The story
Welcome to Eau Claire
Eau Claire takes its name from the French for clear water, chosen when its post office opened in 1861. Its main street is the line between two townships. Orchards surround it, and in 1906 the largest orchard in Berrien County stood nearby in Pipestone Township.
Pipestone Township lies east of the St. Joseph River, in the country the Potawatomi ceded to the United States at the Treaty of Chicago of 1821. Ellis (1880) says the township was named for Pipestone Creek, the large stream that flows west across it to the St. Joseph, but admits that how the creek got its name is not so clear. The early settlers followed Indian trails and blazed section lines to find their land. James Kirk, who came from Virginia because he wanted to leave a slave state, chose a farm site around a cold spring on section 20 in the fall of 1836 and moved his family there the next spring.
William Smythe Farmer, a New Yorker who had been a merchant and lumber dealer there, settled near the future village in 1848. Coolidge (1906) says he bought more than 1,600 acres in the forest and cleared a thousand of them. Ellis credits Farmer with getting a post office established in 1861 and with choosing the name. He hit on Eau Claire, meaning clear water, as a neat name. Henry Rush was the first postmaster and kept the office in his store just over the township line in Berrien Township. Edwin Hart was the first storekeeper on the Pipestone side, followed by George E. Tatman, who moved the post office into the Pipestone part of the village when he became postmaster in 1874. Patrick Stapleton succeeded him in 1877.
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A Wesleyan Methodist church organized in Berrien Township in 1855 moved to Eau Claire in 1858, where Ellis says it was reorganized with six members. Coolidge mentions a public hall built in the southern part of the township in 1877 for $1,200, used for services by several denominations. Farmer served as supervisor in 1864 and was a delegate to the state constitutional convention of 1867.
Eau Claire was incorporated as a village in 1891. Coolidge notes that its main business street, running east and west, is the boundary between Berrien and Pipestone townships, and that the state census of 1904 counted 318 people. He also describes the largest orchard in the county, owned by the West Michigan Nurseries: more than five hundred acres planted to about 30,000 peach, 10,000 plum, 8,000 pear, 5,000 cherry and 5,000 apple trees. The 2020 census counted 552 people in the village.