Ravenna borrowed its name from an Ohio hometown

Ravenna’s beginning has two people in it, and it helps not to mix up their jobs. E.B. Bostwick built the first sawmill in 1844. That gave a small settlement a reason to gather. But Muskegon County’s community profile says the name came later, from the surveyor who platted the village in 1882.

That surveyor borrowed the name from his hometown in Ohio. The county profile does not name him, but it makes the split clear: Bostwick built the mill; the surveyor supplied Ravenna’s name nearly four decades later.

Ravenna incorporated as a village in 1922. So the short version is easy to keep straight: an 1844 sawmill started the settlement, an 1882 plat gave it the Ohio name, and village government followed in the next century.

That order is the useful bit. The mill explains why people gathered there, while the later plat explains why Ravenna appears under an Ohio name. Older retellings sometimes blur those two jobs. The county record assigns them separately: Bostwick built the mill, and the later surveyor supplied the name.