Interesting, my own ancestors in Michigan were just a bit north of there in the region around Marshall, Michigan beginning in the mid 1830s. Allen is just beyond the edge of the area I explored last year researching them.
White Pigeon seems to have been an important village as well. And Hillsdale, because that's where the railroad went through. A lot of Yankees (like the Ranneys) had come out to cut timber around Three Rivers in the early 1830s. This seems to have led to a rash of land purchases by both Massachusetts and New York families right around 1837. The White Pigeon Land Office operated from 1831-4 and then the Bronson (Kalamazoo) office opened in 1834. I should probably write a post about this...
Interesting, my own ancestors in Michigan were just a bit north of there in the region around Marshall, Michigan beginning in the mid 1830s. Allen is just beyond the edge of the area I explored last year researching them.
White Pigeon seems to have been an important village as well. And Hillsdale, because that's where the railroad went through. A lot of Yankees (like the Ranneys) had come out to cut timber around Three Rivers in the early 1830s. This seems to have led to a rash of land purchases by both Massachusetts and New York families right around 1837. The White Pigeon Land Office operated from 1831-4 and then the Bronson (Kalamazoo) office opened in 1834. I should probably write a post about this...
About cutting timber -- [A Brief History of Lumbering in Michigan](http://www.michigan-history.org/lumbering/LumberingBriefHistory.html).
Dow Chemical, in Midland, MI, was initially fueled by scrap wood from the timber industry.
[Herbert H. Dow](https://corporate.dow.com/en-us/about/company/history/herbert-henry-dow.html); [Dow Chemical Company - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Chemical_Company)