The story
Welcome to Burr Oak Township
Burr Oak Township, in the southeastern corner of St. Joseph County, takes its name from the burr oak timber that once covered its level land. Its first settlers came over from Branch County in 1831, and the Michigan Southern Railroad gave it a village in 1851.
Burr Oak covers surveyed Township 7 South, Range 9 West. Its surface is generally level and, the 1877 county history says, was originally covered with burr oak timber, which gave it its name. Prairie River, still called Hog Creek by the settlers, crosses it, and Eberhard’s, Bryant’s and Fish lakes lie in its western sections, the first two named for families who settled near them.
The first cabin was built in 1831 by Samuel Haslet, who came with his family and a bachelor named George Miller from Branch County; Haslet’s child, born in 1832, was the first in the township. Late in 1831 a man named Snow came over from Snow prairie in Branch County, which had been named for him. Reuben Trussell settled on the Centreville road in 1833 and the next year built the first frame house, with whitewood lumber rafted down Swan Creek. The Livermores came about 1834, the Weavers in 1835 and 1836, and James L. Bishop and Sidney Carpenter in 1836.
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Burr Oak was part of Sherman Township until the legislature set it off by an act approved March 6, 1838. The first township meeting was held on April 2, 1838, at the house of Julius A. Thompson, whose crossroads, Thompson’s Corners, held the township’s first post office. Schools were taught before the township was organized, and on May 9, 1838, the school inspectors divided it into four districts.
In 1851 the Michigan Southern Railroad came through, and the village of Burr Oak was laid out on William Lock’s land in section 23; the post office moved there from Thompson’s Corners in 1852. By 1860 the township had 1,773 people, 666 of them in the village. In 1876 it had seven schoolhouses, one of them the brick graded school of the village. The township is still farm country around the village. The 2020 census counted 2,639 people in Burr Oak Township.