The story
Welcome to Quincy Township
Quincy Township, on the Hillsdale County line, was set off from Coldwater in 1836 and named, on the suggestion of the county’s legislator Dr. Hiram Alden, after Quincy, Massachusetts. Its first settler, Horris Willson, bought land on the Chicago road in 1830 and kept the first tavern; the village of Quincy grew up around John Cornish’s tavern at the centre of the township.
Quincy is surveyed Township 6 South, Range 5 West. An act approved March 23, 1836, set off townships 6, 7 and 8 south of range 5 west from Coldwater under the name Quincy, so that for two years it also held the present Algansee and California, which were set off on April 2, 1838. The petitioners had asked for Springfield or Springville; because another township already had that name, Dr. Hiram Alden, then representing Branch County, suggested Quincy, which Johnson says is claimed to come from Quincy, Massachusetts, Alden’s former home.
Horris Willson, who had lived in Detroit since 1825, made the first land purchase in June 1830, 320 acres in sections 12, 13 and 14 beside the broad Indian trail that became the Chicago turnpike, and with a hired man built a house of hewn logs on section 14 that he opened as a tavern; Collin quotes the saying that he bought the first land, built the first house and kept the first tavern in the township. James G. Corbus, a contractor on the Chicago road across Bronson’s Prairie in 1832, settled on section 13 in the spring of 1833 and built the first frame house, also a tavern, where the first Sunday school and temperance society of the township were organized.
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John Cornish, then of Girard, entered the first land on section 15 on October 16, 1832, and in 1834 built a frame tavern where Main Street meets the Chicago road, the later site of the Quincy House; the first township meeting was held there on April 4, 1836. The Berry family, who owned most of the ground on which Quincy village was afterwards built, kept a hotel west of Main Street, and the first post office was opened at the Berry home in 1837, with Dr. Enos G. Berry as postmaster and, by tradition, a bushel basket for the mail. The first schoolhouses were built in 1837 and 1838. Marble, Berry and Quincy lakes lie southwest of the village.
The Michigan Southern Railroad’s first locomotive came through Quincy in early December 1850, carrying iron for the track to Coldwater. Collin describes Quincy township and village as a purely agricultural community of slow and steady growth, the village remaining its central settlement. The village of Quincy lies at the centre of the township. The 2020 census counted 4,108 people in Quincy Township, the village included.