Jamestown got its name from four men named James

The name came down to a coincidence of first names. When this corner of southeast Ottawa County split off and organized as its own township in 1849, the first meeting was held at the home of James Cronkright Jr. The local history records thirteen men present, and four of them were named James. That shared first name apparently settled the matter: the township became Jamestown, after no one founder in particular.

James Cronkright and his wife had already been here for six years. They arrived in 1843 as the township’s earliest settlers and put up a house just 16 by 22 feet on land surrounded by heavy forest. Settlement was pulling in from two directions: Grandville to the east and Holland to the west. Fur trader Rix Robinson also nudged families toward this stretch of fine timber in between.

The township still wears those early settlement names. Forest Grove’s district built a log schoolhouse in 1853, part of the small school network that spread across the township to reach farm families in the woods. Zutphen and Jamestown Center filled in more of the map.

It’s an unusually plain origin story for a place name. No explorer, railroad baron, or Latin flourish: just a township meeting in 1849, four men with the same first name, and a name that stuck.