The story
Welcome to Keeler
Keeler is the township seat of the southwest corner township of Van Buren County, a farming country of burr-oak openings crossed by the Territorial road to St. Joseph. Its southwest corner holds the Sister Lakes, a summer camping ground since 1868.
Keeler Township, town 4 south, range 16 west, was largely burr-oak openings, with a fine sandy loam that Ellis in 1880 called ahead of any other township in the county for farming. Its lakes include Round and Crooked lakes in sections 31 and 32, Magician Lake in section 34, and Keeler and Brown lakes. Small streams in the centre flow west toward the Paw Paw River.
The first comers were John and James Nesbitt, natives of Ireland, who bought 120 acres on section 14 in the summer of 1834 and lived in a hay-covered pole tent. Tobias Byers located land in 1835, and on the last day of June 1835 Wolcott H. Keeler of Vermont bought out the Nesbitts and entered 480 acres. His family followed in 1835–36. Keeler laid out a village at his house, which became a tavern on the stage route; the Keelers kept a store there in 1836, and a post office called Keelerville opened that year with Keeler as postmaster.
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A branch of the Territorial road from Detroit to St. Joseph was being graded through the township when the first settlers came in 1835. In January 1836 John Allen of Lawrence started a stage route from Lawrence to Keeler, where it met the Territorial road, and in time as many as ten coaches a day ran each way, until the railroad from Kalamazoo to Niles drew the traffic off. Keeler was part of Covington Township under the act of March 11, 1837, and became a township of its own in 1839, at first including what is now Hartford; 29 votes were cast at its first township meeting, which chose James Hill supervisor and Eleazer H. Keeler clerk.
Wolcott Keeler’s paper village never grew, and the family sold out in 1850. The post office was moved from Keelerville to Keeler village in 1856. In 1880 the village had about forty families, Methodist and Congregational churches (the first church was built in 1860), a store, two groceries, a hotel and several shops.
In 1868 E. Pardee and A. Maykes camped for two weeks on the narrow, wooded ridge between the Sister Lakes on section 31. Other families joined them, and in 1876 Pardee bought the ground and fitted it up as Forest Home Camping Ground, with cottages, tents and boats. By 1912 several resort plats surrounded Round and Crooked lakes, and a post office named Sister Lakes was the only one in the township. The 2020 census counted 1,968 people in Keeler Township.