Michigan · St. Joseph River Valley
Hillsdale County
Hills and dales at the head of the St. Joseph.
Project Scroll is an independent local-history website. This is not an official page of Hillsdale County or of any township, city or village in it. For official business, contact the county or local offices directly.
Welcome
Hillsdale County, Michigan
Hillsdale County lies in southern Michigan on the Ohio and Indiana lines, and the St. Joseph River of Lake Michigan rises in it at Baw Beese Lake. It was created on October 29, 1829, and named, the 1879 county history says, for its alternating hills and dales; it was attached to Lenawee County until an act of February 11, 1835, organized it. Jonesville held the county seat from 1831 until 1843, when the legislature moved it to Hillsdale.
About 46,000 people live here today (45,746 at the 2020 census), in Hillsdale, Jonesville and the towns and lake country around them. Pick a place to begin.
Cities and villages
HillsdaleCity · Baw Beese’s lake, the head of the St. Joseph, and a college town.
JonesvilleCity · The Chicago road crossing of the St. Joseph and the county’s first seat.
LitchfieldCity · Hervey Smith’s mill town on the upper St. Joseph, named by a turbulent pioneer.
ReadingCity · Basswood Corners on the high ridge where the waters part.
AllenVillage · Moses Allen’s prairie on the Chicago road, the county’s first settlement.
Townships
Adams TownshipTownship · Salmon Sharp’s cabin of 1835 and the village of North Adams.
Allen TownshipTownship · Captain Moses Allen’s ‘Sand Creek Prairie’, the first settlement in Hillsdale County.
Fayette TownshipTownship · Benaiah Jones’s house on the St. Joseph and the village of Jonesville.
Hillsdale TownshipTownship · Baw Beese’s country, south of Fayette, set off in 1855.
Litchfield TownshipTownship · The first furrow of 1834 and a name won in Detroit.
Reading TownshipTownship · On the divide between Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.