The story
Welcome to Sherman Township
Sherman Township, just north of Sturgis, is what remains of one of the county’s three original townships, which once took in the whole southeastern quarter of the county. Rolling oak openings and seven small lakes mark its farm country, first broken by a Yorkshireman in 1830.
When the county was divided on November 5, 1829, the township named for Colonel Benjamin Sherman, a pioneer of the county, took in the present townships of Sherman, Sturgis, Fawn River, Burr Oak, Nottawa and Colon. Nottawa and Colon soon went their own way, Burr Oak and Fawn River were set off in 1838, and Sturgis in 1845, leaving Sherman as surveyed Township 7 South, Range 10 West. Its first township meeting was held in April 1830 at the house of John B. Clarke in the village of Sherman, which is now Sturgis.
The first settler within the present township was Thomas Cade, Sr., of Welton, near Hull, in Yorkshire, who arrived in July 1830, built what Everts calls perhaps the largest and best log house yet raised in the county for a hundred dollars in gold, and sowed twenty acres of wheat that fall. David Petty settled near him in 1831, as did an old bachelor named Johnson, and the Perrins, Adonijah Foot and David Chapin came in 1835. The first land entries in 1830 were made by settlers from Scotland and England.
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The township’s lakes were named for the people who lived beside them or for their shapes: Chapin Lake for David Chapin, Crossman for Abel Crossman, Thompson’s for Elijah Thompson, Johnson’s for its settler, Crotch for its shape, and Middle because it lay between Klinger’s Lake and Thompson’s. Fish Lake took its name both from its shape and its fish. A post office opened in the northeast part of the township in 1837. The Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad was built north through the township, David P. Robinson built the first sawmill, on section 28, in 1860, and the first grist mill in 1871.
The soil, a clay loam mixed with sand, was good for wheat, corn, clover, apples and peaches, and Everts noted in 1877 that peppermint was a staple crop, with many acres planted every year. The 2020 census counted 3,444 people in Sherman Township.