Burlington Township

The story

Welcome to Burlington Township

Burlington Township, on the Branch County line in southern Calhoun County, was first settled in 1832 by Eleazer McCamly, whose land became known as McCamly’s prairie. It was organized in the winter of 1836–37, and the village of Burlington grew on the St. Joseph River around William and Ansel Adams’s sawmill of 1837.

Burlington is surveyed Township 4 South, Range 7 West, bounded by Newton, Tekonsha, Branch County and Athens. It was organized in the winter of 1836–37, at first including the present Newton, and the first township meeting was held at the schoolhouse near William Adams’s house on April 3, 1837; Justus Goodwin was elected supervisor, and the meeting voted five dollars for each wolf scalp and a hundred dollars toward a bridge over the St. Joseph. Newton was set off in 1838.

Eleazer McCamly came in 1832 with his wife, three sons and two daughters, having sent his son Milton and Richard Tuck ahead to enter half of section 26 in the St. Joseph valley; Tuck built the first log house, for months the only dwelling in the township. Horton Warren squatted on section 33 in the spring of 1833, Justus Goodwin settled on section 28 the same year, and on October 8, 1833, a settler arriving on section 24 found the place ‘then first known as McCamly’s prairie.’ In 1834 William and Ansel Adams came with their widowed mother and settled on sections 33 and 34, on land later within the village. McCamly sowed the first wheat in the fall of 1833, and Milton McCamly’s marriage to Lydia Nichols in the spring of 1834 was the first in the township.