Calhoun County MI Archives History .....History Of Calhoun County 
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Robin Ellis -- July 17, 2007, 11:01 am

It was the summer of 1821, when fifty-five Potawatomi Chiefs gathered to sign 
the treaty of Chicago which granted this part of the country to the United 
States.  The first recorded history of Calhoun County began with the signing of 
this treaty.

Would you believe the Michigan Territory was described as "...unfit for 
habitation, made up of poor, barren and sandy land in the intermediate spaces 
between swamps and lakes, on which scarcely any vegetation grows..." in a 
federal survey published after the Revolutionary War?  In the early 1800's, 
newspapers and Morse's geography marked Michigan as an "interminable swamp".  
Therefore, settlers did not venture into the Michigan Territory.

Henry R. Schoolcraft and his crew of surveyors provided a more accurate 
description of the land west of Detroit.  By 1825 the Michigan Territory was 
described as "fertile lands".  Territorial Governor, Lewis Cass, and Michigan's 
Territorial representative to Congress, Father Gabriel Richard, worked together 
to get assistance in opening up the interior lands of Michigan for settlers.  
In the fall of 1829, Congress authorized the Territorial Road and surveying 
began in January of 1830.

Traveling by way of the Territorial Road, which really was a trail at the time, 
settlers began to arrive from the east cost and Europe.  On their way west 
these settlers left Detroit on the Chicago Road.  Near Ypsilanti they continued 
west on the Territorial Road which went directly through the counties we know 
today as Wayne, Washtenaw, Jackson, Calhoun, Kalamazoo, VanBuren and Berrien.

Calhoun County was named in honor of John C. Calhoun on October 29, 1829, when 
the legislative council of the territory met to assign boundaries to the 
county.  At the time, John C. Calhoun was a member of President Jackson's 
cabinet and also served as a senator from South Carolina.

In 1830 Calhoun County's first recorded entry of land was made by Ephraim 
Harrison in Albion.  The Peabody's were the first settlers to arrive in 
Albion.  Dr. Foster and Isaac Tolland were the first settlers on the present 
site of the City of Battle.  George Ketchum and his party were the first 
settlers on the Marshall Village site in April 1830.  The Ketchum party built a 
cabin and a sawmill on Rice Creek, and then built a grist mill which began 
operating in the fall of 1832.

In the early summer of 1830, New Yorker, Sidney Ketchum rode along Territorial 
Road until he reached the community we now know as Marshall.  Sidney acquired 
land claims in the area and returned to upstate New Your and New England to 
recruit settlers.  He recruited merchants, doctors, lawyers, ministers and 
other professionals for his new settlement.  In 1832 a schoolhouse was built, 
since most of the first settlers came from educated communities.  Before the 
Village had even a dozen children of school age, a Miss Brown was summoned from 
Ann Arbor to teach.

Oshea Wilder originally settled in Marshall and the located in lower Eckford 
Township.  It is claimed that he originated the idea of a canal connection 
between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.  Many of the early village plats in the 
county were settled near the Battle Creek Village site and became the county's 
first state legislative representative from 1836-1837.

"We are not yet in the Union but shall be on Monday or Tuesday of next week!"  
Serving as Michigan's liaison to the U.S. House of Representatives, Isaac E. 
Crary wrote these words on January 19, 1837, from Washington, D.C.  Crary was 
right and Michigan became a state the following week on January 26, 1837.  
Michigan was supposed to have become a state exactly two years earlier on 
January 26, 1835.  What kept Michigan out of the Union?  A boundary dispute 
called the "Great Toledo War."  The dispute ended with Michigan giving up the 
so-called "Toledo Strip" to Ohio for the western half of the Upper Peninsula.

By 1835, the Village of Marshall had a population of 300.  The village was the 
center of a rapidly growing agricultural area, and midpoint on the Territorial 
Road for settlers coming to Michigan.  Many settlers were traveling through the 
village and public houses were overcrowded.  Colonel Andrew Man of Connecticut 
recognized the great need for accommodating travelers and built what we know as 
the National House Inn.  The Inn began operating in the fall of 1835, and was 
the first brick building in Calhoun County.  It's interesting to note that the 
first log cabin in the community was built just five years earlier.  The Inn 
soon became the economic, social and political center of Marshall, serving as 
headquarters for the county courts until 1838.

The Cornerstone of the first county courthouse was laid on October 22, 1837.  
The building was completed in 1838, at a cost of over $25,000, and included a 
jail in the basement.  In 1850, a jail break occurred when nine prisoners 
managed to heat an iron at the stove.  The escaped by burning off the lock 
fastenings, and also freed one prisoner secured to an oak log by burning off 
the staples.  A jail separate from the courthouse was built in 1869 for housing 
approximately thirty prisoners.  During 1875, a new courthouse costing just 
under $55,000 was completed.  The new courthouse replaced the original 
courthouse which had become structurally unsafe.

Calhoun County continued to grow during the early 1900's with the Industrial 
Revolution.  During World War I the cities of Albion, Marshall and Battle Creek 
emerged as industrial centers.  Today there are many industries in the county 
including Kraft Foods, Eaton Manufacturing and Michigan Carton Paper Company.  
Battle Creek is know throughout the world, and serves as headquarters for the 
DLIS Program in conjunction with the Department of Defense in Washington.  
Also, Battle Creek is the home of the International W.K. Kellogg Foundation and 
Battle Creek Health System which has been in operation for over 100 years.  
Dairy faming accounts for over on third of the county's total agricultural 
income today.  The principal crops raised in the county are corn, hay and wheat.

Education has been important to the people of Calhoun County since the 1830's.  
Today, Isaac E. Crary and Rev. John D. Pierce are best remembered as the 
founders of the Michigan educational system in 1834.  Albion College is one of 
Michigan's oldest denomination colleges. Other well known schools in the county 
include the Calhoun Area Technology Center in Battle Creek.  Kellogg Community 
College, formerly known as the Battle Creek College, was established in 1958.

File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/mi/calhoun/history/other/historyo2ms.txt

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