Fowlerville: The Man Who Named a County

Ralph Fowler arrived in Handy Township in eighteen thirty-six, as its first permanent settler. Nearby Livingston County was named for Edward Livingston, not for Fowler. Fowler himself became the founder of the village that would carry his name.

A post office opened in eighteen thirty-eight under the name Cedar, but the community platted formally in eighteen forty-nine at Fowler's instruction, and by eighteen fifty-three the post office was renamed Fowlerville. The village incorporated in eighteen seventy-one. Today Fowlerville sits right on Interstate Ninety-Six about halfway between Lansing and Detroit, a small agricultural town that survived the highway era as a quiet pit-stop community of about three thousand people.