The story
Welcome to Millgrove Township
Millgrove Township, written Mill Grove in the county histories, is the northwest corner of Steuben County. A colony from Windham County, Vermont, settled at Orland in 1834, and Crooked Creek, called Fawn River in Michigan, turned its first mill.
Mill Grove Township is twenty-four sections in township 38 north, range 12 east, south of the Michigan line and east of LaGrange County. Lake Gage, Lake Pleasant, Belle Lake and Tamarack Lake lie in it, and Crooked Creek flows west through the middle. It was voting by 1840, when it gave William Harrison 49 votes to Martin Van Buren’s 9, and the 1920 history calls it an early stronghold of the Whigs and of antislavery feeling.
Settlement began in 1834, drawn by the rich burr-oak openings. In the spring of that year John Stocker of Windham County, Vermont, scouted for a home in the West, and in June or July Benjamin Pierce, Abel Blanchard and his family, Stocker and his family, and George D. and S. A. Parmenter came from Vermont and settled where Orland stands — “a Green Mountain Colony,” the 1920 history calls it. George D. Parmenter built the first house in 1834; Sarah L. Pierce, born November 10, 1834, was the first child born in the township; and Polly Blanchard, who died on August 2, 1835, was the first death. More Vermont families followed in 1835 and 1836.
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The first church, Baptist, was organized in 1835, and the first schoolhouse was built in 1837, with Eliza Eaton as teacher at $2 a pupil. Orland was platted on March 19, 1838, by Samuel Barry, Cyrus Choate, Alexander Chapin and Chester Stocker; when the name Mill Grove was found to belong to another post office in the state, Colonel Chapin opened a singing book and the first tune, “Orland,” became the name. Deacon Timothy Kimball built the first gristmill on Fawn River, grinding its first grist in 1838. Captain Barry and the tailor-innkeeper S. U. Clark helped fugitive slaves northward, and the Orland Academy taught from 1850 to 1878.
In 1907 the St. Joseph Valley Railroad was built from Elkhart through Orland, but after its promoter’s death the rails and rolling stock were sold to junk dealers during the World War, leaving only a short link between Orland and LaGrange. Many of the lakes were lined with summer cottages by 1920. The 2020 census counted 1,619 people in the township.
