Oak Grove: the mill village whose post office supplied the name

Oak Grove began with water power. Cohoctah Township’s history says the first grist mill and dam went up in 1846 on Bo-bish-e-nung Creek. A small store followed, and a village began to gather around them.

The village and post office did not start with the same name. Residents called the settlement Chemungville, after a county in New York. The post office was Oak Grove. The postal name is the one that lasted on the map.

The township around it changed names, too. It began as Tuscola Township, became Bristol in 1857, and took the name Cohoctah in 1867. Those dates help explain why several names can appear in records for the same corner of Livingston County.

The township’s account says an Oak Grove post office still remained when another local post office moved to Cohoctah in 1874. It does not give the later closing date, so the clean historical thread is the earlier one: mill, store, Chemungville settlement, Oak Grove post office, and a postal name that outlived the village’s first choice.