The story
Welcome to Washington Township
Washington Township lies on the Michigan line where the St. Joseph River and the Little Elkhart meet. Its town of Bristol dates from 1829, and the range of hills across the township grew fruit for city markets.
Chapman (1881) says the township was named for George Washington. The Nicholson family stopped in 1829 “in a graceful bend” of the river where Bristol now stands, near the mouth of the Little Elkhart; James Nicholson, his sons Samuel V., David T. and George, and their relatives Peter Marmen and Aaron Brown made pre-emption claims. Reuben Bronson and his brother-in-law James Cathcart came next, and in 1831 Samuel P. Judson, a merchant from Buffalo, bought Bronson’s land.
Judson, L. M. Alverson and Hiram Doolittle laid out the town of Bristol. Dr. H. H. Fowler was the first physician and postmaster, Alexander Bassett the first justice of the peace, and the first school, taught by Miss Philossa Wheeler, met in a double log cabin before the first schoolhouse of 1838. The first dam across the St. Joseph was built in 1841. In 1861 John Boyer and Simon Bickell put up flour and sawmills at the mouth of the Little Elkhart, and in 1868 the Bristol Hydraulic Company built a dam and mill that soon burned.
Read the full story
The soil is sandy but productive, and Chapman found on the hills “the finest nurseries and the most extensive vineyards in the State,” with strawberries shipped by thousands of crates and grapes by hundreds of tons. B. F. Cathcart, who came as a boy with his father James, became one of the leading fruit growers and nurserymen. Deahl (1905) estimated that 200,000 cases of fruit left the Bristol depot in a good season, along with melons and huckleberries.
The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern runs through Bristol. Today the township counts 6,892 people (2020 census), and its cemeteries include Cathcart, Oak Ridge, Proctor and Trout Creek.