History of Almena Township, MI.: PalmerFamilyWeb

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History of Almena Township, MI.

History of Almena Township, MI.
FROM History of Berrien and Van Buren Counties, Michigan
With Illistrations and Biographical Sketches
of Their Men and Pioneers.
D. W. Ensign & Co., Philadelphia 1880
Press of J. B. Lippincott & Co., Philadelphia.

Almena Township.

DESCRIPTION OF THE TOWNSHIP AND ITS EARLY SETTLEMENT.

ALMENA, originally a portion of Clinch, lies upon the eastern border of Van Buren, and is known as town 2 south, range 13 west. Its boundaries are Pine Grove on the north, Antwerp on the south, Kalamazoo County on the east, and Waverly on the west.

At least one-third of the township is covered by a great swamp which extends in a northeast and southwest direction. The earliest settlements were made in the territory lying south of the swamp, although pioneers penetrated soon afterwards into the northern and western sections. Good water-power, which attracted the attention of the first white settler, is found on a fork of the Paw Paw flowing through the town towards the west, and suffices now to supply two mills.

Although the town has two post-offices, it has no village, the nearest approach to a hamlet being at Almena Mills, where there is a grist-mill and store. In the south the soil is sandy and productive. In the north there is much heavy timber and a clayey soil, although one may find in that portion also many excellent farms.

Almena's population in 1874 was 1009. Its assessed value in 1879 was $324,000.

Tradition has erroneously referred to one Joseph Derosier, a Canadian Frenchman (probably a half-breed), as the first white settler in Almena. Derosier was doubtless the first white man who came to the township, but he was scarcely a settler. He had an Ottawa squaw for a wife and squatted in 1833 upon section 23, near the swamp, where he put up a cabin, but his business was simply that of an Indian trader, guide, rover, trapper, and interpreter, but not a settler in the full meaning of the term.

There was another French Canadian (with a deaf-mute squaw for a wife), called Mousseau, who was a companion of Derosier, but, like the latter, he was nothing above an Indian hunter. Derosier was known in the town until 1854, when he died in Waverly. Mousseau died in South Haven.

The great Indian trail from Chicago to Grand Rapids passed through Almena. It was on this trail that Derosier lived, and in the vicinity of his place, until 1845, numerous Indians of the Pottawattarnie and Ottawa tribes encamped from time to time. They were chiefly hunters, fishermen, and beggars, but never occasioned the whites any trouble or even concern. Two of them tried their hands at farming, but made failures of course. Finally the red men left the region and were seen no more. The first road of any consequence laid out was the Kalamazoo and Paw Paw road, which was in its time a thoroughfare of considerable traffic. It is yet the mainly traveled highway running east and west through the southern portion of the town.

The first actual settler in Almena was Jonas Barber, of Prairie Ronde, who came hither in the spring of 1835, and built a saw-mill on the stream flowing through section 28.

Barber had land near the present grist-mill, and lived there in a shanty. He intended to build a grist-mill at that point, but abandoned the idea.

Before Barber's advent, however, Junia Warner, Jr., Horace Bonfoey, and one Potter came from New York to Almena, in the spring of 1834, in search of land. Warner entered 240 acres, lying in both Almena and Anbwerp; Bonfoey located a tract on section 29, in Almena; Potter declined to make a location, and with Warner and Bonfoey returned to New York.

In the spring of the following year (1835) Warner, his father (also named Junia), and Horace Bonfoey came again to Almena, for the purpose of preparing their land for permanent settlement. Warner and his father bought a few boards at Jonas Barber's mill, and putting up a cabin on section 31 began at once to clear some land, and having put in a crop and built a double log house, Junia, Jr., went back to New York for his family, while the elder Warner concluded to remain at Kalamazoo, where he labored at his trade as mason until September of the same year, when Junia, Jr., reaching Kalamazoo with his family, on his way to Almena, the old gentleman joined them, and all were soon installed upon the Almena farm, where they found a fairly comfortable home in the log house built by father and son the previous summer. The widow of Junia Warner, Jr., lives now in Paw Paw, and in describing their trip from Detroit to Almena says, "We traveled in a wagon drawn by three oxen, and although we made but fifteen miles a day, we were kept mighty busy at that." Junia Warner, Jr., who had been a Methodist circuit preacher in New York, continued to preach more or less in the West from the time of his settlement in Almena until his death there, in 1847. He was known fur and wide as Elder Warner, and although averse to preaching, because of ill health, he was so persistently called, from here and there, to preach a funeral sermon or organize a church, that he could not well avoid ministerial labor, and, as a consequence, he was almost as busy as a preacher as he was as a farmer. His widow now lives in Paw Paw, hale and vigorous, at the age of seventy-four. His father died in Almenu in 1841. His mother died in Paw Paw, January, 1880, at the advanced age of ninety-six.

Horace Bonfoey, who came with the Warners in the spring of 1S35, was from Otsego Co., N. Y., and made a settlement in Almena, upon section 29, where he lived until his death, Jan. 11, 1873. At the time of his location he, the Warners, Jonas Barber, and Derosier were the only white inhabitants of Almeiia. Of Mr. Bonfoey's children, those now living in Almena are Russell W. Bonfoey and Cyrena Hall.

Owner/Source	History of Berrien and Van Buren Counties, Michigan
Date	1880
ID	362
Linked to	Junia WARNER, Jr. Junia WARNER, Sr.

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