The story
Welcome to Algansee Township
Algansee Township, south of Quincy, was set off in 1838; its people had asked for the name Carlton, but the Legislature gave it Algansee. Heavily timbered except in its southwest corner, it was settled from 1836, when Luther Stiles and Ludovico Robbins arrived on the same day.
Algansee is surveyed Township 7 South, Range 5 West. It was part of Quincy until the act of April 2, 1838, which named it Algansee and appointed the first township meeting at the house of Horace Purdy, on sections 28 and 29; California was cut from it in 1846. Johnson says the inhabitants had sent the name Carlton with their petition, but the Legislature chose Algansee.
When the first settlers came only the southwest corner was not densely timbered, and the landowners of 1837 were mostly grouped on sections 28 to 33. Luther Stiles and Ludovico Robbins share the honour of first permanent settler, arriving separately on the same day in July 1836, Robbins on section 13 and Stiles on section 9 by Hanchett Creek. In the fall of 1836 Andrew Crater and Stiles began the first sawmill, on the creek in section 9, and finished it in February 1837. The first school, a summer term, was taught in the southwest corner in 1838 by Jane Woodard, and Jasper Underhill was the first town clerk.
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Around the Stiles–Crater mill site a little centre grew up, with a post office, school and several churches. In section 27 the Wakemans built a steam sawmill in 1854, and a large grist mill was put up on the same spot in 1878. Drainage, Collin says, was of first importance to farming in Algansee. Collin’s survey of the county’s lakes places Bartholomew and Middle lakes and part of a larger lake in the northwest of the township, in sections 4 to 7.
The 2020 census counted 2,033 people in Algansee Township.