The story
Welcome to Fredonia Township
Fredonia Township, south of Marshall, was organized in 1838 from Marshall Township. Its first settler, Thomas Burland of Yorkshire, England, built a log house in April 1833; its lakes include Lyon Lake, named, Everts says, by the surveyor Lyon for himself.
Everts gives Fredonia as Township 3 South, Range 6 West, organized in 1838. It was drawn from the original Marshall Township, as were Tekonsha in 1836 and Convis in 1837. In 1870 it had 1,031 people.
The surface is generally level, and on the east ‘Palmer’s plain’, named for a settler of 1832 in Eckford, runs into the township. Squaw and Nottawa-seepe creeks and several small lakes water it: Lyon Lake, clear, sandy-shored and very deep, which the surveyor Lyon named after himself; Cedar, Pine, Long and Fish lakes; and parts of Nottawa-seepe and Brace lakes.
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The first settler was Thomas Burland, born in Yorkshire, England, who came from England in 1831 with families bound for White Pigeon prairie. In April 1833, before moving his family from Marshall, he and his father built the first log house on his place; he had the first horses, cows and plough in the township. John Houston, Sr., from Rochester, New York, came next, built the first frame house with lumber from George Ketchum’s new mill at Marshall and set out the first orchard; his daughter, born September 28, 1834, was the first white girl born in the township. Stephen Maynard settled in 1836 on section 12, south of Brace lakes, and the Fredenburgs in 1834 on section 23, by Lyon Lake. Everts writes that the Indians were almost daily visitors.
Gardner describes Fredonia as noted for its fine farms, beautiful lakes and churches. The 2020 census counted 1,585 people in Fredonia Township.