How Edwardsburg got its name

Edwardsburg, Mich. Edwardsburg is named for an Edwards; nobody disputes that. Which Edwards is another matter. The county histories name the storekeeper who opened the first store in the county here in 1828. A memoir printed by Michigan’s pioneer society in 1888 names his father, the major. And before there was any Edwardsburg at all, the place was Beardsley’s Prairie.

We went back to the county histories of 1875, 1882 and 1906, the pioneer society’s memoir, Michigan’s first gazetteer of 1838 and the county map of 1860, to see what the record shows.

The case in brief

Story or record? Play along

Here are eight things people say about the name. For each, make your call: true, false, or no record either way. Then see what the paper shows.

Beardsley’s Prairie

DocumentedThe first name on this ground belongs to the prairie. Rogers’s history of 1875 describes “a settlement made by Ezra Beardsley, on the prairie that still bears his name,” and the 1882 history says the prairie was “named after Ezra Beardsley, the first settler on it.” Glover’s history of 1906 places it beside “the beautiful sheet of water rightly named Pleasant lake.” Beardsley, Rogers says, kept the first hotel, on the bank of the lake.

DocumentedThe two names lived side by side for a while. A list of Bishop Chase’s preaching stations, printed in the 1882 history, has “Beardsley’s Prairie or Edwardsburg.”

ReadingStrictly, Beardsley’s Prairie was the name of the open ground, not of a village. We have found no plat or post office under that name.

A post office before a plat

DocumentedA territorial road act of 30 July 1830, quoted in the 1882 history, runs the Chicago road “a few rods west of the post office, near the house of Ezra Beardsley.” Postal-history listings date the office, as “Edwardsburg” or “Edwardsburgh,” from 1830.

DocumentedThe county’s first circuit court opened at Beardsley’s house on 9 August 1831, and the first board of supervisors met there on 4 October 1831, “at the house of Ezra Beardsley (now Edwardsburg),” as Rogers puts it.

Which Edwards?

DocumentedRogers, 1875: “Edwardsburg was laid out by Alexander H. Edwards, August 12th, 1831, comprising thirty-one blocks.” On the same page he names the man the village was named for: Thomas H. Edwards, who in 1828 “commenced to sell goods and was the first merchant in the County.” The 1882 history agrees, “Thomas H. Edwards, from whom Edwardsburg was named,” and adds that he kept his goods in a pole shanty on Lake Street, and in the fall of 1831 sold his stock and his village lots to Jacob and Abiel Silver and moved on.

DocumentedThe Pioneer Society of Michigan printed a different account in 1888, in a memoir of the Edwards family. A family arriving from Detroit in 1828 with ten children, it says, “reached Beardsley’s prairie, Cass county, now Edwardsburg, named after Maj. Edwards.” The memoir calls him “the late Major Abram Edwards” and names Oliver and Alexander among his sons.

ReadingThe two accounts are easily reconciled. Alexander, who laid out the village, and Thomas, who kept the store, were very probably the major’s sons; the town took the family’s name. Which of them the founders had in mind, the record does not say.

Burg and burgh

DocumentedBlois’s Gazetteer of the State of Michigan (1838) prints the name both ways: “Edwardsburgh,” where it describes the proposed southern railway, and “Edwardsburg village and post office,” ten miles southwest of Cassopolis on the Chicago turnpike. The plan of the village on the county map of 1860 is headed “EDWARDSBURGH.”

New findingBlois also gives the lake an older name. Edwardsburg, he writes, stands “on the Chicago turnpike, at the north-eastern corner of Beardsley’s prairie, and on Beardsley’s lake. Here are 4 stores, 2 lawyers, 3 physicians.” The lake beside the village is the one Glover calls Pleasant Lake, so in 1838 the first settler’s name was on the water as well as the prairie. We have not found “Beardsley’s lake” in any later account of the village.

ReadingThe -burgh ending, as in Pittsburgh, was common for American towns of the time, and it wore away in everyday use. No source we have read comments on the change.

Ontwa

DocumentedEdwardsburg lies in Ontwa Township, one of the four townships into which the Legislative Council divided the new county on 5 November 1829, with its first election at the house of Ezra Beardsley. Rogers says the township “was called after an Indian girl of that name, who, for a number of years, was in the employ of Thomas H. Edwards.”

ReadingRogers gives no source, and there is another candidate. A long poem titled Ontwa, the Son of the Forest was published in New York in 1822, seven years before the county existed. Neither explanation is proven.

OpenWhere the name Ontwa came from is still open.

The name on paper

Play the names in order, from the prairie to the village today.

• c. 1826 Beardsley’s Prairie (the first settler)
• 1830 Edwardsburgh (the post office, per postal listings)
• 1831 Edwardsburg (the plat, as Rogers reports it)
• c. 1832 Beardsley’s Prairie or Edwardsburg (Bishop Chase’s stations)
• 1838 Edwardsburgh (Blois, with Edwardsburg too)
• 22 years later
• 1860 Edwardsburgh (the county map)
• 15 years later
• 1875 Edwardsburg (Rogers)

To cite this page: Michael Urbanski, “How Edwardsburg got its name,” Project Scroll, projectscroll.com/news/how-edwardsburg-got-its-name/, first published 22 October 2026. Corrections are welcome, and any we make are noted on this page.