The story
Welcome to Colon Township
Colon Township lies where the St. Joseph River flows through Sturgeon Lake in the eastern part of the county. It took its name from its village, was settled by the Schellhous brothers in 1829 and 1831, and became known for fine stock farms and ancient earthworks.
The township covers surveyed Township 6 South, Range 9 West. It is mostly level, broken around the village and by a hill the settlers called Colon Mountain, about 120 feet above the surrounding land. The St. Joseph River enters from the east and flows past Sturgeon Lake, named for the fish once caught there, and Swan Creek comes up from the south through Long Lake and Palmer Lake. Ancient mounds and earthworks were found in many places in the township and are described at length in the county histories.
Roswell Schellhous came from Ohio to the edge of Nottawa prairie in 1829 and kept a two-room log house as a hotel for land-lookers. His brothers followed in 1831 with George Brooks and their families, thirty-one people in all, and built the first mill on Swan Creek. Other early families included the Tylers, Belote and Hoyt in 1832, Levi Mathews from Connecticut, the Farrands from New York, and German families from near the French border. Henry K. Farrand bought the last unsold tract of government land in the township in 1837, Everts says, paying ten dollars an acre.
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Colon was part of Sherman Township in 1829 and then of Nottawa. In 1833 it was set off with what is now Leonidas as a separate township, and in 1836 the two were divided, leaving Colon at its present size; it took its name from the village, projected in 1832. Roswell Schellhous was elected the first supervisor in 1833. The first schoolhouse was built that year on the Brooks farm, the first post office opened in 1835, and the Farrand bridge, the third over the river in the county, was built in 1839–40.
Henry K. Farrand brought the first blooded cattle, Kentucky shorthorns, into the township in 1852–53, and with his brother Phineas kept the best stock in the county; several Colon farmers bred trotting horses. Farrand built a large Greek Revival house in 1854. When the Michigan Air Line was building through the county, township people raised $42,000 in subscriptions to bring it through Colon, and it arrived in 1871. In 1838 the township had 368 people. Colon remains a lake and farm township around its village. The 2020 census counted 3,325 people in Colon Township.