The story
Welcome to Mendon Township
Mendon Township lies on the St. Joseph River in the north-central part of the county, on land that was part of the Nottawa-seepe reservation. French traders were its first settlers, and it was first named Wakeman before its people chose Mendon in 1844.
The township covers surveyed Township 5 South, Range 10 West. Together with parts of Leonidas and Park it formed the St. Joseph County portion of the Nottawa-seepe reservation, set aside for the Potawatomi in the Treaty of Chicago of 1821. Its southern sections take in the north end of Nottawa prairie, and the rest was oak openings and heavy timber of oak, walnut, whitewood and ash. The St. Joseph crosses the south, the Big Portage River runs through Portage Lake in the north, and the Little Portage was dammed to make the water power at Mendon village.
Francois Moutan came with his family in 1831 to run the Godfroi trading post on the south bank of the river; he opened the first farm in 1832–33. Patrick Marantette took over the post in 1833, married Moutan’s daughter Frances in 1835, built the first frame house in the township that year, and raised its first wheat. When the Potawatomi gave up the reservation in 1833, a section of land was reserved to Marantette, and Everts says it was largely through his efforts that the people of the reservation were gathered and removed west in 1840. Leander Metha settled on the north bank in 1834, and Moses Taft came from Mendon, Massachusetts, in 1835.
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The Wakeman brothers, Adams, Hiram and Mark, came to Nottawa prairie between 1833 and 1836 and settled in Mendon in 1837; they brought the first purebred shorthorn cattle into the township in 1851. The township was part of Flowerfield and then of Nottawa until 1843, when it was set off and named Wakeman for its largest landholder. Many residents disliked the name, and at a meeting in L. Salisbury’s cooper shop Peter House, from Mendon, New York, and Moses Taft, from Mendon, Massachusetts, proposed Mendon instead; the legislature made the change in 1844.
The Wakeman bridge over the St. Joseph was built in 1843 near the west end of the township. A Methodist class at West Mendon was organized in 1857 and dedicated its church on January 25, 1873, and the Zion Evangelical church was built in 1871. By 1873 farmers in the township sowed more than four thousand acres of wheat. The 2020 census counted 2,581 people in Mendon Township, including the village.