The story
Welcome to Salem Township
Salem Township, the southwest corner of Steuben County, was a dense hardwood forest when Richard Knott settled in 1835. Its old crossroads is Salem Center; its railroad villages, Hudson and Helmer, came with the Wabash in the 1890s.
Salem comprises congressional township 36 north, range 12 east, about 23,000 acres drained by Turkey and Mud creeks, with Turkey, Little Turkey, Lime Kiln, Lake of the Woods and McLish lakes. Caleb Hopkins made the first entry on August 26, 1835, and a few months later Richard Knott entered land and became the first permanent settler. Eli Teal entered land on May 3, 1836, brought his family at the end of September with the first load of goods hauled from Fort Wayne, and in the autumn of 1837 built the first frame house.
Mrs. J. B. Wisel, whose family came in 1836, recalled that the settlers first went to Lima for their mail and to Pretty Prairie for provisions, that Elder Locke organized a Christian church of nine members early in 1837, and that “in the spring of 1837 our township was organized,” with twelve votes cast at her family’s house and Avery Emerson elected justice of the peace.
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Salem Center was never platted; its history began in 1843, when W. H. Austin and Edward Wright opened the first store, and a post office came in 1848–49 on the route from Auburn to Orland, with David Wisel as postmaster. Joseph and John Miller built a sawmill in 1855 near the later Hudson. Hudson was first platted in August 1869 by Elizabeth Clark and others as North Benton, and in 1873, with the Chicago & Canada railroad expected, Leander Brugh platted the addition that became its business district; the railroad was never built. Turkey Creek was a country post office southwest of Helmer.
The Wabash Railroad was built through the southern townships in 1892–93, with stations at Helmer and at Hudson-Ashley, and Hudson was incorporated in 1892–93; Helmer became the junction for a spur to the cement works at Stroh in LaGrange County. The 2020 census counted 2,189 people in the township.