A town the railroad renamed, beside a village the Germans built

Two settlements grew up a few miles apart in Denmark Township, and they came from completely different worlds. One was built by hand by German Lutheran immigrants who wanted to farm and worship in their own language. The other got its name handed to it by a railroad company that barely slowed down.

The Germans came first. Starting in 1851, Lutheran families settled the country that became Richville — names like Gottlieb Ammon, Michael Schwartz, and Michael Gruber. They organized Denmark Township in 1853 and held the first town meeting at Joseph Selden’s house the next year. The 1854 count found 227 people raising corn and wheat. By 1880 the township held more than 1,600. Richville stayed what it started as: a churchgoing German farm community, with the congregation at its center.

Reese has a stranger origin. In 1872 a woman named Asenath Rogers platted a tract and called the place Gates, after a Saginaw businessman. The name didn’t stick. When the Detroit & Bay City Railroad came through in 1873, the railroad renamed the village Reese, after a superintendent — Alvin H. Reese, a man who may never have lived there at all. That was how it often went: the company laid the track, the company hung the sign, and a stranger’s last name became home for everyone who got off the train.

Reese grew fast on the rails. Within five years it had about 300 people and was the trading point for a big stretch of farm country. In 1883 a second line, the Saginaw, Tuscola & Huron, crossed through and made Reese a junction, which is exactly the kind of thing that turns a crossroads into a town.

So you have the two patterns of the Thumb side by side: a village settlers carved out for themselves and named for their faith, and a village the railroad named for an official, almost in passing. Both are still on the map.