Welcome to Bay County Michigan
Bay County was organized on February 17, 1857 from parts of Saginaw and Midland Counties. The citizens of the bayside communities tired of traveling three days to Saginaw for court cases and in 1854 voted to separate from Saginaw County.
The county encompasses the mouth of the Saginaw Bay Watershed, the outlet to Lake Huron of the Saginaw, Kawkawlin, Chippewa, Coldwater, Tittabawasse, Shiawassee, Cass and Flint rivers. The land is a fertile plain, part of the inland lake bed of the glacial Lake Algonquin. Tobico Marsh, a National Landmark 1976, is part of the largest contiguous freshwater coastal wetland in the United States.
Bay City was once the camping ground of the Sauk, Ojibway, Ottawa and Potawatomi Indians. Ojibway or Chippewa Indians greeted the French Voyageurs who came to trade for furs in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The artifacts of the settlements have been unearthed along the Saginaw River causeway.
The natural geographical configuration led to the economic base for the county which included lumber, coal, salt, sugar beets, potatoes, soy beans, wheat and oats, chemical manufacturing, knitting mills, automotive manufacturing and boat building. The lumber industry started in Bay County in 1844 when a mill was constructed at the mouth of the Kawkawlin River. Millions of board feet of lumber from Michigan's pine and hardwood forests would pass through the mills of Bay County in the ensuing years. The county was aptly named the "Lumber Capitol of the World".
The salt mines were tapped as early as 1850. The Michigan Mine in Monitor Township began mining coal in 1897. The Monitor Coal Company was the last coal mine in the county to close in 1947. Producing the coal proved to costly. Oil production in Bay County in the Kawkawlin pool ranks fourth in the State of Michigan.
Sugar beet farming and the sugar industry have also played a part in the economic development of the county. Sugar beets and chicory were introduced around 1892.
Shipyards in Bay County produced Great Lakes steel freighters and other water craft. During WWII the shipyards helped produce U.S. Destroyers and missile vessels for the war effort. Today the county produces hydroplanes, sailboats, catamarans and iceboats.
In successive waves Bay County was settled by numerous ethnic groups. The French came from Canada and Southern Michigan and settled in Banks and Dolsenville. German immigrants settled Frankenlust and Monitor Townships in the early 1850's. In the 1870's through the early 1900's Polish and Jewish immigrants settled the area between Madison and Hampton streets off Columbus Avenue. The Irish settled both sides of the river after the Potato Famine. Other immigrants came from Sweden, Holland, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Italy. Numerous immigrant migrant workers from Mexico and Haiti settled permanently in the county.
All in all a rich heritage, a fertile land and water.........................!Table of Contents
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Cemetery Listings & Transcriptions - Cemetery burials and other information. |
Links (Bay County, Mich., & US) Places to help with your search online. |
Census Data - Online Census enumerations for Bay County | Lookups - people willing to help with research. |
Bay County Churches - selected histories of the counties churches |
Schools, Clubs, Associations, Fraternal Organizations - school census, yearbooks and member lists of organizations. |
Cities, Towns, Villages, & Townships - submit your stories about Bay County | Maps, Plat Books and Land Owners |
Bay County Directories - directories give the name and address of the person and generally their occupation. |
Military History: Michigan, Bay County
Information on enlistments, GAR camps, and photos of Civil War GAR headstones. |
Funeral Homes - listing. | Native American Resources |
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This page was initially created 15 February, 2003.
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Portions © 2001, 2002, 2003 Jan Nearing and Kay L. Mason, other portions © 1999/2000 Bill Carney, 1998-1999 Donna Hoff-Grambau. This page was originally constructed and maintained by Gloria and Eric Craig of South Bend, Indiana. It was visited 6,054 times between the time it was uploaded on 12/11/96 and 1/3/99.
The original page on the MIGenWeb was dedicated to Doris Alma Gies Bornemann May 11, 1929 to October 27, 1997
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