Editing Gratiot County, Michigan (section)

==History==
Gratiot County, Michigan is named for Captain [[Charles Gratiot]], who supervised the building of [[Port Huron, Michigan|Port Huron]]'s [[Fort Gratiot]].<ref name="Smith">{{cite book |title=General Charles Gratiot: Acres and Avenues Bear His Name |first1=Mildred L. |last1=Smith |year=1987 |publisher=Gratiot County Historical and Genealogical Society}}</ref>   It was described by the [[Michigan Territory|Territorial Legislature]] in 1831. By 1837, the Territory had been admitted to the Union as a state; in 1855 the State Legislature authorized the organization of Gratiot County – the death year of the county's namesake.<ref>{{cite book |last = Tucker |first = Willard D. |year = 1913 |title = Gratiot County, Michigan: Historical, Biographical, Statistical. Chronicling the Events of the First Sixty Years of the County's Existence as the Abode of White Men; with County, Township, City and Village Matters Fully Detailed and with Miscellaneous Events of Importance Duly and Suitably Treated; by One who Has Been a Resident of the County Nearly Half a Century |location = Saginaw, Michigan |publisher = Press of Seemann & Peters |page = 25 |oclc = 497670 }}</ref>

Gratiot County was a [[New England]] settlement. The original founders of [[Ithaca, Michigan|Ithaca]] and of [[Alma, Michigan|Alma]] were settlers from New England, "[[Yankee]]s", descended from the [[English American|English]] [[Puritans]] who settled the northeastern coast of the new continent in the 1600s. The Gratiot County settlers were farmers who headed west into what was then the wilds of the [[Northwest Territory]] during the early 1800s. Most of them arrived as a result of the completion of the [[Erie Canal]] as well as the close of the [[Black Hawk War]]. They arrived to virgin forest and wild prairie, but laid out farms, constructed roads, erected government buildings and established post routes. They maintained their customs, such as passion for education, and abhorrence of the existing slave trade. They were members of the [[Congregationalist Church]] or the [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal Church]].<ref>Portrait and Biographical Album - Gratiot County MI (1884)</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=UzREAQAAMAAJ&q=%22New+England%22&pg=PA269|title=Gratiot County MI|last1=Tucker|first1=Willard Davis|year=1913}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G9wnYRvMkp8C&q=%22gratiot+county%2C+michigan%22&pg=PA85|title=An Index of Pioneers from Massachusetts to the West Especially the State of ...|year=1975|publisher=Genealogical Publishing Com |isbn=9780806306605}}</ref>

In the 1890s, German immigrants began settling in Gratiot County.<ref name=clarke>{{cite web|url=http://clarke.cmich.edu/resource_tab/bibliographies_of_clarke_library_material/michigan_local_history/county_material/gratiot.html|publisher=[[Clarke Historical Library]], [[Central Michigan University]]|title=Bibliography on Gratiot County|access-date=January 19, 2013}}</ref><ref>Netherlanders in America: a study of emigration and settlement in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in the United States of America, Volumes 1-2</ref> ''See'' [[List of Michigan county name etymologies]]. [[Emil Lockwood]], a noted Michigan legislator, represented Gratiot County in the [[Michigan Senate]] from 1963 to 1970, much of the time as Senate Majority Leader.

There are six Michigan historical markers in Gratiot County:
* [[Alma College]]
* Gratiot County
* Jackson Weller House
* Lumberjack Park
* Michigan [[Masonic]] Home
* Saginaw and Gratiot County State Road / Saginaw Valley & St. Louis Railroad<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.michmarkers.com/Frameset.htm|title=Michigan Historical Markers|work=michmarkers.com|access-date=January 6, 2009|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180412064547/http://www.michmarkers.com/Frameset.htm|archive-date=April 12, 2018|url-status=usurped}}</ref>