The story
Welcome to Jefferson Township
Jefferson Township lies between Elkhart, Goshen, Bristol and Middlebury, so close to all of them that it never needed a town of its own. Its rough northern hills were given to fruit, and its level southwest to some of the county’s finest farms.
Chapman (1881) describes a full Congressional township except for half of section 31, cut off by the Elkhart River. The southwest half was level and fine for farming; the northeast was rolling and broken, with small farms given to fruit, and Dock Lake, about a hundred acres, lay among rough hills. Pine Creek drained the township toward the St. Joseph.
The first settlers were Thomas Carick, his father and a man named Stutsman. Carick pre-empted the southwest quarter of section 21 but spent most of his time hunting and trapping. James Wilson came about the same time, and James Defrees, the township’s first elected justice of the peace. Joseph Gardner settled on section 22 in the spring of 1835 and Ozias Stotts on section 34 in 1834, and William and Joseph Newell, William Martin, Elijah Adams, James Kane, John Neff and John Wilson soon followed.
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The first schoolhouse stood on section 21, where a Mr. Stockdale taught; after it burned a brick school took its place. In 1881 the only church building in the township belonged to the German Baptists. Deahl (1905) explains that with Goshen to the south, Elkhart to the west, Bristol to the north and Middlebury to the east, and no railroad through it, Jefferson never formed a village.
It remains a township of farms and suburbs, with four cemeteries, Cornell, Morris, Neff and Pine Creek, and the 2020 census counted 10,989 people.