The story
Welcome to Butler Township
Butler Township, in the northeast corner of Branch County, was set off from Girard in 1838 and named by its first voters after their home town of Butler in Wayne County, New York. Densely wooded and wet, it was settled only from 1836, around Shook’s Prairie and the hamlets of Butler and South Butler.
Butler is surveyed Township 5 South, Range 5 West. It was part of Girard until the act of March 6, 1838, set it off, with the first township meeting at the house of David Lindsay; the meeting was held in April 1838. Johnson says that at its organization the township had only about twenty voters, most of them from Butler, Wayne County, New York, and that at a preliminary meeting they chose the name by ballot in remembrance of their old home.
Collin contrasts Butler with Girard: the first settler reached Girard prairie in 1829, but it was six years later before anyone settled permanently in Butler. Except for Shook’s Prairie in sections 26 and 27, it was densely wooded, with large areas under water or swampy, and public drainage later made some of its swamps its most productive land. Caleb Wilcox, from Wayne County, settled on section 2 in the spring of 1836; Jacob Shook, later a county judge, settled on sections 26 and 27, and Shook’s Prairie took its name from him. The Rossmans came over from Calhoun County, Asa Wisner was the first township clerk and Charles M. Wisner the first teacher.
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David Lindsay, the first supervisor, opened the first store in 1843 at what is now South Butler, then called Whig Center. Stave, heading and cooperage mills and sawmills worked at various times, but Collin wrote that the industry of the township had been almost entirely farming.
The 2020 census counted 1,417 people in Butler Township.