Charlotte: Named for a New Yorker's Wife

Charlotte has been the seat of Eaton County since the county organized in eighteen thirty-seven, but the town's name comes from a personal act of affection. A New York City developer named E. B.

Bostwick purchased the early village tract, and in a letter written in December of eighteen thirty-eight, he stated simply that he preferred to name it Charlotte after his wife. The name was accepted, and it stuck. The county's functions were conducted at the nearby village of Bellevue until the population caught up, and Charlotte was formally incorporated as a village on October tenth, eighteen sixty-three.

It became a city in eighteen seventy-one and remains the commercial center of Eaton County today, a county seat that began with a husband's note in favor of his wife.