smoked the pipe of peace and received soldiers during the Civil War. He was second in rank among the Potawatomi and the most admirable character among the St. Joseph Band. He died in 1840.
• The Air Line Railroad, a branch of the Michigan Central, came into Cass County in 1870, and then onto Niles in 1871.
The above information is taken from “Early Cass County: A Brief History for Use by Teachers,” compiled with information gotten from personal contacts, articles published in local newspapers and several books. Complete information is available at the Cass District Library—Local History Branch.
Some firsts and the growth of Howard Township
• In 1833, William Young erected the first frame barn in Howard Township, on Section 14, where it still stands. It is believed George Fosdick constructed the first farmhouse in the township, in Section 21, in 1835, while the first brick one was built by John Pettingill in Section 81, in 1842. About the latter date farmers began to erect better buildings, and discard the rude log structures, which had well served their time, and over the entire township can be found fine farm buildings and cultivated fields, while the Indian trails and deer paths have given way to suitably constructed wagon roads, and the old settlers and their descendants are enjoying the results of many years of patient toil.
• Probably no one is more conversant with or has been more prominently identified with the history of Howard Township since 1835, than Ezekiel C. Smith, who with his wife, Laura (Parralee), came from Hamburg, Erie Co., N. Y., to Michigan at this time. He was preceded by his father, Amasa, and brother Zenas. His mother, Candace, died here in 1836, and was interred in the Barren Lake Cemetery, which land was donated for this purpose by Mr. Smith.
• The year 1885 witnessed quite an influx of population to Howard Township, for the erroneous theories regarding the barrenness of the soil had been by this time exploded, and, having full faith in its future, George Fosdick laid out a village of sixty-four lots, which he named Howardsville, on the farm now owned by Henry Pryen. He carried on the blacksmith trade in his embryo village, and, in addition, made a specialty of jail locks, with which he furnished nearly all the jails in Southwestern Michigan and Northern Indiana.
The above information is credited to Genealogy Trails, History of Cass County
History of Cass County, Michigan (Waterman, Watkins) by Alfred Matthews 1882. More information is available at the Genealogy Trails website.
Compiled for the Barron Lake Association 2022
