Morrice: The Scottish Brothers on the Michigan Prairie

The small village of Morrice takes its name from William Morrice, a pioneer who emigrated from Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and settled here in eighteen thirty-seven with his family. The first white settler in the township was actually Josiah Purdy, who built his cabin in the autumn of eighteen thirty-six and broke the first plowed ground the following spring. But it was the Morrice family whose name stuck.

The village was formally established by Isaac Gale in eighteen seventy-six and incorporated in November of eighteen eighty-four. Today it is home to roughly a thousand people in Shiawassee County, a quiet crossroads that carries the surname of a Scottish pioneer family who chose Michigan over Scotland.