Williamston: Two Trails, Three Names
Near Lansing, Michigan
Williamston grew up at the crossing of two old Native American trails in Ingham County. The Putnams, a pair of brothers from the East, arrived in eighteen thirty-four, called the place Cedar, and started farming. They stayed only a few years before selling out in eighteen thirty-nine.
The buyers were the Williams brothers, who had bigger plans. They put up a sawmill in eighteen forty, added a grist mill two years later, and platted the town in eighteen forty-five. The Williams name stuck.
The village incorporated officially in eighteen seventy-one, the same year a railroad depot landed on the Pere Marquette line between Detroit and Grand Rapids. That rail connection turned Williamston from a crossroads farming stop into a small but legitimate town. Today it's a compact city of about four thousand people, still sitting where those two trails once crossed.
