The story
Welcome to California Township
California Township, the fractional township in the southeast corner of Branch County, was the last of its sixteen townships, set off from Algansee in 1846. Its first settlers cut their way in from Waterhouse Corners at the end of 1835, and the crossroads store of Joseph Hall became California village.
California is fractional Township 8 South, Range 5 West, bounded by Algansee and Kinderhook in Branch County, Hillsdale County on the east and Indiana on the south. It was part of Quincy and then Algansee until it was separated on March 25, 1846. By then, Collin says, every section had at least one landowner, and sixty voters took part in the first town meeting.
In late December 1835 Samuel Beach, his son William and James H. Lawrence set out from Saline in Washtenaw County, came by the Chicago road to Coldwater and on by Waterhouse Corners, and began a house on section 4 ‘by felling the first tree cut by a white man in California township,’ as Lawrence later wrote. Ira Purdy was the next to build. Most of the settlers of 1836 took land in the north of the township around the site of California village, and Alexander Odren, who died in the township in 1888 at ninety-seven, settled on section 1.
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About 1846 Joseph Hall opened a stock of goods at the crossroads of sections 3, 4, 9 and 10, and the place was long called Hall’s Corners before it became known as California village or post office. Johnson found the surface level, with few streams or swamps, and the people chiefly farmers. The Fort Wayne, Jackson and Saginaw Railroad, opened from Jackson to Angola in January 1870, crosses the southeast corner of the township; Collin notes that it passed California by, leaving the hamlet three miles from State Line station.
The 2020 census counted 1,181 people in California Township.