The story
Welcome to Ovid Township
Ovid Township, south of Coldwater, was organized in 1837 and at first included Kinderhook. Its first settlers, Howard Bradley and the Salsberrys, took land along the Coldwater River in the northwest corner, and Coldwater Lake on its southeastern edge became a summer resort.
Ovid is surveyed Township 7 South, Range 6 West. The act of March 11, 1837, organized it from Coldwater with bounds that took in the present Kinderhook, which was set off on February 16, 1842. In October 1837 Ovid had 209 people. Johnson wrote that the township records had been almost wholly lost.
Howard Bradley and Richard and Nelson Salsberry were the first settlers, on sections 6 and 7 in the northwest, the part crossed by the Coldwater River and nearest the villages of Coldwater and Branch; the first school of the township was set up on section 6. Gardner Scofield built a sawmill on section 8 in the 1840s. Reuben Wilson held land on section 21, and his son, Dr. Daniel Wilson, settled in 1839 and became physician, farmer and sheriff. The Quimby family settled east of Coldwater Lake.
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Parley Stockwell, whom an earlier county work had called the first settler, settled in the northeast corner of section 16 about 1842 and set up an ashery; a post office, schoolhouse, blacksmith shop and tavern followed at Parley’s Corners, but it never grew into a village. Collin wrote in 1906 that Ovid had always been farm country doing its business at Coldwater, while cottages built around Coldwater Lake had made the lake a summer resort.
Coldwater Lake lies in sections 26, 27, 34 and 35 of Ovid and runs into Kinderhook; its outlet starts in section 27. The 2020 census counted 2,161 people in Ovid Township.