The story
Welcome to Ray
Ray stands on the Michigan line in the northeast corner of Fremont Township, partly in Branch County, Michigan. It grew up around a station of the Fort Wayne, Jackson & Saginaw railroad, built in 1870, and was platted in 1873 by Alexander McNaughton, whose family had farmed section 13 since 1846.
Alexander McNaughton, of Scottish birth, and his wife Maria Crawford came from Washington County, New York, in 1836 and settled on section 24 of Fremont Township; ten years later they moved to section 13, where Ray now stands. They were Reformed Presbyterians. In 1841 a congregation of that faith was organized under the Lakes Presbytery as the Cedar Lake Congregation, later called Ray, with the Duguid families, Asa and Mary Anne Lewis, and Alexander McNaughton and his wife among its charter members. Rev. John French was called in 1848 and stayed as pastor until his health failed in 1880. The congregation built its first house of worship in 1853 for $800 and a church costing $3,000 in 1876.
The Fort Wayne, Jackson & Saginaw Railroad was built through Steuben County in 1870, leaving the county from section 13 of Fremont Township, and it had two stations in the township, Fremont and Ray. A post office called Clear Lake opened in May 1870 with Abraham Bloomer as postmaster; its name was changed to Ray, and Lester W. Roscrant was appointed postmaster in January 1872. On November 19, 1873, Alexander McNaughton platted the village on section 13 of Fremont Township and on section 22 across the line in Branch County, Michigan. Clear Lake, which the 1885 history called the best known of the county’s lakes after Pleasant Lake, lay two and a half miles from Ray station.
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The 1920 history gave Ray about 250 people and called it a station “of some considerable importance,” because the country around it was noted for its large acreage and good yield of winter wheat. Theo McNaughton and E. B. McNaughton organized the Ray Bank in 1907 with $10,000 capital, later $20,000; in 1919 it held $118,000 in deposits, and the two men were still its only president and cashier. Ray then had small stores and shops, a physician, Dr. Duncan Taggert, and two churches, the Reformed Presbyterian and the Methodist Episcopal, which formed one Methodist charge with Jamestown. Its post office ran from 1872 to 1960. Fremont Township counted 2,851 people in 2020.