The story
Welcome to Florence Township
Florence Township was named in 1837 by a legislator so taken with its open burr oak plains that he gave it the name of Florence. Part of White Pigeon prairie lies within it, and for many years it led the county in growing peppermint and distilling its oil.
Florence covers surveyed Township 7 South, Range 11 West, less three sections in its southeast corner that were cut off by a large marsh and given to White Pigeon Township. The 1877 history describes the original land as level burr oak plains without undergrowth, thick with grass and flowers. Neal McGaffey, the county’s member of the legislature in 1837, was so delighted by a drive through this ‘elegant park’ that he named the new township Florence, ‘after the queen of the sea.’ The Fawn River is its only stream of any size, and part of Klinger’s Lake lies in its southern sections.
David Crawford and a man named Martin came from Monroe in the spring of 1829 and settled in section 32, on White Pigeon prairie, where Crawford built the first log house and sowed the first wheat. Alvin Calhoon, a New Yorker whose family had fled Monroe when Hull surrendered in 1812, arrived that October. Jeremiah Lawrence moved in from Newville in 1830, Norman Roys settled in the north, John Howard came in 1832, and George Pashby, Sr., in 1834. Elisha Dimick kept the first tavern in his log house from 1833 to 1840.
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Florence was part of White Pigeon until it was set off as a township in 1837; its first meeting was held at the house of Giles Thompson, who was elected supervisor. A Methodist class began meeting in 1834 at the house of Benjamin Ball and moved into a schoolhouse in 1835, and the Roys schoolhouse of 1836 was the first in the township. The first post office opened in 1840 at Lyman Bean’s tavern; when the Kalamazoo branch of the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad was built, it moved to Florence station. A Reformed church was organized in 1868 and built a brick church in 1876.
Peppermint made Florence known. Reuben and Otis Matthews ran the township’s first distillery for peppermint oil in 1837, using roots they got that spring from Calvin Sawyer, who had just come from Ohio. Cutler says Florence was long a banner township for mint and oil; in 1876 it produced about four thousand pounds of oil from some three hundred acres, with William Hagerman and the Roys brothers among the largest growers. The 2020 census counted 1,153 people in Florence Township.