Isabella County Michigan

Michigan Family History Network

1860 Census

From the Isabella Times News

The Real Isabella Pioneers

The labeling of a citizen"a pioneer", or of a family as a "pioneer

family" employs the use of a more or less comparative word or

phrase -- the fact, readily being recognized that there are pioneers and

"early pioneers", and still earlier pioneers.

However, in the list of early residents which the Times-News publishes this

week, no one could in seriousness deny that the names which appear

therein are other than those entitled to every recognition as truly Isabella

county's earliest of early pioneers.

The list is a copy of the first census of Isabella compiled in 1860, and that

is a date back pretty close to the beginning of things as far as this county

is concerned. It was in April of that same year that Mt. Pleasant was

selected as the site of the county seat and this relocation authorized, which

took the seat of the county government from the uninhabited geographical

center of the county as had been originally outlined by the legislature when

the county was organized the year before.

Three years prior to this census, the federal government had built the

Indians a flour and saw mill on the Chippewa just north of the present

boundary of Mt. Pleasant.

Only six years before this census, the first road in the county had been

hacked out of the wilderness from the south county line to Salt River.

Many an interesting observation may be made in scanning this list of

real Isabella pioneers - the number who claimed New York as their parent

state, the number from Vermont, Ohio and other states, the recurrence of

many given names and the occupations as stated to the enumerator.

But the most interesting of the many interests awakened by a perusal of

the list will undoubtedly be the tracing of well-known families through a

succeeding generation or two down to the present day. The list will

establish a sort of official degree of pioneership, and residents of

Isabella county interested in the traditions and early history of their own

section are deeply indebted to Mrs. Myrta Wilsey Burwash who copied the

list from the original record in Washington so that Times-News readers

might have it for examination and for reference.

Copied by Mrs. Myrta Wilsey Burwash

The first census taken in Isabella county was that of June 1860.

 There were three townships: Coe, Chippewa and Isabella.

A large number of Indians were omitted by Mrs. Burwash.

Chippewa Township

Coe Township

Isabella Township

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